Dear Editor,
Many thanks for your report on the Free Church of Scotland’s conference that focused on the church’s ministry in rural areas (en August). It struck a chord; the plight of rural churches bothers me also.
One of the drawbacks of mass car ownership has been how it has facilitated, in the last 50 years or so, the practice of many Christians to gravitate towards larger church fellowships in our towns and cities. The Sunday commute to church often passes several small, but otherwise sound, struggling churches. Usually the blame is put on the children (there’s nothing for my kids here).
I ask myself, if God has called me to live in a particular community, why would He not also expect me to worship and witness in that same community? Or alternatively, if God has called me to worship in a particular church why am I not called to live in its vicinity? I wonder if the leadership of all our churches should be seriously considering ‘sending out’ those of their number that don’t live in their vicinity either to support or to plant churches wherever it is they actually live?
The recent increase in home working, accelerated by the Covid lockdown, has enabled many to consider leaving the cities and suburbia to live somewhere ‘more pleasant’, more affordable and more rural. How ironic that many Christians have moved in the opposite direction.
Yours sincerely,
Allister McCallum Aberdour, Fife
