Frequently Asked Questions

We understand a rural place to be a populated area with open country and less than 2,000 houses or 5,000 people. This definition comes from the USDA.

Other factors also define rural places.

Land Dependent: Rural places are usually economically dependent upon jobs that extract resources from the land (such as farming, mining, logging, etc.) or use the expanse of land for other jobs (such as ranching, tourism, wind/solar, etc.).

Social Isolation: Rural places are often more than twenty miles away from important goods (such as grocery and clothing stores) and services (such as hospitals and vehicle repair).

As of 2021, 14% of the U.S. population (approx. 46 million people) live in rural counties. These rural places make up as much as 97% of the land mass in the United States.

The lifestyle of rural people is often directly connected to the physical land, weather conditions, and the availability of resources within their county.

Even if they work more directly with systems of commerce (often computer based-jobs), rural-minded people often think about local resources and the current conditions of the land.

This lifestyle also leads rural people to be more relationally-focused than progress-focused. For example, rural people may prefer to seek consensus in their community before agreeing with a new thing. If highly respected persons are not on board with the new thing, the project is unlikely to move forward.

We serve the churches, church-plants, and pastors in the rural ‘homeland’ of the United States of America. These regions and people are often lacking in financial resources to give proper time to evangelistic ministry. We also work with rural congregations who don’t have any denominational support yet have a passion to spread the gospel among their least-reached neighbors.

Thousands of protestant, gospel-preaching churches close each year. Many of these are located in rural places where lack of resources make it difficult to sustain a paid pastor. Yet the material and spiritual needs are often much greater than suburban settings.

Materially, things are rough for many rural people. As of 2021, 13% of rural people live below the poverty line – a higher number than those who live in US cities. Almost 20% of rural children live below the poverty line. 25% of American Indian, Alaska Native, or Hispanic rural households experience severe housing problems. Over the past twenty years, the suicide rate as increased 50% in rural areas, and is 73% higher among rural youth. Likewise, alcoholism, domestic abuse, the misuse of opioids are all greater among rural people than those who live in suburban and urban areas. The lack of funding, social services, social isolation only add to the despair found in rural communities. When there is no church or missionary present, rural places are often very hopeless places.

Spiritually, 60 counties in the US have an evangelical witness of 3% or less. Historically, these ‘least-reached’ counties have been located in rural New England and in the rural west. But as protestant churches close, the need for gospel-centered congregations is only increasing. Not only is their spiritual need in New England and western counties but also in rural counties within the Great Plains and desert south. These regions of the US are often overlooked by church-planting and missionary efforts.

A missionary pastor is someone who has been commissioned for church leadership by a sending church and is dependent upon financial support to accomplish their mission of establishing a healthy, self-sustaining congregation. They are missionaries in the sense that they are often serving in a region where their rural neighbors don’t have access to any other gospel-centered congregations. Their rural neighbors may have heard of the Bible, but may not own one, and certainly have never been taught from it.