A Review of the Book "Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church" by Michael Adam Beck & Tyler Kleeberger

Title: Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church

Author: Michael Adam Beck & Tyler Kleeberger

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Year: 2022

135 pages

Summary on the back: The rural church was a community's centrepiece. The Place where people gathered to worship and hear a sermon, break bread together, and support each other through the joys and struggles of life with the land. In many ways, the rural church captured a central aspect of the church's mission: to be the guiding hand for the life of a place. Can rural communities flourish again? Can new Christian communities succeed in rural areas? Could healthy rural churches catalyze a better future for their declining communities? This book collects stories form diverse rural contexts across the United States. It lays out a fresh theology for rural life and offers principles for harnessing the potential of what some consider the forgotten spaces. Each chapter includes a helpful Field Exercise, questions for discussion, and suggested actions for leadership teams to work through together. Chapters conclude with a Field Story illustrating how the chapter's main ideas can work in a real church setting.

Personal Thoughts: From the website freshexpressions,com, "In 2004, Fresh Expressions emerged out of the Anglican and Methodist churches in England. Pastors and leaders started to recognize new, organically-forming trends of church as an opportunity to “proclaim the faith afresh to each generation,” as the Anglican Declaration of Ascent states. The Mission Shaped Church report called them “fresh expressions,” and their popularity exploded across many denominations. Over time, Fresh Expressions has become a vehicle to mesh the existing church culture with newly-inspired ways of reaching those who don’t go to church."

This book was written as a way to give a ""Fresh Expression" to rural ministry. By using stories from their own history being pastors in country parishes, as well as calling on others to give their story, Beck and Kleeberger try to bring life to a ministry that many people often forget about or dismiss as not important. I think they were pretty successful as you can't help but feel for these struggling parishes who found new hope with their pastors.

As well, there are some good ideas that could be taken into other rural contexts, and even some urban ones! There is no denial of suffering and desperation that is being felt in rural parishes. But there is also hope as new things are tried, like team ministry, locally-grown pastors, and letting things die so that something new can take its place.

Because it is written in short-essay form, "Fresh Expression of the Rural Church" is a quick and easy read. However, by taking the time to digest the stories and explore the "field assignments", maybe we can all start to bring some hope to those parishes who might be feeling a little bit of that desperation, whether they are rural or urban.