The new Lady Vicar :P

Just suppose you found yourself the sole pastor of a rural parish which had tiny congregations scattered throughout. What would you do? We had a go at brainstorming this in our staff meeting the other day. Here are our top five (in no particular order):

1. Find someone to regularly mentor and support you. Find a friend. Value your wife's role in this and encourage her to find this too.
   
2. Be both decisive and gracious early on. If you say 'no' to something, look for an opportunity to say 'yes' to something else or to invest in a positive way. Alternatively you could give yourself permission not to stress too much about changing things, but just ride it out for the first year.
   
3. Pick one main congregation to focus on. You might have services there weekly and only go to the other churches monthly.
   
4. Work out what your community involvement will be (eg regularly visiting everyone in town, teaching Scripture at the local school). To do this you will need to immerse yourself in the local community, getting out and about and chatting to the shopkeepers.
5. Invest in two or three people who you see as influential people or potential leaders. Read the Bible and pray with them each week. If you don't have any of these people, try to attract some local Christians who don't currently have much church involvement.

We also thought about the usefulness of getting to know the people in your congregations really well (going around to their houses, drinking lots of tea and listening to their yarns); preaching really solid sermons but without altering the style the people are used to; and looking for wider evangelical support, including people to import into your parish.