Across the Pacific Northwest, rural churches from mainline denominations are combating declining attendance and escalating costs through a novel solution: pastor sharing.
In more urban settings, congregations that belong to the same denomination are often able to share one pastor in order to reduce costs. In a more rural setting, however, pastors who can’t serve multiple congregations in the same denomination are instead beginning to serve at two different denominations — a move that crosses theological lines and, many say, helps build bridges between different denominations.
“What we’re finding is it’s getting harder to attract clergy to move to rural communities, particularly for part-time positions,” said the Rev. Geoff Helton, superintendent of the United Methodist Church Pacific Northwest Conference — Inland & Seven Rivers Missional District. “We’ve begun, where we can, sharing clergy.”
Keeping ministers in rural areas financially
The biggest benefits of pastor sharing that many people have reported are the way it allows both congregations to save costs and attract ministers to rural areas.
That’s the situation that the Rev. Roberta Smyth, who serves at Zion Lutheran Church and a United Methodist Church in La Grande, Oregon, is in. Both churches, located in a small, rural area, have about 20 households that regularly attend services.
“Neither could afford a full-time pastor,” Smyth said.
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For a short time before she was called to the Methodist church, she was working half-time at the Lutheran church. Without many other job opportunities in the rural area that could have supported her work as a pastor, she said she would have had to start looking for another call had she not been able to also serve as a Methodist pastor half-time.
“It was just fortunate for me that there was an opening there,” Smyth said.
The Rev. Jake Schumacher, an ordained Evangelical Lutheran Church in America minister, currently serves both the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Grandview, Washington, and Sunnyside Presbyterian Church in Sunnyside, Washington. Combined, both churches have an average congregational size of about 65 people, he said.
The two congregations decided to share Schumacher as pastor primarily for financial reasons, he said. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, both churches struggled to balance their budgets. By splitting the cost of a pastor’s salary, they’ve since been able to recover from those losses.
“That’s been really nice,” he said. “It feels really good to be more focused on ministry and generosity than always worried about the bottom line.”
How interdenominational ministries work
Several mainline denominations have overarching policies about pastor sharing, Smyth said. For example, Lutheran pastors are able to serve at PC(USA), United Church of Christ, Episcopal and Moravian churches, Smyth explained.
UMC (Methodist) pastors can serve at ELCA (Lutheran), PC(USA), United Church of Christ and Episcopal churches, Helton said. These denominations are known as full communion partners, or officially established unifying relationships between certain denominations.
“Our denominations have sort of created these relationships ahead of time,” Schumacher said. “That makes it a lot easier.”
Pastors serving interdenominationally have said that, while there are theological differences between mainline Christian traditions, the churches they shepherd tend to have more things in common than areas they differ.
“For most of these mainline denominations, the differences in theology [are] usually more finer pointed than you would necessarily cover in a sermon,” Smyth said.
The nature of shrinking congregations and creative solutions to address financial struggles, like pastor sharing, is also helping to tear down perceived differences between the denominations, Schumacher said.
“We’re realizing, ‘Oh, we can’t just be an island,’” Schumacher said. “And that causes us to realize, ‘Oh, we do have much more in common than differences.’”
Working through congregational differences
Rather than theology, the biggest tension many pastors reported wrestling with is the different ways that worship is practiced across different Christian traditions.
Some denominations are more structured and liturgical, with common ways of worshipping that are uniformly practiced across different congregations. Others have looser worship structures with more room for creativity and direction from the pastor.
Another difference that pastors have noticed between denominations is within the hierarchical structures.
Smyth, who serves in La Grande, Oregon, said she has noticed that Lutherans tend to be more focused on congregational input while the Methodists tend to be more hierarchical. One example is the calling of a pastor.
In Lutheran churches, the congregation is the one who chooses who to call from a list of qualified candidates handed down from the regional office known as a synod. In Methodist churches, the regional bishop will assign pastors to a particular church, with input from the congregation, Smyth said.
“It’s just a very different hierarchical system,” Smyth, who has been pastoring the two congregations for about four years, said.
Sharing resources
Many rural churches will go beyond sharing pastors and also share resources and support across denominations.
The Rev. Catherine Lyle, who is serving as the interim pastor for the First Presbyterian Church and the permanent pastor for the United Methodist Church in Sandpoint, Idaho, said many churches in her area work together to share resources and support.
“Collaborative ministries [are] key to rural ministries,” Lyle said.
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The ELCA (Lutheran) Northwest Intermountain Synod has been intentionally building interdenominational relationships with the help of a grant from the CaSTLE Project, an initiative of Wartburg Theological Seminary that works to revitalize rural ministry. The grant allowed the Synod to host events that bring together denominational heads to discuss what is going on in their areas and brainstorm ways to partner.
The group, which is still in its infancy, plans to meet in August to explore what the congregations can work on together, the Rev. Meggan Manlove, bishop of the Northwest Intermountain Synod, said.
Manlove said that Lutherans share resources, like pastors, as a way to be good stewards of the church.
“As rural communities continue to shrink for so many reasons, so do the congregational populations,” Manlove said. “But we want the life-giving gospel to keep being proclaimed in those areas, and it makes so much sense to partner with our full communion partners.”
By Emma Maple, FāVS News Reporter
