Equipping the Rural Church:
Reviving Forgotten Congregations
September 5, 2025
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Guest: TJ Freeman
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/05/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, hello and welcome to the program. I thank you for tuning in or joining us on maybe your favorite podcast or streaming us through our Stand in the Gap app. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and today I am excited to have a return guest, but also a friend of mine and friend of the program, and that’s Pastor TJ Freeman of Christchurch in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. That’s up in beautiful Tioga County, Pennsylvania. Some of you maybe have visited Wellsboro to see the beautiful sites there, especially this time of year going into the fall with the changing leaves at the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, as they call it, and some of the other beautiful trails. But TJ, thanks so much for making time to be on our program today.
TJ Freeman:
It’s my pleasure, Isaac. Thanks for having me back.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, TJ, for those who have been up to Wellsboro, they will understand, I think why the Lord led you to start the Brainerd Institute, which is for rural ministry helping rural churches because you are in a very beautiful rural area. You and I actually, I live on the other side of the New York Pennsylvania border, so I live on the New York side and you’re down in the Pennsylvania side, but we’re both in what the twin tier region and we both go to some of the same places for hiking or shopping or restaurants or things like that, and there’s a lot going on. But when I moved back up to this area from being down in Berks County and having actually even been in South Carolina before that, I remember almost immediately people that I didn’t even know as well as friends and even family members started questioning, well, Isaac, why are you and Jill moving up here?
Why are you moving back here? My wife grew up in the Corning, New York area, grew up in this area, and so we were coming back and people kind of thought it was strange. And that’s been almost seven years ago now, and that still sometimes happens. And it is common, very common to see people moving out of our area down south to the Carolinas or Florida or Georgia or just somewhere else. And tj, you were part of that group. You and I probably, I think we consider ourselves young still we’re maybe the geriatric millennial age. We went through high school in the late nineties, Y2K and all that. But when we were both younger, we were further south. And I’d just love for you to talk a little bit about what brought you back up to this area as well as to a more rural area from having been in a southern area, but also an area that had a lot more people back to an area where you originated from and where your ministry has really grown and developed now.
TJ Freeman:
Yeah, you’re right, Isaac. A lot of us grew up wanting to get out of a place like this, and I was certainly among that number, and I thought I had pretty righteous reasons for wanting to do that. And part of it had to do with wanting to maximize my effectiveness. I had been trained to preach and to do ministry and had the opportunity to go out and just naturally, you start thinking about where there are greater pools of people or a higher population, there’s just greater potential to maximize your effectiveness. So it feels like a stewardship principle, right? But in reality, I had kind of flipped that upside down and coming back is what exposed that to me. So we started having kids after being down in southwest Florida as church planters and got a little nostalgic about our rural upbringing and had an opportunity to move back.
And when we did that, I was amazed at how difficult it felt. I did not expect to experience culture shock moving back to the place I grew up, but I very much did, and it had a lot to do with the mindset here in Southwest Florida, like you said, there’s a lot of people, it’s resource rich, there’s a growth mindset, and here things tend to be on the decline because of things like guys like us growing up and moving out, and there’s more of a scarcity mindset even in the church. There’s not a lot of thought about the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in many cases. We’re just trying to survive. So coming back up here was primarily a move to be closer to family, and the Lord knew he was using that really to expose some things going on in my heart and to help me see a broader theology of his purpose for a place like this.
Isaac Crockett:
I love that the theology of God’s purpose for a rural area and the Lord has led you to open this institute, the Brainerd Institute for Rural Churches and Rural Ministry, and we want to talk a lot in this program about that. But really we want to focus this idea on equipping the rural church. If you are not from an out of the way place, maybe you’re in a suburb area or an urban area, I think you’re going to want to listen to this and there’s a lot to learn and pray about. But equipping the rural church and reviving, forgotten congregations is sort of what we want to get into. And I want to ask you about kind of your philosophy. I think last time you were on, you called it the Dollar Store philosophy, but before that you have a big, we’re five weeks away from a big rural church conference coming up right there in Wellsboro. Could you tell us the dates and a little bit of information about that tj?
TJ Freeman:
Yes. October 10th at 11, right here in the beautiful Victorian historic town of Wellsboro. If you’ve not been, I would encourage you to come just to see the town. What we’re doing though is getting together with church leadership teams, so pastors, deacons, elders, whatever you understand the leadership of the church to look like. And we’re talking about what does it mean to have a healthy church in a place where the church is often overlooked, forgotten, many cases, struggles, and how can we work together for the sake of the demonstration of God’s glory in an entire region like this, Isaac, 97% of our country is rural according to the USDA by landmass, only 20% of the people live there. So we have a lot of work to do as Christians to make Christ known in the forgotten places, which he wants to have happen. He wants the whole earth to be filled with the knowledge of his glory. So that certainly includes places like this. So when we gather here in Wellsboro, October 10th and 11th, we’re going to be talking to leadership teams to ministry wives, and just helping encourage them to pursue God’s heart for the church in their region.
Isaac Crockett:
TJ, we have about one minute. Can you explain what you sometimes call the dollar store theology or application of this idea of restoring the rural church?
TJ Freeman:
Okay, so when I moved back, not all of the things that God was doing in my heart were pleasant to me. Okay? One of those is the Lord stripped away something I had in Florida that I loved. You know what it was? It was Chick-fil-A man.
I struggled with the idea of having to drive two hours to eat what some people call the Lord’s chicken. And so I was kind of whining that there’s no Chick-fil-A in the area. And then I noticed, well, everywhere these dollar stores are popping up like crazy, why can’t Chick-fil-A do that? But it kind of occurred to me, there’s really two business models. There’s one that says, I’m going to go where the people are because that’s where the most economic incentive is. And then there’s another that says, no, we’re just going to spread ourselves out as wide as we possibly can and get into the most remote rural places. There’s a joke that every time a yellow bag hits the ground, a new dollar store pops up wherever it lands, and that includes some really remote spots. So the question that the church needs to answer is, do we want to be a big commercial chicken restaurant that goes to the bigger places, or would we like to be like the dollar stores and figure out how can we just be everywhere? And as the church we know, the Lord’s commanded us truly to be everywhere. And so everywhere that there’s a dollar store, there should be a healthy church. And until that happens, we’ve got to keep fighting for it.
Isaac Crockett:
I think that’s a great way of looking at it. We can all picture that. And no matter where you live, you know that when you’re driving and out of the way places, you’ll see a Dollar General or some sort of dollar store. And it reminds us that the Lord has sent us to go into all the world to make disciples for him. And thinking about how much of our nation is rural is important for us to think about how do we reach those geographies? How do we revive forgotten congregations? How do we encourage role pastors? So many things to talk about. So many things to look forward to in this program today. I hope that you’ll stay tuned in, maybe even let others know about this broadcast. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today. Welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m talking with a friend today.
Pastor TJ Freeman is a return guest to this program, and he’s not only the pastor of Christ Church in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, but he also started a ministry to help other rural churches. And tj that’s what we want to talk about today, this idea of equipping the rural church and really reviving forgotten congregations. I think for all of us when it’s election time, especially national elections, we see the maps and we see the difference between the clusters of urban and suburb areas where there’s a lot more people and then the more rural areas, and typically the rural parts lean more traditional, more conservative and those sort of things. And you were given this object lesson of the dollar stores. And how wouldn’t it be neat to have a thriving biblical Christ-centered church in every spot where there’s a Dollar Tree or a dollar store? And that’s a neat goal.
One of the things you were starting to say at the end of the last segment too is just because a church is in an area where there’s not a lot of people or a rural type of lifestyle, doesn’t mean that it’s not a healthy church. Sometimes we think of rural churches as being small and struggling, and there are many of those, but the Lord used you when you came back up to the area where you’d grown up here in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. The Lord used you and has really done a neat work at the church that you were at, and it’s a thriving healthy church. And through that, the Lord has led you to this Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry and the director of that. And so tj, my question I guess is can you tell us a little bit about the significance of the name for Brainerd Institute, this being named after David Brainerd and early American missionary to the Native Americans and to the pioneers, and just a little bit of that inspiration for the naming of the Brained Institute?
TJ Freeman:
Yes. Well, when I was struggling a little bit with some of that unexpected culture shock, moving back to a rural place, I found myself almost getting into a little bit of a depression. It was such a resource rich area down in southwest Florida. It was so vibrant and so focused on the advancement of the church. And up here I struggled to find that same kind of rhythm and groove on top of that, things like not having Chick-fil-A close by and stores closing early and having it be more of an insulated community. That was harder to break into. I just found myself feeling a little bit lonely, and quite frankly, a little bit sorry for myself. I picked up a copy of David Brainerd’s journal and he became a mentor, which is pretty amazing because he’s been dead for close to 300 years now to have a mentor like that.
But God used him through the writing of his journals throughout his missionary journeys. He kept a journal and he was very honest about where he was at in his heart and very honest about how the Lord was refining him as a Christian and as a pastor. And I identified so much with his story. He did not mean to become a rural pastor, that’s what he ended up being. But he meant to become a more urban pastor in New England. Through a series of difficult circumstances. He got expelled from Yale. You needed to have an Ivy League or a Cambridge degree to preach in New England at the time. So he was barred from doing the thing that he had given his life over to doing, and he got called out by a mission society to preach in the most remote parts of the country. So Brainerd became a man who gave himself for the sake of Christ to the middle of nowhere.
And guess what? It killed him by age 29. He’s dead of tuberculosis. David Brainerd, I’m sorry, Jonathan Edwards discovers his journals as Brainerd’s dying in his house and get permission to publish them. That’s the only reason we have them today. So what I realized is I’m whining over some really insignificant things. Here’s a man who gave himself for the sake of Christ in the middle of nowhere, and it killed him. Am I willing for the sake of Christ to give myself to places most of the world, and I considered to be the middle of nowhere, and I by God’s grace and with the help of the Spirit determined yes, I was willing to do that even if it kills me and I want to call other men to do the same. So that’s been the battle cry of the Brainerd Institute from the beginning is I’m looking for men who are willing for the sake of Christ to give their lives to the middle of nowhere, even if it kills them.
Isaac Crockett:
And it’s been really fascinating and amazing to watch as in the last few years, especially the Brainerd Institute has grown, and it’s so helpful here, but it’s helpful just even beyond the Tioga County Pennsylvania area. The Lord has been using it all over the country and giving you opportunities in the ministry there opportunities to really help revive congregations, equip churches and pastors and empower. I think that’s one of the words you all like to use is empowering them. So could you tell us a little bit more about that heartbeat that we get even from hearing how you came up with the name, but that heartbeat of helping revive rural congregations that many times? Let’s face it, these churches and these groups have been kind of forgotten by many people.
TJ Freeman:
Well, to do that, Isaac, we have to go all the way back to Genesis and we find in Genesis one and two, God’s purpose and his creation, he creates all things to show his glory, and he creates man specifically in his image and he gives man his dominion. Nothing else has that. So man has the capacity to glorify God in a way that’s bigger than just the rest of creation. Well, mankind of course, fails horribly at that. And you’d think when we get to the flood, God is canceling that plan, but that’s not what he does. When Noah gets off the boat after the flood, God reissues the command that he gave man right there in Genesis two, which is be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. God’s plan from the start has been an earth filled with image bearers who exercise his dominion to the ends of the earth.
He wants this thing filled with that. In Habakkuk too, we see what I quoted earlier, that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, like the waters cover the sea. So think about the way that the waters of the flood cover the earth. God wants his glory to cover the earth like that, but through the spreading out of man. And then when we get to Ephesians three, the apostle Paul says, Hey, I want to go back and revisit this. I want to reveal the mystery of this that’s been hit for ages in Christ, that through the church, the manifold wisdom or the highest display of God’s glory would be revealed not just in a place but to the heavens. So I go through all that theological work to say God wants there to be healthy churches in all parts of the earth for the display of his glory so that this whole planet is saturated with a display that communicates God’s glory all the way to the heavens. That means that what we might think of as the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania or Iowa or the central part of Florida or anywhere that’s rural, that place matters richly for the display of God’s glory. And if we’re going to be faithful to what God made us to do, we have to pursue healthy churches in places that we may consider the middle of nowhere.
Isaac Crockett:
Amen to that. Brainerd institute.com gives a lot of information so much that you all are doing, and the Lord is using you to help seminaries and Christian universities and congregations and places all over. And we mentioned five weeks from today, October 10th and 11th in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, the Rural Church Conference. But another thing that you’re doing is the residency program at Brainerd. Can you explain a little bit of that in the time we have left?
TJ Freeman:
Yeah, so we realized really early on as we were watching rural churches close their doors for good that we needed to encourage or empower, as you said, the next generation of pastors for these rural churches and coming out of seminary, most guys are not thinking I’d like to go to a town of 200 people and give my life to ministering there. Yet these places according to scripture need to have a healthy representation of the church. So we want to call young men or really men of any age out into rural places where we’re going to train and equip them for rural ministry. And there are so many obvious needs in front of us. We’ve even been able to place a lot of our residents as pastors in churches as they graduate, but it’s a one to two year highly immersive rural specific training to be a pastor.
Isaac Crockett:
And this is great for guys coming out of seminary, but really for all ages, and we just have about a minute here, but maybe you could mention that as well as your website where people can see more of your podcast, your articles, so many resources out there.
TJ Freeman:
Yeah, I kind of stumbled into the all ages part because I initially was thinking younger guys, but we’ve realized there are men, especially guys who are thinking of switching careers or guys who have retired from one and would be willing to go into ministry for the second career, and we want to equip and support them without them having to go away somewhere for training so that they can learn right here what it means to be a pastor getting the theological education they need, as well as the practical hands-on work. And the need is so significant. We want to dive in and help as many guys as we can give their lives to pastoring in the middle of nowhere, even if it kills them. There’s a lot of information on our website@brainerdinstitute.com. That’s Brainerd with an e Brainerd institute.com. You can see all of our initiatives, a bunch of resources, and if you’re interested in considering pastoral ministry in the middle of nowhere, I’d like to talk to you too.
Isaac Crockett:
And for any of you interested in going to the conference, you can go to Brainerd institute.com and look at that. But that’s coming up in Wellsboro. The speaker will be Sean DeMars and some other neat opportunities and things going on, as well as networking and fellowship and just refreshment and reviving. And this will hopefully help you if you’re in a rural church setting, do an even better job, maybe help equip you more or revive you if you’re thinking about getting into it. Or maybe you’re not from a rural area, maybe your suburb or urban area, but you need to know what your brothers and sisters in Christ and most of the map of America are going through. This would be a great opportunity for you to come to that. That’s five weeks from today, October 10th and 11th in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. When we come back, we have more questions for tj, more to talk about looking at reviving forgotten congregations and looking at a little church building, one of many vacant church buildings that TJ and others have seen, and the Lord is actually bringing a congregation back to where that congregation used to be in a rural little town.
Lots of neat ideas, lots of talk about, lots of encouraging stuff coming right up on Standing the Gap today. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and on today’s program, if you’re just tuning in, we’ve been talking with Pastor TJ Freeman from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania and from the Brainerd Institute for Rural Churches. And we’ve been looking at equipping and even empowering, you could say, the rural church, reviving, forgotten congregations. And before we go into more of that, talking about some of these forgotten churches and forgotten places and some of the things that are going on in some of the revival that’s happening in rural areas, there’s a lot also going on here at the American Pastors Network and stand in the Gap media. It’s always amazing to see how God uses and opens up doors. So I’d like to go to our program producer, Tim Schneider, and Tim, if you could come and just give us a little bit of the information of things that are going on and ways that people can take advantage of it.
Speaker 3:
Yes, Isaac, I can. Good afternoon to everybody. Want to let you know, have you guys ever checked out our websites on the internet? We have two great websites. We encourage you to check out Stand in the gap media.org. You can go there to find all the archives of TV, radio programs, anything that has to do with media is usually found there at Stand of the gap media.org. There’s archives of our programs from really just about since we started and all the other things that we do here. So media wise, please check out that site stand of the gap media.org. Also, we have the American Pastors network.net. Please consider checking that out. There’s articles written from the host and lots of other resources there at Stand the Gap media.org and american pastors network.net. But if you go to american pastors network.net, one of the things we encourage you to do is consider signing up for our e-newsletter.
We won’t inundate your inbox with spam, but we’ll send you information about the ministry and things that are going on that you’ll find useful. One of the things that we do usually weekly is we send out a recap email of the previous week’s radio programs so you can find out what was airing and what the programs were the previous week, the guests, the titles, a link to them. You can find out information about transcripts, some podcast q and as. There’s lots of different stuff that’s usually included in that email recap newsletter that’s sent out every week for the previous week. So please sign up for e-newsletters, you’ll get stuff like that and other things related to the ministry. Also, we encourage you to please pray for our ministry. If you sign up at that site, again, american pastors network.net, we’ll send you an e-newsletter occasionally when we have prayer requests and things like that.
But besides, even if you don’t get that email or that e-newsletter, we encourage you, please continue praying for this ministry, cover your prayers for everything that is happening here, and thank you in advance. Also, please consider giving financially if the Lord is blessing you through this ministry. No amount too big, too small is too much. Just please consider giving whatever the Lord would put on your heart because ministry does cost and we have bills to pay around here and things that need to be done ministry wise. So we covet your prayers and we covet your finances also for whatever the Lord might put on your heart. So that’s what I’ve got here, Isaac, and I’ll go ahead and send it on back to you.
Isaac Crockett:
Thank you so much for that, Tim. And yeah, we hope that we can be a resource to all churches and to all believers who are listening to this all around the globe and especially here in the States. Well, let’s get back to looking at reviving forgotten congregations. I want to go back to Pastor TJ here last year you were on this program. It’s been a little over a year ago, and one of the things you were mentioning, I think a lot of our listeners can relate to, and that’s when you drive around an area for long enough, you see old church buildings and we know that the church buildings are just that. They’re the buildings that are used by congregations. They’re not the actual church that Christ has, his universal church and his congregations that get together. But it is sad to think of all of the things, all the disciple making, all the neat events that happened in those buildings at one point in the history of that community that are now just empty, just vacant or turned into a used car lot or whatever it is. And so you were talking about that and a few months ago you had a really neat opportunity, one of these forgotten places, one of these forgotten church buildings. An opportunity caught your attention. Could you tell us a little bit more about that story?
TJ Freeman:
Yeah, the decline of the rural church and seeing these buildings that are empty, that’s really reflective of a decline that’s going on in rural America. There’s a generation that has slowly been dying off, who held together a kind of moral fabric that allowed us to have kind of a Mayberry like picture of what rural America is. And what I say today is we’ve got to realize that now Mayberry has a meth lab and really that is a theological problem. It’s not just a cultural problem, not a political problem. It really is the fault of the church in some ways for looking the other way as I had done by thinking that bigger places are where the gospel needs to make the biggest splash. Well, these rural places are really important too, and I realized when we see one of these empty buildings, if there’s an opportunity to reclaim the glory that was once demonstrated from a place like that, that is at least worth trying.
And so we took a stab at it. I drove through a little coal mining town way back in the hills of Pennsylvania. Someplace that you don’t pass through, you’d have to intentionally be trying to go there and not many people do that, but there’s a beautiful historic stone church, been there since the 1880s and it’s been sitting empty for the last 23 years. Inside it was dusty, but aside from that, it looked like they just walked out. Yesterday that building came up for sale and I was kind of challenged, are we going to put our resources where our mouth is? And so we ended up buying that church through the Brainerd Institute and we are gifting that to a congregation who’s going to plant a new church there, and we’re eager to see the glory of God reclaimed in that place. You’re right, the building is just a building, but that building does represent a spiritual reality in a congregation that gathers in a place like that to make God’s glory known.
Here’s just how I picture it quickly. I like to think of this. If you were to look at a satellite map at night of that area, that community is not going to be making an impact on the satellites. You can’t see the light. I think of a spiritual reality there. The church is meant to demonstrate the light of the gospel all the way to the heavens. So that was happening in that town and then it went dark. We have the opportunity not just to ring the church bell again, but to turn the lights back on spiritually speaking in a way where God will be testifying about his glory to the heavens through the congregation that gathers there, and that I think is so worth the effort.
Isaac Crockett:
TJ, you’ve had these opportunities to do things closer to your congregation there in Wellsboro at Christchurch and further away and really some very far away places that you’ve gone. And as you’ve talked to rural church leaders to pastors to healthier churches, to more struggling churches, as you’ve talked with others who are looking at ways to revitalize churches, what are some of the biggest challenges that you think forgotten congregations in some of rural America are facing?
TJ Freeman:
The challenges are really numerous. Some of them are internal. There can be a bit of a scarcity mindset. Churches can think of each other as competition rather than partners. For the advancement of a kingdom, it’s easy to become isolated and insulated. And when there is scarcity, we tend to hold on to things instead of holding them with open hands like we know we should. There are also some external things. The seminaries are not typically training guys to go out into rural places. Guys are not getting a vision for giving their lives to a place like that. And so we really need to correct that on both fronts. We need to help churches understand you have a responsibility to thrive according to God’s word for the sake of his glory. You have everything you need. You’ve been given the word of God and the spirit of God.
Your greatest tool then is the people that the Lord brings who use his word and live according to his spirit for the sake of his glory. And you can do this, I think we’ve failed to understand what success really looks like. Oftentimes we’re shooting at a target we’ve read about in a book or we’ve seen on a video or an expectation we’ve set in our minds instead of just being a mere church that exists, using the normal means of grace to love the Lord, love the people around us and make him known. And then again, broadly speaking, we need to reclaim a fundamental understanding of place that says God wants his glory to be seen. He does it best through healthy churches. Therefore we must pursue healthy churches in rural places. And that means a lot of us are going to have to figure out ways to leave bigger places for the sake of smaller.
Isaac Crockett:
That is an interesting statement right there, and I think this is eye opening for all those listening to consider this, and I think so much of what you’re talking about, these mindsets and things and the isolation and competition things, these apply to many of our churches that might be struggling even if it might be more of a suburban or city landscape as well. But as you travel to some of these far away places or harder to get to or smaller spots throughout America, what are some of the things that you find encouraging and what do you see that you want to see more of when it comes to, I guess churches, but especially we’re focusing here on the rural churches?
TJ Freeman:
Well, God has certainly not done with rural places, and I have been so thankful as I’ve pursued this journey of rural ministry to be able to go out and connect with some pastors and some churches where there is some excitement about what God’s doing in small towns. And I am so thankful for that attention. Just this summer, my family and I had the opportunity to go out to rural Iowa, middle of cornfields, and here is a sweet congregation and a community where the pastor knows everybody by name. They’re all high fiving him as we’re out getting ice cream in the evening. And it was just a beautiful picture of God’s representatives, his church being there in a community and God’s being glorified as they give themselves over to the word to prayer to each other and to their community for the sake of Christ’s glory. That reality can take place anywhere. And so what I’m most optimistic about is the truth that God delights in making impossible things possible. He delights in working in a community where the rest of the world would say, is that even worth your time? Yeah, he goes in there and makes his glory known. That’s been really encouraging to me.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, we’ve gotten to talk about a lot of things already, tj, but there’s still more I want to ask you and there’s a lot we won’t get to. We just don’t have enough time in the broadcast to get to all the questions, but those of you listening, please don’t go away. We’re going to be right back finishing up this conversation about reviving forgotten congregations and praying for the American church, rural, suburban, urban, everything in between. God is not dead and God is on the throne. He is at work in our lives and in our churches. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to this program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. I’ve been talking with Pastor TJ Freeman and TJ as we’re wrapping things up here, maybe there’s somebody listening right now and they might even be part of a small community, maybe a struggling rural church, and maybe we have some who are listening from strong ministries but maybe kind of in a rural area. And I’m wondering what you would say to someone who maybe they’re listening and they say, you know what? I’m not in one of those rural places. I’m not in one of those dollar store type of communities. Maybe they’re in the place that has the Chick-fil-A and the nice restaurants and different things in a suburb or something, and I’m curious what you would say how they could help with the task that is at hand in revitalizing churches and especially today’s focus on looking to revive and revitalize the rural church.
TJ Freeman:
Well, if you are in a struggling rural church, there can be times where you are really focused in on what you lack. That’s the normal thing we do as humans anyway, and when you’re in a church where you feel like, man, I wish we had a better music program. I wish there were more for the kids. I wish there were more people. The list can go on rather than lamenting those things. Think about what it is the Lord will say to you when you see him in glory, you for being faithful to him will hear the words well done, good and faithful servant. He in that moment wipes away every tear he restores, confirms all of those things that happen when we see Christ. That’s where your reward is today. You are there not to consume something. You are there to demonstrate something, and that is the glory of God in your church and his glory is worth displaying there even with the things you lack.
So lean into that. Trust the Lord with the things that are the gaps that you see and just be faithful. Christ is coming and it will all be worth it. If you’re in a bigger church in a larger area, you’re not in a rural church, understand that your brothers and sisters out here need your help. It is tremendously difficult to support the work of rural ministry in a place where there are not a lot of jobs and there are not a lot of resources and there hasn’t been a lot of thinking about what it means to plant churches and things like this. You through the resources you have and the experience you have can be a blessing into those rural communities, not by trying to make their churches look like yours, but by supporting the work the Lord is doing out there. So get involved financially.
The Braid Institute tries to give away matching scholarships to rural pastors who can raise some funds so that a church can have a pastor who doesn’t have to be bi-vocational. Maybe you could help support a pastor that way by helping with some of our pastoral scholarships. You certainly can be praying for the rural church. You can be encouraging people in your church to go out to rural places. You yourself might even be thinking about is there a way you can take your job and do it in a remote location? God wants to be glorified in places like that, and it takes all of his people thinking about the advancement of his kingdom in all places, including the 97% of America that’s rural for the spread of his glory according to his eternal purpose for creation.
Isaac Crockett:
Dida, you mentioned this upcoming conference that that happens to be just five weeks away. Could you talk a little bit more about that and maybe encouraging pastors who are listening or maybe a listener wants to tell their pastor about this opportunity that it is. You have Pastor Sean DeMars coming in from Alabama and you have people coming from all over to focus on this idea of helping the rural church.
TJ Freeman:
Yeah. One of the things that rural pastors especially don’t get to experience often is just sitting under the teaching of the word themselves. Sean DeMars is a really gifted and very earnest loving pastor, and he’s just going to come and minister to us through the word. We also have Mike osi, who’s a missionary to rural pastors in other countries. We have Raphael Manco who is a very gifted pastor from Central Pennsylvania, and I’m even going to do a session, Isaac, and we we’re going to talk about what it means to understand a good theology of place we’re going to worship when pastors and ministry leaders gather together and sing from the bottom of their hearts. It is one of the most beautiful things, I think this side of heaven, and then the aim of my team through the Brainerd Institute is to just richly bless all of the guys and the teams who are coming with really good. We have people cutting hair.
People have donated all kinds, pounds and pounds of meat and cheese to bless people with, and people are coming to do massage and footwork and it’ll be a real blessing. So this is going to be a sweet time together, plus just being in Wellsboro this time of year in the fall, it’s a really beautiful time to gather like this, so it’s a good time to sharpen your theology. It’s a good time to make some deeper relationships with other rural church leaders, and it’s a great time to be refreshed in the Lord. I would really encourage you to come bring your whole leadership team wives. My wife is doing a special session on Saturday just for you. I think it’ll be a really sweet time. I am sure it’ll be worth your investment,
Isaac Crockett:
And that’s a good point to remind too. It’s not just for pastoral and leadership team members, but it’s also for the wives of them, so a great opportunity as we’re approaching the end of this program, what about somebody who’s listening and we have people actually listening all over the world from rural areas as well as other areas. We have people even in Africa and places where they’re listening on radio then because it’s digital, they can listen anywhere where there’s an internet signal, but what would you like to tell the Christian who is helping in an area that’s maybe a hard to reach area, a rural church setting or something like that, and maybe they don’t even understand necessarily how the Lord is using them. Maybe they’ve just kind of grown up there and that’s all they’ve known, or maybe they’ve purposely gone back to a place or found a place that they see as a place with a need, even if it’s not a big area. What kind of encouragement would you like to leave them with?
TJ Freeman:
First of all, thank you for being there and serving faithfully. Second, lean into gaining a deeper understanding all the time of why the Lord has chosen to place you in that place at this time.
You’re not there by accident. You’re not there as a coincidence. It’s not happenstance. God has you there and he has you there for a rich purpose and he’s actually got some outcomes in mind that you need to help lead people toward. We talk a lot at the Brainerd Institute about things like helping people pursue the Lord so that they have an intimate relationship with him, helping them understand their stewards of everything that God has entrusted to them, helping them know that they should demonstrate through the spirit and their lives, that they have a story of God’s grace that they need to be sharing. These kinds of principles are what we need to be after, so in rural places, sometimes we can just kind of go with the flow and do what’s always been, but we have a responsibility no matter how small that might seem to us, it’s huge for the sake of making God known according to the means of grace that he’s established pursuing the outcomes that he’s called us to. In this place, what you’re doing really, really matters and you’re the one God has picked to do it. What a sweet responsibility,
Isaac Crockett:
Tj. As you’re saying that, I’m just thinking, well, how biblical that is that you’re saying and how applicable it is to all of us, whether it’s a mom who’s getting ready to cart her kids to soccer practice or a grandparent who is involved in their church or a rural church leader or a missionary on the other side of the globe or anybody. Anyone who knows the Lord, we’re not where we are by accident and God is working in us and is His grace being seen in our lives. We understand the bigger picture that we’re a part of wherever we are that God has placed us. TJ, I want to thank you for the work you are doing, not only at your church, at Christ Church in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, but through the Brainerd Institute helping and training and encouraging pastors and church leaders all over, but especially here in the United States for the rural church.
Thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time to be on, for sharing this, for sharing what people can know about the Brainerd Institute, and I want to thank all of you for listening. Thank you for listening to this program. I hope that you will support us with your prayers and pass this program and other resources onto others. Look up Brainerd institute.com and look up Stand in the Gap Media. We are so glad you’ve chosen to be with us, and until next time, I pray that you will stand in the gap for truth wherever God has led you today. Thanks again.
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