Singing the Faith in Rural Kansas
Catherine Neelly Burton
Before I go too far, I want to give readers a sense of the context of rural Kansas. Call to Worship is a publication of the PC(USA), and the majority of PC(USA) congregations are east of the Mississippi River. As I see them, the realities of rural life and rural isolation east of the Mississippi are different and distinct from rural life west of the Mississippi.
Some call Kansas the Midwest, others say it’s the High Plains. Whatever you call this region, these primarily agricultural states west of the Mississippi are big, and there are fewer Presbyterians (and people in general) per square mile. Geography creates realities that are unique to this part of the country.
The least populated county in Kansas is Greeley. Greeley County is on the border of Colorado and is one of the few Kansas counties in Mountain Time. There are 1.6 people per square mile in Greeley County and one PC(USA) congregation, the First Presbyterian Church of Tribune. The 2020 census reported 772 people in Tribune. First Presbyterian of Tribune has twenty-two members—3 percent of the town. Greeley County has a small medical center, but it is one hour and twenty minutes to the regional medical center in Garden City, Kansas, and four hours to a major medical center in either Wichita, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Amarillo, Texas; or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The Tribune church is lay-led and participates in a preaching pool with two other rural congregations who share a rotation of lay preachers. Hymn singing in worship is accompanied by recorded music, and a church member plays the piano for special music. One of the other churches in the pool still has an organist; she is in her eighties and has been playing at the church for over sixty years. She will likely be their last organist.
Churches in the preaching pool follow the Revised Common Lectionary and a standard outline for worship that includes singing a Kyrie and using the ecumenical Lord’s Prayer. This standard outline was agreed upon years ago when the churches joined together and were trained in preaching and worship by a trio of retired pastors. Each church then adds their own written and spoken liturgy.
Rural Kansas churches sing from a variety of hymnals. Some use Glory to God, some the 1990 PC(USA) “blue hymnal”—The Presbyterian Hymnal—and some use hymnals from other denominations. The same is true in the PC(USA) churches in the urban Wichita area. A few of our churches use multiple hymnals. In Tribune they use the 1990 “blue hymnal” and a non-PC(USA) hymnal.
As in Tribune, several of our rural churches sing along to recorded music. There are multiple options for where and how to purchase collections. The Presbytery of the Plains and Peaks recently created a catalogue of public domain tunes that are in Glory to God, and they will share them for a nominal donation. One of our congregations in rural Kansas sings along to YouTube.
Once a month First Presbyterian in Freeport, Kansas, has a paid pianist. The rest of the time they sing a capella. A woman in the church with musical training picks out a few notes, and then they sing. This church is one of the only, if not the only, churches in the presbytery to read all four assigned lectionary texts for the day in worship. Freeport is unincorporated, so it is no longer a viable town, but unlike Tribune, it is about an hour from Wichita and everything a city of half a million people has to offer in the ways of medical care, retail, and entertainment.
In my life, I’ve worshiped in many places: as a pastor and church staff member, as a church member, and as a Sunday morning visitor. I’ve been in churches with robust music programs in which the singing, the instrumentalists, and the leaders are passionate and driven by their faith.
There are also some churches whose music programs used to be robust, and now everything feels like an effort to reclaim the glory days. This might look like a church paying for lots of musicians who appear to perform more than embody the spirit of their work. These services feel to me more like strange Sunday morning concerts than worship. Of course, it is also important to recognize that there are some paid musicians who do connect to the spirit of their work and the congregations they serve.
Efforts to keep the past alive might also look like a worshiping congregation of twenty-five people spread out in a sanctuary that seats three hundred because there is still a brilliant organist, and no one will suggest reconfiguring space or worshiping in a smaller space. Sure, no one can hear anyone else sing, but they dare not think about changing anything for fear of losing their organist. If they can keep the organist, they can pretend that things are the same as they were in the past. This is not intended to be a slight at gifted organists. I suspect an organist would prefer to have people sing along to hymns than to play them and wonder if anyone is even singing.
One of the many things I appreciate about our rural congregations is that they tend to be realistic about who they are and what is possible for them. In June of 2023 I left a pastoral call of thirteen years to work with rural congregations in Southern Kansas. The church I served was a lovely community of around three hundred members. Unfortunately, I fell into the trap of thinking that if I just worked hard enough, had enough innovative ideas, and recruited enough people to lead, we could reclaim our past worship attendance numbers, add new members, and make the church more attractive to people.
None of my goals were wrong, but they were all about my work and the church’s work as I set us up to strive and strive. Our rural churches learned long ago that they can strive all day long to make their church attractive and increase numbers, but reality is reality. People in small towns go to church at the same rates as people in cities, and small towns are shrinking. At some point, churches (of all sizes) must acknowledge where they are and what they can do. They can decide to feel sorry for themselves or decide to live with their reality.
Churches with full-time staff and multiple part-time staff members struggle with challenges that our small rural churches do not. I’m not anti-capitalist, but the history and relationship between capitalism and the church in the United States can make things hard for churches with staff to navigate economic and theological expectations. Capitalism says that if the church budget doesn’t grow each year, the church is failing. This is not a Christian idea, but as someone who has led a church staff, I understand the cultural and financial pressure. It is not just about success and growth; it is about people’s jobs. If the budget doesn’t grow, there won’t be enough money to pay everyone. It is hard to focus on the call to be the church of Jesus Christ when we are also navigating contradictory practices, vacillating as an institution between keeping a business in a capitalist culture and being the body of Christ.
In F-1.03, “The Calling of the Church,” the PC(USA) Book of Order states that the church is the body of Christ. This means that “Christ gives to the Church all the gifts necessary to be his body.” In the last year of my work, I have felt that our churches without pastors and music staff believe this more than our well-staffed churches do. Churches with limited or no staff are the churches that embody the theological conviction that Christ gives them what they need. If they sing along to recorded music, they can do that and be the body of Christ.
Our rural churches who have embraced ways of using music in worship that some may consider less than are the churches that focus on who they worship and why rather than the physical source of the music, be it from a live organ or a recording. No one in those churches will claim that their music is the best, and music is not the main reason they attend worship. But they do claim a sense of joy and freedom in worship that all churches should hope for.
Congregants may not leave worship at one of our rural churches after singing to recorded music and say, “Wow! The music was incredible today.” Instead, they leave worship week after week renewed from hearing the word read and proclaimed and singing their faith together.
