Some of us have noticed an odd thing happening at gatherings of rural pastors and laypeople. We’ve seen pastors bragging not about how large their churches are (as often happens at conferences) but about the smallness of their towns, one-upping each other in a kind of race to the bottom (“My town is so small that the last one to bed at night turns

My friends’ ministry is expressing something of God and his gospel that couldn’t be expressed through a massive revival. All their many sacrifices, their unconditional friendship offered to a young Muslim family still blind to the glory of Christ, their consistent, prayerful sharing of the gospel with those who will listen—these things are living

But I have enough questions regarding the case for prioritizing city ministry that I think it’s worth pushing back on this view as it’s commonly expressed. I’d prefer to speak about the crucial importance of big-place ministry and the crucial importance of small-place ministry (and all the places in between),

In the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the future Zion, water flows from the temple out of the city; it’s out there in the green space surrounding the

assuming city-center churches develop a clear vision and passion for planting rural and small-town churches, are they equipped for this work? We’ve seen that in both our broader culture and urban church culture there are significant misunderstandings about small towns and rural communities.

One stated reason for prioritizing city ministry is that it can move the gospel from the city to the countryside. But getting the gospel from the city to the small towns requires sending people from the city to the countryside, which is generally the opposite of what the urban apologetic literature calls for,

the stated aim of church-planting organizations like Redeemer City to City is not from the city to small towns but from one city to another.59 This differs from the vision of Roland Allen, who called for city churches to be “centers of light” for the surrounding countryside.

But the stories of “radiating influence” I’ve heard tend to be from the city to the suburbs, not to the small towns. City churches are planting into suburbs, but are they planting (are they even aiming to plant) rural, small-town churches?

But for the first, formative period of their lives, small-place churches will have the sacred opportunity to shape them profoundly.