I’m reading Rural Ministry: The Shape of the Renewal to Come at the moment. It’s a good book, though feeling its age a bit. Here’s an awesome quote, though, from Judy Heffernan, speaking to a Rural Ministry Conference for Theology and Land at Dubuque, Iowa, on the role of rural pastors in communities that have experienced decline.

I do want to suggest two or three things to you: Lead us in powerful worship, powerful and reverent worship. We need to hear it. We need to experience it. Help us, maybe even teach us ways to shore up and deepen our own spirituality. Then, if you would, help us with the vision thing. In this country we have a vision war going on. It is a fight about what will be the compelling vision that guides us. The vision of what kind of community, what kind of society, what kind of family life we want. Then, when I think of clergy I think of few others who know how to do what Truman said of Churchill: namely, mobilize the English language and send it into battle.