In 2011, the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention released “a collection of North American strategies and stories” in a book called Rural Church Planting: A Missional Footprint. George W. Garner, the compiler of the book, comments in the introduction, “The goal for Rural Church Planting: A Missiological Footprint is to move the discussion to church planting in rural venues. To achieve this goal, this book provides a discussion of missiology on which good strategy and effective church planting is based. Furthermore, the discussion provides practical methods and models that are based on good missiological thinking and that have been implemented by skillful mission strategists.” (8). One of the mission strategists contributing to this book speaks from the context of rural Appalachia, specifically Appalachia Pennsylvania. As his brief bio explains, Barry Whitworth “has served as a church planting missionary with the Baptist Convention of Pennsylvania/South Jersey over the last seven years” (148).
The Appalachian portion of Pennsylvania (“…with the exception of the Philadelphia area, the entire Keystone state is designated as Appalachia” [142].) is located within the northern subregion of Appalachia. As Appalachia is not a homogenous region, it is important to keep in mind that Whitworth is writing from the situational perspective of northern Appalachia. There may be strategical differences that one in southern Appalachia would seek to implement as opposed to northern Appalachia, for example, but there also may be many points of agreement. The reader is free to decide what is worthy of adopting and what is worthy of ignoring or rejecting within this piece. The point of this post is not to offer a clear cut, “this is how church planting needs to be done in rural Appalachia” field guide. The point of this post is to simply expose the reader to what could potentially be helpful information regarding church planting endeavors in rural Appalachia.
An Outline of Whitworth’s “Church Planting in Rural Appalachia”
The Appalachian portion of Pennsylvania (“…with the exception of the Philadelphia area, the entire Keystone state is designated as Appalachia” [142].) is located within the northern subregion of Appalachia. As Appalachia is not a homogenous region, it is important to keep in mind that Whitworth is writing from the situational perspective of northern Appalachia. There may be strategical differences that one in southern Appalachia would seek to implement as opposed to northern Appalachia, for example, but there also may be many points of agreement. The reader is free to decide what is worthy of adopting and what is worthy of ignoring or rejecting within this piece. The point of this post is not to offer a clear cut, “this is how church planting needs to be done in rural Appalachia” field guide. The point of this post is to simply expose the reader to what could potentially be helpful information regarding church planting endeavors in rural Appalachia.
An Outline of Whitworth’s “Church Planting in Rural Appalachia”