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A UMNS Feature
By Heather Hahn*

11:00 A.M. EST October 28, 2011

Hinton Rural Life Center’s Mutual Self-Help Housing program helps first-time homeowners build their own homes in Wesley Meadows Community in Warne,
N.C. UMNS photos courtesy of Hinton Rural Life Center. View in Photo Gallery

Support the Hinton Rural Life Center through
designated gifts to The Advance (No. 731372)

“Havin' a Hallelujah good time. A smile on everybody's face. That's what I love about Sunday.”

For a half century, the Hinton Rural Life Center has helped small country churches grow their mission and ministry. The North Carolina center aims, as the country song says, to give United Methodists plenty to love about Sunday.

On Oct. 28-29, more than 150 people plan to pack into the tree-lined town square of Hayesville, N.C., to celebrate the Hinton Center’s 50th anniversary with worship, hymn sings and pumpkin-carving contests.

They will honor a United Methodist ministry that has expanded beyond its origins of working with churches in sparsely populated Clay County, N.C. Today, the Hinton Center consults with rural and small-membership congregations across the United States. It also provides volunteer opportunities for churchgoers to do home repairs and help build affordable housing for low-income families.

“The Hinton Rural Life Center’s mission is creating an experience that serves as a catalyst for building healthy and effective communities of faith,” said Jacqueline Gottlieb, the center’s president and chief executive officer. “(We’re doing) things that can get energy, excitement and passion into churches.”

The event’s main speaker will be the Rev. Claude Young, a Methodist pastor in Hayesville during the late 1950s and early 1960s and one of the center’s founders.

Gottlieb said she hopes the festivities, particularly a dinner on Oct. 28, will give people a chance to reflect on what the center has meant to them and to discuss what they hope to see in the center’s coming years.

Hinton Center offers consultation services to help small-membership churches become more effective.
View in Photo Gallery

Hope for rural churches

Rural churches remain the backbone of The United Methodist Church. They are how Methodism spread across the North American continent, and in some cases, they are the only presence keeping their communities alive. Even now, more than six in 10 of the denomination’s roughly 33,500 U.S. congregations are in rural settings.

However, Gottlieb acknowledges, many rural churches are struggling. “They don’t have the dynamic that they need to move on, to keep the youth engaged and to keep thriving,” she said.

That’s where the Hinton Center comes in.

The Rev. Roger Grace, president of the United Methodist Rural Fellowship, said he uses resources the center provides to help congregations envision and plan a better future.

Grace also praised the center’s First Parish Project, which it jointly funds with Lilly Endowment Inc. The ecumenical project offers seminars and support for clergy under 35 serving their first full-time pastorate in small-membership churches. Many pastors get their start in rural appointments.

Hinton at work

The way Hinton consultants help congregations set and achieve objectives, Grace said, “doesn’t hold them to a measure from outside. It works from within, helps congregations examine what they can do, and I think that’s very important.”

The Rev. David Beam attests to the difference the center made when he was senior pastor of Cashiers United Methodist Church, which is in an unincorporated resort community in western North Carolina. Beam said the “dreaming and visioning” consultations at the center helped the congregation refine its mission statement and strategize about reaching its mission.

Following the initial sessions, Beam said, the congregation set goals of refurbishing its old Steinway piano and buying a church van for transporting area children to its Wednesday after-school program. The church accomplished those goals within two months.

“We learned we didn’t dream big enough,” he said. Hinton’s consultants helped the congregation to look at the larger picture of what God was calling the church to do, Beam said.

The church has since bought 6.7 acres to enlarge its cramped worship and Sunday school space. It expanded outreach into the community as well, growing its food pantry and starting a free dental clinic with other area churches. Cashiers United Methodist Church did much of this work with help from people who only attended the church during the summer, when the community’s population booms.

“People were really moved by what God was doing in the church and in the community,” said Beam, now senior pastor of Harrison United Methodist Church in suburban Charlotte.

Today, the church has an average weekly attendance of 240 people.

At a crossroads

Gottlieb said the center is “at a crossroads right now.”

Many rural churches now seek resources provided by their annual (regional) conference offices or nearby seminaries rather than contacting the center. 

But rural churches still need help. The center is seeking a grant to provide free online resources to any congregation. It also is looking into the possibility of working with seminaries and other United Methodist groups to provide webcasts to rural church leaders.

“The rural church is so important,” she said. “I think we still need to do that. I just think we need to do it in a different niche.”

*Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service.

News media contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.