HOLMES, N.D. - Away in a manger was born Jesus Christ, surrounded by Mary, Joseph and animals. The scene is one that is remembered on Christmas in Christian churches across the world, and this week ...

A church near Mountain City, Tennessee. Photo by Shawn Poynter. “What is the most significant difference between urban and rural churches?” That was the question I was asked at a church conference. It ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Having a disability in a rural community presents many special challenges. Too often, one problem is being shut out of church. And in rural areas, being shut out of church ...

Last year, I visited a Methodist church in Colebrook, New Hampshire, a small town of about 2,000 people. On a typical Sunday, around 20 people attended the service at the Trinity United Methodist ...

MOUNDRIDGE — Brad Roth, pastor at West Zion Mennonite Church in Moundridge, has spent much of his life in rural settings and his career in ministry. Those experiences led him to write his first book — ...

Mother was a devout person who prayed for rain in drought and sunshine to end a rainy spell. Our rural church, constructed by Swiss, German and Irish immigrants in the 1850s and blessed with fine ...

IF the rural church is to be a power in the community, to assume the lead in modernizing and bettering its environment; if it is to fill its rightful place in the life of the nation to-day, it will ...

The nearly 125-year-old St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Bowmansville, just across the Berks County border in mostly rural Lancaster County, always had its own pastor. Now it shares one – the Rev ...

Carol Porter, 63 and no word mincer, sits in her modest kitchen in Euclid, Minn., and recalls the day her 118-year-old church was burned to the ground. “I was baptized, confirmed and married there,” ...

In his new book, Stanton sees small rural churches as places where immediate change can be made, rather than aging institutions, too often either idealized or pitied. The Rev. Allen T. Stanton, ...

Conrad Fisher’s musical journey has taken him from an Amish country upbringing in Pennsylvania to Nashville and back. These ...