Pastoring Small Towns: An Interview with Ronnie Martin

To the Ruled Church podcast.

The Church as Christ's Kingdom and the Necessity of the Local Church

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Introducing Ronnie Martin and the Small-Town Church Ministry Context

Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast. I am your co-host, Alan Nelson, pastor in Perryville, Arkansas, Second Baptist Church of Perryville. With me, as always, is my brother in Christ, my good friend and co-labor in the ministry, Eddie Ragsdale.

Say hello, Eddie.

I'm not always with you. Sometimes Jonathan Murdock.

Yeah, mostly you're with me, yeah.

Mostly.

But we actually have another guest today.

For the second time, our listeners don't know this, but we tried to connect a few weeks ago, and one of the hamsters that kept the internet going died, and so we had to reschedule. But with us is Ronnie Martin.

Ronnie, and I have to look at the other brother's name, Ronnie and Donnie Griggs. Ronnie Martin and Donnie Griggs have written a new book put out by B &H, Pastoring Small Towns. And so we've got Ronnie on the show today to talk about this book.

So Ronnie, why don't you say hello and tell us a little bit about who Ronnie Martin is.

Yeah, well, hey guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm a transplant. I'm from Southern California 13 years ago to mid-Ohio to a town called Ashland, which is a small town right in between, en route to either Cleveland or Columbus.

So you got to kind of pass right through us to get to either of those cities. Those cities are about an hour either north or south of us. And you'll be going down I -71 and you'll see all these signs for an establishment called Grandpa's Cheese Barn.

And that is how you know that you're either gonna wanna go to, preferably probably Grandpa's Cheese Barn, but then if you make a right instead of a left, depending on which way you're going off the highway, you'll come into our town, which is Ashland, Ohio.

And so, yeah, we relocated there 13 years ago, planted a church there in 2013. So celebrating our 10-year anniversary this year. And then we planted another church just up the road in an adjacent town called Worcester, about 20 minutes away in 2016.

And so the Lord brought us, me and my wife and our 14-year-old daughter at the time, she's a lot older than that now, but brought us out of suburban Southern California into just a rural small town setting and just kind of moved us, called us into becoming church planters and just getting involved in all of the different things that come with pastoring, planting and doing it in this particular setting.

So, which was really different for us, really unique for us. I traveled a lot to these kinds of towns in my earlier years quite a bit, never lived in any of them, always was very intrigued by what it might look like to someday relocate to one of them.

And then at some point, God said, well, here you go, open up some doors and we landed there and that's what we're doing.

Amen.

Yeah, there's a little bit of a, just probably the shortest version of my story I've ever told, so thank you.

Small-Town Life, Seasonal Rhythms, and the Diversity of Rural Contexts

No, no, that's great, brother. What, just real quick, what would you say are differences, positives maybe between big town life and small town life? What do you see as, I know a lot of people maybe look at small town rural America and they think, I just, I couldn't imagine living there.

What positives have you seen in your switch?

Yeah, I mean, I think we find more positives than negatives. I think one of the big adjustments was if you grow up in a really populated area, it's just the availability of everything, right? Like you trip out your door and you're standing in a target, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Which target? Do you want the one right there or the one across the street? And so you don't have that kind of availability of like stuff and things. But I think that's one of the smaller things that took some adjustment for us.

I think some of the bigger things that we enjoyed right off the bat was just the pace of life, the slowness. And with the slowness comes an expectation from people that things are not going to be fast and they're okay with that.

So what you can do is you can develop a type of pacing that is far more human than what we were doing before in Southern California, where you're just going and going and going. And that's all anybody knows how to do.

And by the way, in Southern California, there's no weather. It's just kind of, it's the same temperature most of the year. It's either hot or not as hot. And so the weather never prevents you from doing anything.

And then you come to a climate where there's these things called seasons. And that's part of what also creates like this really beautiful, I think more natural rhythm of life. So, you know, winter comes, everybody slows down a little bit.

Not everybody goes out as much. People stay in or they're just a little more selective with the kinds of things that they do and the kinds of activities that they're able to do. So I think just the slower pace, the availability of seasons, I think, and the expectation that,.

Hey, it's okay, buddy.

You can, you're not in California. You can slow down. We're not looking for you to go fast. We're patient. I think those were some major positives for us. And they're also very shaking things for us, for my wife and I.

Amen.

And in Arkansas, sometimes we have all four seasons in one day, isn't that right?

That's right. That's right. Ronnie, I wanted to ask, could you share with us a little bit about your co-author, author, Donnie, and a little bit about his context there in North Carolina?

Donnie Griggs, Moorhead City, and the Variety of Small-Town Settings

Yeah, so Donnie is,.

Donnie's in a place called Moorhead City. Definitely a lot different than where I'm at, which I think is one of the, it kind of shows you sort of the diversity of small towns when we think of small towns.

So I'm in like, I would be in, you know, mid Ohio, a little more like classic rural, mid Ohio kind of a setting. Donnie is like on a, is in a small coastal town that during the summer months actually gets pretty populated,.

But it's mostly with tourists.

And then shrinks down to about 10 ,000 for the rest of the year. But to look at the two towns, you'd be like, I don't see any similarities between these two places, except for the fact that the people that do live there year round are people that have, they're probably born and raised there.

So there's kind of a generate, I call it like a generational quality to the town to where you can go back and people you see just the families are stacked and stacked and stacked. And so Donnie, I think was born and raised there.

He grew up there. I'm a transplant. And I think for him, I think, you know, I think some of the challenges he faces is just a little bit more of probably a transient aspect of the town because you do have people that come in and out or they're snowbirds.

It can be that kind of a town, you know? And so people will be at his church six months out of the year. And we get a lot less of that. So that's a little bit of his setting. So think, you know, outdoor, coastal, a lot of like surfing, boating, sailing, but in this small town community, whereas ours would be, you know, more of just like farm country and a lot of hunters and a lot of outdoor activities, like in terms of like that, you know?

I've got two questions. One, is the raccoon story real?

Oh man.

Was that Donnie's story?

Yeah, I think it's about, yeah, I think.

Well, I don't know. I didn't read any of his stuff.

That's pretty wild. We've seen some

I actually don't remember the story.

You have to remind me.

I don't remember the story.

Yeah, somebody brought a raccoon to church or something. And I think, yeah, it was funny. It's kind of in the introduction there. That's right.

I know, I think it's all true.

It's all true.

That's right. Some mornings we've counted the deer as attendants. So that way they didn't come in, but you know, we like to, you know what I'm saying? But

You know, in a small town setting, you count everybody.

Yeah, that's right.

You count everything, right?

Yeah, that's right. You know it, yeah. Hey, so tell us, what do you love about the church, Ronnie? We're going to get into the book more, but what is it? You know, you wrote this book, obviously because you love the church and you seem to have a heart for pastors and small towns.

So what is it about the church that sticks out to you that you love?

The Church as God's Plan and a Painful but Beautiful Community

Well, I think, you know, the church was God's plan. You know, the church is an idea that comes from Jesus Christ himself. And so this was the way and the means in which he sought to expand his kingdom on earth.

So it's his idea. It's a divine idea. I think for me on a practical level, it just represents community and family. And the people that I've been closest to in my life are, you know, my church family.

And I think that's significant for me on a personal level, people that you get to walk with, walk through life with, people that, you know, have the opportunity to know you and, you know, you get to be known by them.

I think all of those things produce just a greater depth in my life. It's also super painful, as you guys will know. I mean, the church is as lovely as it is. It's also an incredibly vulnerable and painful community to, you know, to live out your life before the Lord with.

But there's no other, if you're somebody who trusts Jesus for your life and your salvation, there's no other option. This is what he provided for us as the way to know him and to be known by him more deeply.

And so, yeah, so the church to me represents just a beautiful community, difficult community. And I think all of those things combined is what makes it what it is, you know.

Yeah, amen. So, and then Eddie, you can be thinking of a question here, but just to get into the book officially here, why this book? Okay, because like the subtitle, you know, help and hope for those ministering in smaller places.

So the book is Pastoring Small Towns by Ronnie Martin and Donny Griggs, subtitle help and hope for those ministering in smaller places. So why this book?

Why We Wrote Pastoring Small Towns

Well, you know, Don and I became friends a few years back and I think it was, you know, we were both talking about small town ministry, small town church planting. There's definitely been a resurgence, you know, I would say over the last five to 10 years, probably last five years where, you know, I think the big emphasis over the last 20 years on, you know, urban renewal and planting and city planting, which by the way, we totally agree with, we're a hundred percent on board with.

Sure.

We're just not in those, we're not in those contexts.

Amen.

We love Tim Keller Center Church Model, read that book, love it. We just haven't been called to those contexts. And so we were looking around, we were seeing some of the new emphasis on small town church planting.

What we saw were some books that were saying that were encouraging pastors to not ignore small towns, get to small towns, plant churches or revitalize churches, you know, start gospel center movements in small town, whatever the context is, get in there and don't ignore small towns.

And what we hadn't seen was just a book that said, hey, you're already in a small town. We're not trying to convince you to go to a small town. You are somebody who is in a small town, but it's hard to pastor a small town.

And there are unique challenges in pastoring small towns that are different than urban and suburban centers. So can we write a book that would just be an encouragement to small town pastors and including us, can we write a book in a way to encourage ourselves in some of those unique challenges?

So that was really what it was born out of. And just something simple, really nothing groundbreaking. Can we do that? And so we wanted to attempt it and that's what we did.

Amen.

Ministerial Loneliness and Building Networks with Other Pastors

You know, one of the things dealing with pastors in small towns is just the, not just the lack of the number of people in the town, but the lack of people also doing what they're doing, other pastors.

So how would you encourage small town pastors to both deal with maybe their own ministerial loneliness, we might think of it that way, and build networks with other pastors if they kind of feel like, man, I'm in this little town all by myself.

You know, it's such a great question. It's a hard question to answer. I think first off, it takes time because you could feel like a kind of a lone wolf in a particular context, because maybe you're surrounded by denominations or other pastors who don't necessarily hold to your doctrine or your values in those in very distinct way and your distinctives in those ways.

I think a couple things you can do is, you can try to connect with other pastors, form small local networks and find things that you can all be about, you know, in terms of, you know, y 'all care about the community, y 'all care about the town, find things that you can come together on and let those things be the things that can maybe provide some camaraderie and some partnership, rather than just maybe some of the doctrinal differences that you're never gonna be able to come together on.

So I would say kind of seek, you can kind of seek the good of the town together, maybe in some unique ways and maybe put some of your doctrinal differences aside. That can be a way to do it. If you have the conscience to do that, I think that's valuable.

I think the other thing too,.

Is that, you know, hey, the world has shrunk quite a bit, you know, look at what we're doing right now, you know, in terms of it's, we, you can find communities now and it's not, nothing to me replaces good flesh and blood, face-to-face community.

But I, you know, for me, one of the things that helped me when I first moved to this town was that it was hard to break in. It was hard to make friends. And we were about 45 minutes to an hour away from Columbus.

And I had a friend out in Columbus and a local gospel coalition chapter had formed, just a bunch of church planners that hung out once a month and they invited me into that. And so once a month, I had like 30 or 40 dudes that I knew I was gonna be able to connect with, that I could talk to that were praying for me.

And I mean, this was years ago now. And I mean, some of these guys are some of my best friends all these years later. I had to drive, you know, I wasn't doing life day-to-day with them, but I tell you what, you know, I was texting them, some of them day-to-day and sometimes they would meet me halfway outside of those monthly meetings and we would get coffee and we would talk.

So, I mean, definitely it was a sacrifice. It took time, but I was desperate. And so it was something to where it required some sacrifice, it required some risk. And, but it was really important for me to try to make, to have any kind of community connection.

So I think you definitely face some challenges, but I think anywhere that you can find a community of like-minded brothers, that's gonna just sort of help replenish your soul a little bit, do that. And then if you can partner with people in the town for other reasons, you know, in terms of just, you know, your care for the community, I think that's always something that, you know, might be worth pursuing.

Patience, Slow Change, and Resisting the Pressure to Manufacture Results

Yeah, that was encouraging, brother. I want to share some that you wrote, great paragraph on your chapter about patience. I think that's such a good, such wisdom there, but read a paragraph from page 51.

As a pastor, this can create some challenges because I want to see the gospel transform people. I want to see transformed people change our town. I want to see our changed town be an outpost of hope in the rural portion of God's kingdom.

I mean, that's the mission last time I checked, but this transformation often comes through challenging the status quo and calling certain values into question, especially when those values are raised to gospel status.

So I love your heart there. And I love the idea of, you know, being an outpost. And we talk about here, you know, raising the banner of Christ here, right here in Perryville. But I wonder if you would share some pastoral wisdom for those listening, just about patience.

You know, you've been there 10 years now. I know when you go in to a place and there's some things that are wrong, or maybe some things, maybe they're not wrong per se, maybe they're just not the best way.

And you want to go in there sometimes and just turn everything over at once. So maybe share some wisdom for that about small town patience.

Yeah, I think, well, thanks for saying that. You know, I think you're, you know, regardless of where you go to plant a church, and especially we're talking about, you know, wanting a gospel-centered church, a church that is just, you know, really highlighting the foundation of who we are in Christ and what we're called to do.

But I think you're always challenging the values of the culture, right? So I think for small towns, and they're not all, small towns are not homogenous, right? Small town, like we said earlier, you know, Donnie, the values of Moorhead City, North Carolina are different than the values of Ashland, Ohio.

And you got to figure out what those are. You got to figure out what people hold dear. You know, what are the predominant idols of that particular town and culture? And that's what you're challenging.

But I think patience is so key because I think especially in a small town setting where you don't see progress and change happen as quickly as you do in other areas, I think people can tend to be a little more suspicious if they see things happening too fast, too quickly.

And I think that actually works to our advantage, right? Because we're not really, God did not make us to be people who do things fast and famous, you know? But he's always calling for maturation and spiritual maturity, it's a slow process.

So as we are maturing in Christ, we can be applying, we can be applying that at the same pace to the town and the people that we're ministering to. And I think we will see the possibility of those values and those idols maybe changing in a culture as we are going slow and pacing with it, you know?

So, you know, I mean, all through the gospels, we just, we see Jesus, even though he was only, you know, his ministry only lasted three years and yet he did things, you know, very intentionally slow. And, you know, he wasn't going as fast as he could.

And I think, especially in a small town context, we need to hit the brakes and we need to listen to people. We need to find out why they think what they think. We need to figure out, you know, why do they hold dear what they hold dear?

And it allows us to, I think, just walk in the way of Jesus a little bit, a little bit more intentionally. It also can drive you a little bit crazy too, because, you know, I'm just a dude, right? I would like to see things happen a little faster,.

A bit slower.

But I think to try to manipulate and manufacture things, and I would say this to somebody in an urban context or a suburban context, you know, I would say that, you know, letting God lead that process and not try to manufacture things on our own is always the best way.

And it's super hard thing to learn, super sanctifying thing though too.

But it also keeps the expectations.

And the pressure off us a little bit too. You know, people in our church setting, they are not asking me to go fast. They are not on my back all the time saying, well, you should have already built this new thing.

And that's kind of refreshing.

If I don't allow my own ego and my own pride to be the one to propel those things, I actually have a people that are fine with letting God kind of take the pace on those things and letting us follow his lead.

I should take that as something that kind of removes some of those burdens off my back if I'm truly being patient about it.

Yeah, amen.

That's good. And it goes along, you know, later in the book, you talk about endurance. I think those two things go together, patience and endurance, because if you just try to go 100 miles an hour all the time you're gonna burn out, you know?

So I think, you know, obviously none of us here would be advocating laziness, but there's this idea of, we need to be dependent on the Lord and seek his face and rest. I mean, you talk in endurance, you know, you talk about prayer and those sorts of things.

And that's where we need to be at. And if you're gonna do this for the long haul, you know, patience and endurance, I think they go together there. Eddie, what about you?

Evangelism in a Churched Small Town

Yeah, you know, you're not far from Columbus. And so thinking of a city like that, I know Quatro has a good friend and I've met him a couple of times that lives in Columbus and does a lot of evangelism there.

There are opportunities in large places like that for evangelism. How would you encourage brothers in small towns, like you're in and we're in, to look for opportunities to evangelize that maybe, you know, there are all kinds of opportunities in large cities because there are just people everywhere.

And we've got to kind of get in front of lost people. We've got to get into those conversations. So thinking about evangelism in the small town context.

That's a really good question. And I think that to me in this setting, I think that is the hardest thing that we face. I can speak to my context, which is it's incredibly churched. Whether people are in church or not, they probably grew up in church.

Hey, that sounds like Marshall and Perryville.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's funny because people are not offended by the gospel, you know, in our town. You know, we have a mayor who does these citywide events. I mean, he's praying in Jesus' name and everybody's clapping, you know?

So we're, it's not like one of these things where everybody has to be careful not to offend, you know, with the gospel. It's like people are offended if you don't mention God. And now, of course, what that means is that you have a lot of people that are inoculated to the gospel in that sense, right?

They're not, they don't, they are not truly saved, but they enjoy the blessings that come from a community that thinks God is okay, right? And that foundationally, we're Americans, we believe in God, and it's all of those kinds of things.

And I think evangelism is one of the hardest things to do because what I think it comes through, I would say evangelism comes through, you know, discipleship and preaching in a lot of ways, where you are taking the time to really like, again, we go back to that, like unpacking people's values and sort of, you know, and sort of, you know, kind of reversing the thread in their lives on, hold on, when I ask you to give me your story of how you know Jesus and how Jesus saved you, give me your gospel story.

And the first thing that comes out of a lot of their mouths were, well, you know, I started going to church at four years old.

Yeah.

And they immediately go to this, like, well, I grew up in a family that attended, you know,.

The Methodist church here on the corner.

And, you know, my grandparents still go there. So again, it kind of gets back to this, who I'm associated with, the organization I'm associated with, the family I'm associated with, but it's just devoid of any relationship with Jesus.

And so you're constantly saying, okay, I appreciate that. And that's great. But let's kind of, let's go down a little bit deeper and let's talk about, let's talk about, you know, what Jesus has done to your heart and how he's working in your life.

And is he, and is he actually doing those things? And is he Lord of your life? And it's not just some moment that you're running off of because you were born into a religious family or born into a family that has a reputation amongst the town for doing good things and being part of all these charities, works and services.

There's so much of that in our town. And so a lot of it is just reverse engineering those things and saying, well, let's,.

We should probably talk about that.

Because you can be somebody who just enjoys the blessings of a community that's not against God or a church community that is championing the gospel and God, but you might not be somebody who has had an authentic, you know, heart change.

And so we probably need to talk about that and ask about that. And I would say that's how, you know, when we do baptisms, which we don't do a lot of baptisms, right? I mean, our conversion rate is pretty low.

It takes time for people to come to this realization that wait a minute, I don't know that I was ever saved. And when they have those revelations, it's massive. It's huge, you know, but it takes time.

Amen, amen.

Faithfulness Over Fame in Forgotten Places

Well, we're real, speaking of time, we're wanna be real honoring of your time, brother, but, you know, just maybe in closing, why don't you just talk about, as we close it down, we hear all this stuff about patience and endurance.

I mean, what you just shared there sounds incredibly difficult because we know it, right? We know it. You're not telling us anything in the sense, I mean, we all have a different context, of course, but we're hearing you and we're familiar, but would you just maybe encourage folks listening to this like that what you're doing in a small town is worth it, talk about that, and then we can close it down.

Yeah, I mean, for sure.

I mean, we just see that the value system of Jesus is just so different than the world, you know? I mean, I love how Zach S. Wine said, we're not called to do fast and famous things. We're called to do these slow, you know, almost mundane works, you know, that produce like long lasting fruit, you know, through the years and through the faithfulness of us, continuing and persevering.

And so, you know, we read in scripture, we read about the parables about those who had 10 talents and five talents and one talent. And, you know, I think in the, you know, if we look at the sort of the grand story of the gospel, it's not where God puts us, but it's what we do with, you know, the resources that God's given us, regardless of where he's placed us.

And he's certainly not looking at other areas, more prominent areas where people can become a little more well-known or have bigger platforms as being more important than being in an area that is just not going to be seen by the world.

And so the encouragement is, hey, just, you know, be in the place, be present in the place that God has put you, you know, as believers are, you know, our aim is to please the Lord and to seek, not seek glory from men, but to seek his glory.

And all of these are, again, like Zach Eswine says, they're mattering things. And it's hard for us to not equate success with numbers. We're always gonna battle that. We're just people, so we battle those temptations, but it's gonna be hard for us to not do that.

It's gonna be hard for us working in more forgotten places to not think that maybe God has forgotten us as well, because the work is a long slog. It's hard. It doesn't get, you know, you're not receiving a lot of notoriety.

You're not building a big platform. You're not having, you know, a massive church that's gonna propel you into the national spotlight, most likely. But again, that is not the economy of God. Those are not the things that he looks at.

And so just to be encouraged that the Lord is with you, that he keeps you, as the psalmist writes, and to, you know, let our value and our worth come from our identity in him. I'm saying this as I struggle with this so much.

So I always wanna like to qualify that. It's a massive struggle for me. I mean, it's just massive. But I think brothers like us, we talk together. We encourage one another. We just say, hey, you keep on keeping on because you are being kept by Jesus.

And you can keep on keeping on persevering.

You know, in the Bible, God has done some big things in small towns. And so something to consider as we minister in these places. So pastoring small towns, help and hope for those ministering in smaller places.

Ronnie Martin and Donnie Griggs put out by B &H Publishing. And we'll put a link in the notes. Eddie, do you have anything else you wanna say?

I was just gonna say, ask Ronnie, where's the best place for people to connect with or follow you and Donnie online or anything like that? Twitter handle, whatever you wanna share.

Yeah, find us on Twitter and Facebook. I can't remember what my handle is.

You can find us on there and, or just go to pastoringsmalltowns .com. I think it has some of our personal information on there you can reach. I would love to hear from you. You send us an email. You can go to our church website, substance-church .org.

My email's up there. Donnie is at, I think, oneharborchurch .org. His contact information's there. It's all available. Love to hear from you. Love to hear how we can serve you in any way we can.

Well, thank you so much for coming on, Ronnie. It means a lot. We're just two small town guys as well. So we appreciate it.

Thanks, you guys. Thanks for being so kind. And man, it's an honor and privilege to be on the show.

And man, the hamster made it all the way through today. So internet kept going, yeah.

I know, imagine that.

All right, sign us off, Eddie.

We'll see you guys next week.

The Church as God's Work and the Believer's Response

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemas, the masterpiece of God.

How are you gonna respond?