The GēDUNK January 2023

A PEOPLE AND A PLACE

How the Project on Rural Ministry is helping Grove City College’s neighbors thrive

By Grace Leuenberger ’16 Photos by Gracie Turnbaugh ’23

(Pictured above:) Parishioners at Coolspring Presbyterian Church celebrate Ag Sunday with a “Bring Your Tractor to Church” service in the Mercer County, Pa., church’s parking lot. Pastor Mark Frailey leads the service.

On a brisk Saturday evening in Fombell, Pa., a dozen Grove City College students gathered around the dinner table of Pastor Mark Sentell ’94. It was the first night of spring break, a time typically reserved for rest and recreation in a location far away from campus. But this wasn’t a typical spring break trip, nor is Fombell a typical spring break destination.

Located 30 miles south of Grove City in the rolling hills of rural western Pennsylvania, Fombell was one of five stops on a weeklong trip designed for students to serve and learn alongside the neighbors of Grove City College — neighbors like Sentell. As the night came to an end, the pastor of Living Faith Baptist Church shared a thought that would guide the students through their whole spring break trip: “Churches thrive when they spend time in the place they do ministry. You can’t understand the context or the people you are serving unless you are right there with them.”

Sentell made an important point, one that the founders of Grove City College were also guided by: place matters.

Pastor Jason Schepp ’01 preaches at Christ United Church’s East Brook Presbyterian Church in Lawrence County, Pa. Schepp is one of several alumni pastors in the Project on Rural Ministry’s clergy cohort.

At Grove City College, you often hear people say, “The people make the place.” But it is also true that the place makes the people. Situated in the heart of rust belt and rural America, Grove City College from its earliest years understood the importance of investing its time and resources into the people and the place it was surrounded by. Helping its neighbors thrive – whether they be from Fombell or Franklin, Mercer or Moundsville, Eastbrook or Irwin – was a founding principle of the College’s mission.

Just this fall, more than a century after College founder Isaac Ketler began hosting an annual Bible conference on campus intended to “provide local pastors and laypeople with in-depth knowledge about the Bible and theology,” a similar conference assembled once again. In attendance were local pastors from over 30 churches within a 150-mile radius of the College. Among them were alumni including Sentell, Jason Schepp ’01, and Eric Phillips ’04, joining others from a diverse group of churches in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, southern New York, and eastern Ohio. Together, these pastors make up the first cohort of the Project on Rural Ministry (PRM), an initiative that extends and reimagines Grove City College’s legacy of providing academic, spiritual, social, and cultural services to the community while furthering its commitment to love of neighbor and advancement of the common good.

Parishioners worship in the sanctuary of Coolspring Presbyterian Church on a summer Sunday.

The Project’s inaugural five-year period began in 2019 through grant funding from the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Ministry initiative, a program intended to strengthen pastoral leadership in Christian congregations in the United States. PRM launched with the initial goals of building relational networks, amplifying pastors’ voices, and engaging in collaborative learning experiences between pastors, College faculty, and students. With one year remaining in the initial grant period, PRM has gone from a written proposal to robust, real-life experiences including annual conferences, faculty-led workshops, interdisciplinary service-learning projects, internships, shortterm mission trips, and more.

The 12 spring-breakers around Sentell’s table were just a few of the student participants engaging with the work and mission of the PRM, but many more are involved. This past summer, nine students from Grove City College spent the summer working as fully funded interns with PRM, serving on worship teams, leading children’s ministry programs, using photography to document the life of local churches, and more. During past semesters, students have volunteered in a church’s community garden in Jeannette, Pa., a post-industrial town about 90 miles south of Grove City, attended a “Bring Your Tractor to Church Sunday” in nearby Coolspring Township, and put on a children’s program about the intersection of biology and theology through the example of honeybees from the GCC Bees project.

At its most basic level, all our programming –whether oriented toward resourcing pastors or amplifying their voices and stories – is geared toward helping rural pastors thrive.

– Charlie Cotherman ’06 Program Director

Under the direction of faculty, students have employed their coursework through service learning projects, finding creative and collaborative ways to build mutually- beneficial connections with pastors and their congregations. Budding graphic designers guided by Nate Mucha ’08 created church websites, while Tim Sweet ’85 partnered with students in entrepreneurship classes to craft marketing plans designed to help pastors spread awareness of their church’s ministries. Professor Shannon Barrios incorporated a PRM service-learning project into the research methods class required of all communication majors, encouraging participant Mikayla Gainor ’23 to see how the pursuit of knowledge can also “incite palpable change and help pastors thrive.”

While all these activities are designed to equip and encourage pastors with needed resources, student involvement with PRM has been an encouragement to students as well. “In the end, the experience was more than an academic requirement checked off the list for the students, or a useful product for the pastors and their churches. [We] were given an insider’s perspective to the responsibilities that pastors shoulder and the work that ministry requires,” Grace Leone ’22 remarked. “Tears filled my eyes as I watched the youth I had been praying for all summer choose to follow Jesus,” Mollie Landman ’23 shared, reflecting on her summer internship experience with a church in Mercer County.

Vacation Bible School students at Rose Point Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Whether a student studies Biology or Business, Communications or Computer Science, English or Engineering, it is the work of a Christian liberal arts college to show students how their knowledge, talents, and time can be used in answering Christ’s command to his followers: to love God and love others. The Project on Rural Ministry is just one of many ways Grove City College remains faithful to its mission to equip students to pursue their God-given callings and contribute to the flourishing of its neighbors.

The latter half of that mission –contributing to the flourishing of Grove City College’s neighbors – is what the Project continues to work toward. As part of the College’s five-year strategic plan, the PRM is looking forward to building more connections between the college classroom and pastors and local congregations in the region. Additionally, the PRM is working to develop sustaining support through connecting to interested donors in the greater Grove City College community and will also be applying for a sustainability grant to continue working out its mission among the people and places of rural and rust belt America. Charlie Cotherman ’06, program director of the Project on Rural Ministry, reflected on the significance of continuing an initiative like PRM, writing: “At its most basic level, all our programming – whether oriented toward resourcing pastors or amplifying their voices and stories – is geared toward helping rural pastors thrive.”

This goal of helping rural pastors thrive is no small task. They serve in communities facing a variety of economic, social and ministry challenges. But the PRM team, comprised of Cotherman, Executive Director Dr. Seulgi Byun, Academic Director Dr. Paul Kemeny, Assistant Director Dr. Michelle (Adams ’88, ’02) McFeaters, and Research Director Dr. Adam Loretto ’05 have witnessed that flourishing – of pastors and the congregations they serve – happening.

Flourishing is happening through everything from blog posts and logo designs to coffee chats and Zoom calls to community gardens and youth group game nights. From rust belt towns to countryside communities, neighbors are coming together to offer their time, talents, and faith to the churches of rural America so that more people—and the places they call home—may thrive. ■