Rural Church Focus Gains Momentum
More than half of all parishes in Denmark are located in rural areas with only 13 percent of the population. Like in all of Europe the national church in Denmark is undergoing radical demographic changes due to urbanisation.
If McKinsey consultants were hired to analyse the situation it would be a no-brainer for them to conclude that most of these churches are to be “laid off” immediately in order to allocate more resources to new urban areas. And surely, we are already seeing a good number of parish mergers and other ways to limit costs in order to make ends meet in the continuous rural demographic decline.
However, a rural church resistance movement is rising that seeks to focus on the increasing importance of rural churches in settings where most other commercial, public and civil institutions are closing down. This movement cannot abate the overall demographic change. But it is serious about the fact that a good number of people still live in these rural areas and need to uphold or find new meaningful and joyful ways of being vibrant local communities.
Here the church may be one of the best and most stable remaining institutional local contributors. But rural churches are challenged to move beyond their traditional designated “church roles” and to a higher degree move outside church walls into local civil life. This should be a most unsurprising move as the basic premise of Folkekirken is that church and people function in seamless interplay and harmony. However, decades of heavy secularisation means that it takes considerable effort to make reparation to the de facto divide. Research has documented that in many places the church is in fact still welcome as a player in civil life, but on equal terms without any special privileges.
This initiative for reinvigorating rural church and civil life has gained broad support from all major stakeholders in the church. Over the last 3-4 years a rural church committee has worked this issue. Now a multi-level research project has documented facts about rural church issues in Denmark. And now an experienced dean, rev. Hasse Neldeberg Jørgensen, has been hired as project leader in order to inspire and coordinate initiatives between dioceses, deaneries, continuing educational institutions, church council associations, voluntary organisations and municipalities.
The Danish process has already benefited much from similar work in Great Britain and Germany and wants to learn from and network with other European churches that have embarked on rural church ventures. Read more about Kirken på Landet and contact the project coordinator Hasse Jørgensen at hnj@km.dk.
Birger Nygaard
