Stories

Looking at Mission Within Our Changing Context

This webinar launched our 2026-27 NWC Rural Webinar Series, “From Maintenance to Mission: Re-envisioning the Rural Church for a Changing World.” We chose this as our overall theme, recognizing that rural churches are changing—and the communities around them are changing, too. While the message and mission of the Church remain the same, simply keeping the Church going is not the goal. The goal is to move the Church forward in faithful mission.

In this webinar we look at mission within our changing context. We explore together the relevance of the unchanging message and mission of the Church while recognizing the changing rural culture around us, which some identify as the age of chaotic change. We also take time to explore potential responses to these changes. One of those recognitions is that our posture, ministry methods and strategies need to change in order to reposition the Church’s message and mission effectively within our individual settings. This contextualization opportunity will be explored further in the two remaining webinars of this series.

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