I’ve experienced the triumphs and travails of ministry firsthand in my own small town, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting rural pastors from around the country and the world. I’ve found that many of these small-town pastors are doing remarkable work. They have vision and energy and passion and skill. And, like all pastors everywhere, they need encouragement.

My father was a pastor for thirty years in rural Maine. Many of those years were devoted to shepherding a parish of three small churches, each in a different town. I grew up knowing something of the joys and sacrifices involved in caring for churches that other Christians often overlook, in towns the world ignores.

One icy winter Sunday, so the story goes, only two older ladies showed up for the morning service at one of the churches. My father asked whether they should go forward with the service. They consented. He preached the sermon, led the singing, gave the prayers, and took the offering. God was worshiped.

In the years since, I’ve experienced the triumphs and travails of ministry firsthand in my own small town, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting rural pastors from around the country and the world. I’ve found that many of these small-town pastors are doing remarkable work. They have vision and energy and passion and skill. And, like all pastors everywhere, they need encouragement.

Ministry in small places is demanding, sometimes thankless, usually unnoticed by the wider world. Encouragement is precious. Mark 6:1–6 tells the story of Jesus’s ministry in his hometown. This short passage provides at least three mighty encouragements for those who are pouring out their lives for Jesus’s sake in small towns and rural areas around the world today.

Jesus Loves Small Places

Nazareth was an insignificant little place with a population of perhaps 200–400. Jesus’s disciple Nathanael, who came from the larger and more prosperous community of Cana, nine miles north, disdained Nazareth (John 1:46; 21:2). But Mark’s account shows that Jesus didn’t share that disdain. Not only did he come to Nazareth; he brought his disciples with him, and he arrived with a full ministry agenda, to teach and heal.

Consider that the Son of God, who could have gone anywhere, chose this tiny village. That’s not exactly our contemporary “reach the city center” approach! In fact, the Gospels never show Jesus seeking to escape or transcend his small-town roots. As Ray Ortlund points out, Jesus continues to identity himself as a small-town man even after his resurrection and ascension (Acts 22:8).

Importantly, Mark 6 demonstrates that Jesus’s love and concern for Nazareth wasn’t an aberration; he wasn’t giving it preferential treatment because it was his hometown. Rather, his time there reflected his care for places of every size, big and small. Verse 6 says that Jesus “went about among the villages teaching.” Later, Mark describes Jesus ministering in “villages, cities, [and the] countryside” (Mark 6:56). He even visited farms (a good translation of the word for countryside).

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