Pastor finds ministry in rural communities fulfilling

 

Knowing people as individuals beyond their racial or gender identity, not having long waits for medical appointments, conversing with neighbors at the grocery store and having skies dark enough to see the stars are some of the advantages Jeannette Solimine finds in rural life.

Since seminary, Jeannette, a United Church of Christ (UCC) pastor in Colfax, has been doing small church and rural ministry.

After serving Plymouth Congregational UCC Church there three years, she made a covenant with the Pacific Northwest Conference (PNC) of the UCC to do pulpit supply and community ministry in Eastern Washington.

With her background living in large cities and studying and working abroad, that might not have seemed a likely choice.

As a young child, she lived on a military base in Augsburg, Germany for several years. Then her family settled in Davis, Calif.

At 16, she studied a year in the Himalayas at Woodstock Christian International School in Mussoorie, India, with children of missionaries, businessmen, politicians and diplomats of many faiths—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and atheists. She learned about it from her grandmother's cousins, who had been missionaries in India.

After high school, she studied international relations in Scripps Women's College at Claremont and spent her junior year at the University of Heidelberg. Her travels in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union included visiting concentration camps.

In 1986, she earned a bachelor's degree and began graduate studies in international policy at Monterey Institute of International Studies, focusing on communism in East Germany. After she graduated in 1988, Jeannette went to China with 20 others to teach English. She was the only one in the group in Jiaxing, west of Shanghai, when the Tiananmen massacre happened. She returned two months early.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the USSR between 1989 and 1991, the focus of her studies became irrelevant, so she changed career directions.

Back in San Francisco, she worked in lawyers' offices and began attending St. John's UCC, where she was inspired to become a minister. She entered at Pacific School of Religion in 1997.

During seminary, she married John Solimine, and Sophie was born. Chrissie was born after she graduated. Both daughters' disabilities now shape her perspectives and her life.

After graduating in 1999, and being drawn to serve small, rural churches, Jeannette came to begin a three-year Renewal Ministry in Colfax in 2001.

"When I told my parents, I learned my great-great-grandfather had started a Presbyterian home ministry there in the 1880s," she said.

As a Renewal pastor, Jeannette was to report information about the church that did not make sense for a small rural church.

By then, Sophie's autism and Chrissie's genetic Davet Syndrome and mitochondrial disease were evident, so Jeannette offered to work half-time for six months to complete her contract.

Jeannette and John had bought a house. Because John has a business, they stayed in Colfax while she searched for a new church.

"Being up front about the challenges of caring for my daughters, I realized I would not find a full-time job in ministry," she said.

Health care and costs also kept them in Colfax, where the girls qualified for Washington's Apple Health Care and the local clinic had a sliding scale.

"It was hard financially and we were on food stamps," said Jeannette, "but we owned our car and house debt-free, and my parents helped."

Jeannette became engaged in the community, serving on the Colfax City Council, as a volunteer and as a substitute aide at the school.

Believing she belonged in ministry, she pursued being a specialized minister and staying in Colfax, where she developed ministries to the community and built relationships with area churches to do pulpit supply.

She eventually established a formal covenant with the PNC and Plymouth UCC for community ministry and pulpit supply in 2018.

Jeannette preaches in nearby Lutheran, Disciples of Christ, UCC and other churches in Colfax, Cheney, Dayton, Endicott, Pullman, Lewiston, St. John's and Spokane. She served the Disciples Church in Cheney for a year.

From 2004 to retiring in 2024, her community ministry has included teaching Bible studies, visiting residents and leading worship at senior care facilities, serving as volunteer hospital chaplain, leading services at a rehab center, doing funerals and weddings, and informally counseling and referring teens she met as an aide at school.

Those involvements have given her insights into the dynamics of small-town rural and small-church ministry for ministers, denominations, churches and communities.

After retiring from the specialized ministry covenant, she joined Community Congregational UCC in Pullman, but she continues preaching and doing community ministries.

Jeannette has observed that few seminary students are drawn to serve small churches in rural communities as had happened in the past. Several dynamics are behind that trend.

Most have debts and cannot afford to serve a small congregation that is unable to pay salaries denominations require for full-time clergy.

Palouse dry-land farmers live season to season. They rely on machinery, not farm hands, so the towns are smaller and there is little potential for church growth.

There are also few ways a pastor and spouse can earn supplemental income.

Jeannette described some responses to these concerns.

• Some churches have withdrawn from wider church ties and become community churches.

• Some denominations created ways to support lay ministries and provide training for local people to be ordained or licensed.

• Some small churches call retired pastors who have retirement income to supplement what the church can pay.

Another detraction is that Eastern Washington has a negative reputation among some churches in other areas from media news on white supremacy.

"Despite assumptions that small, rural churches are racist, sexist, homophobic, fundamentalist and white supremacist," Jeannette noted, "those dynamics exist in large, urban churches, too.

"Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous and African American people live in rural communities, as do gays, lesbians and trans people," said Jeannette, "but people know them, because in a small town, everyone knows everyone."

From preaching in many Palouse churches, she finds that bias against rural communities runs across denominations.

"Here, we can see the stars at night. Many small communities are safer than urban areas. There is less crime and less hate crime. Our biggest problems are domestic violence, drugs and limited services," Jeannette said.

Some people who might otherwise be homeless live with family and friends.

"People know each other and take care of each other. We talk with each other at the grocery store," she said. "We have opportunities to be neighbors.

"I don't see homeless people on the streets of Colfax," she said, adding that those passing through who are unsheltered might go to shelters in Pullman or Spokane where there are other services.

The Colfax Ministerial Association established a common travelers fund so people passing through seeking aid don't have to go from church to church but can still get some help.

To respond to needs of poor people in rural communities, some churches and ministerial associations offer food banks.

Colfax has a Council on Aging, serving seniors and people with disabilities, a food pantry and a Department of Social and Health Services office. It has "a good small hospital with the Whitman Hospital and Medical Clinics where there is little wait for appointments. In addition, the hospital foundation helps those without insurance."

Jeannette finds that resources for people who are disabled are limited, but everyone in town knows and interacts with Sophie and Chrissie as best as they can. Both of the girls go to weekly therapy sessions.

"Chrissie and Sophie have taught me unconditional love," Jeannette said. "They ground me and make me appreciate life.

"They have taught me to get along with people with whom I may disagree without losing my integrity," she added. "I work with people in fundamentalist and conservative churches to raise money for the food bank and other community services.

"It's important not to disrespect anyone's lived experience or judge a whole community or region," she said.

Similarly, Jeannette believes people in small towns benefit from pastors bringing new perspectives to them. Pastors also benefit from insights of life rural towns and small churches can offer them.

For information, call 509-288-0799 or email revjeannette@msn.com