When small-town pastors put down roots

I pull into the tiny town of Bloom in western Kansas, tires crunching gravel like war rubble, and step out beside the paired ruins of the Bloom School and the Lighthouse Baptist Church. All that’s left of the school is its prodigious concrete arch, cracked foundation slabs, and some rebar gnarling the air. The church is just a stone front and back. A sign over the door reads: Bloom Youth Center. But do not enter—the roof caved in long ago.

Bloom’s devastation came slowly. The school consolidated in nearby Minneola in the 1960s, and the post office closed in 1992. Now the gas station is boarded up, the words “no trespassing” scrawled next to a wobbly, spray-painted heart. The only business left is a grain elevator. Bloom represents the extreme end of the decline many rural communities face—and fear.

Not every rural place finds itself in such grim circumstances. Some communities—such as Moundridge, Kansas, where I live—have defied the narrative of decline, holding steady or even growing. But for every Moundridge there are 100 Blooms: tiny communities with populations in the triple or double digits and falling. They’re no-stoplight towns that can scarcely support a mom-and-pop grocery store. A big-city reporter commented to me once, “There’s really no reason for a lot of these communities to exist.” Many residents have apparently come to the same conclusion, voting with their feet by leaving.