Appropriate Paradigms for the Church and Rural Economic Development

The Protestant Christian Church has had a central role in the life of the western Canadian prairies from earliest times. Often one of the first institutions to be assembled upon the formation of local communities, it is also one of the last to continue some sort of life upon their demise.

Over the years, these institutions have provided direct support to their members, and have had both a direct and indirect economic impact on both local communities and the region generally.

Institutions for the training of clergy were the basis of several of the universities , such as Brandon University, which had its roots in "Prairie College", started by my great-grandfather and an number of his colleagues, for the provision of a general post-secondary education as well as an educated Baptist clergy. At a later date, Brandon College ran into problems when McMaster University in Hamilton was promised a bequest if it would pull all funding and stop training clergy at Brandon College. The Baptists agreed. Locally, Brandon College met this challenge to its existence with redoubled efforts to both survive and thrive.

Such incidents are but small indicators of the huge economic impact of the Church on the prairies since settlement, to say nothing of the their involvement in the labor troubles in the 20's, the formation of Credit Unions, Prohibition, public works, and so on.

Today the prairie scene is changing dramatically. The Churches still have their impact and roles in the community, but one gets the distinct feeling that they are addressing yesterday more than today. It could be compared to the church-paradigm that arrived with the settlers, one fashioned in the old country, for conditions which were no longer relevant. What was good was then striped out from the old models, and new forms and initiatives sprang up on the prairies to meet changed conditions.

The same type of paradigm shift is needed today. Conditions of settlement have moved into a cyber age in a global village. Changes in transportation and communication, shifts in demographics, globalization of agriculture markets and "creeping urbanization" have mixed with other factors to make the present-day prairie scene very much a different world.