Book Review: Strip Mine Jesus: Hope for the Rural Church, Small Towns, and Overlooked Places

Some books give you information. Others give you a new way of seeing. Charles E. Cotherman’s Strip Mine Jesus is the second kind of book.

I give it five stars because it challenged some of my assumptions about ministry, community, success and even what it means to love a place.

At the heart of the book is a deceptively simple idea: God is at work in the places we are tempted to overlook. Cotherman writes out of his own experience in rural western Pennsylvania, eventually returning to Oil City to plant a church and invest deeply in a community that many people might consider a place to leave rather than a place to stay. His central invitation is to pay attention—to see what God is already doing in ordinary people and ordinary places. 

Love is inefficient

One of the ideas that stayed with me most is the recognition that developing relationships is inefficient. That’s almost heresy in a culture obsessed with efficiency.

Relationships take time. They require repeated encounters, interruptions, conversations, patience and simply being around people long enough to know them. You can’t optimize your way into a meaningful relationship.

That leads to an even more profound idea: Love requires our time.

If we say we love our neighbors, our churches, our communities or our towns but have no time for the people who inhabit them, something doesn’t quite add up.

Cotherman challenges the temptation to measure our lives by productivity, influence and visible results. The Christian life may sometimes look remarkably unimpressive from the outside. 

God shows up in the same towns, too

I particularly appreciated Cotherman’s insistence that God doesn’t only show up in the places everybody else is excited about.

We tend to assume that if something important is happening, it must be happening somewhere else—perhaps in the big city, the growing suburb, the megachurch or the next great ministry opportunity.

But what if God is already present in the town we are tempted to leave?

Cotherman repeatedly asks the reader to reconsider the places the culture labels insignificant. His argument isn’t that everyone should move to a small town. It’s that we should learn to recognize God’s presence wherever we are—and stop assuming that significance requires escape. 

Are you a settler or a sticker?

Another idea that really resonated with me is the distinction between people who are settlers and stickers.

The settler asks, What can this place give me? The sticker asks, What might God want to do through me if I stay? That’s a radically different way of thinking about community.

Cotherman makes a compelling case for faithful presence—putting down roots, learning a place, knowing its people and remaining long enough for relationships to develop and for your presence to matter. 

And “staying” isn’t presented as passive. It means paying attention, serving, participating, suffering with people, celebrating with them and becoming part of the story of a place.

Community isn’t something we manufacture

Another important insight is that community shouldn’t become the goal in itself.

Cotherman describes his own experience of pursuing intentional community and discovering that when “community” becomes the objective, relationships can actually turn inward. Real community emerges when people are gathered around something larger than themselves—serving God, serving others and sharing life together. 

That struck me as particularly important in an age when we talk endlessly about “building community.”

Maybe we don’t build community directly.

Maybe we do things that cause community to emerge. We serve, show up, stay, pay attention, love people, work together and keep coming back!

And eventually, something resembling community happens.

The overlooked places matter

Perhaps the most important message of Strip Mine Jesus is that ordinary people and overlooked places are not insignificant to God.

Cotherman uses the image of the abandoned strip mine of his childhood as a powerful metaphor. What others might see as damaged, discarded or worthless can contain “piles of potential.” His challenge is to learn to see, appreciate and participate in what God is already doing rather than constantly searching for somewhere better. 

That makes this more than a book about rural ministry. It’s a book about attention, presence, patience and love. And ultimately, it’s a book about Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t abandon the overlooked. Neither should we.

Why I recommend it

I think Strip Mine Jesus will especially resonate with pastors, church leaders and people who care about rural America and small towns. But I would recommend it much more broadly.

Anyone who has ever wondered:

• Does what I do here really matter?
• Would I be more successful somewhere else?
• Why does my community seem to be declining?
• Why aren’t things happening here?
• Does God really care about this place?

would benefit from reading this book.

Cotherman’s answer is essentially: Look again.

Pay attention. God may already be there. And perhaps the most radical thing you can do isn’t to leave for somewhere more important.

Perhaps it is to stay long enough to love the place you’re in.

That is a message our churches need. It is a message our small towns need. And, frankly, it is a message our increasingly mobile and efficiency-driven culture needs.

WRITTEN BY

David L. Burton

For more information, visit the Engaged Neighbor website. Take our pledge and become part of a movement! Or subscribe to our newsletter. Access some of the research documents written by David Burton, the author of this blog. Or better yet, purchase one of his books off Amazon. Contact David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.