New blood can infuse communities with new ideas

I enjoyed the Olympic curling because I got to hear and not just see the players. Not that I can understand the non-English players, but a fair bit of curling talk doesn’t need translation.

When the Danish women’s skip yelled over the roar of that raucous Canadian crowd “Skynd dig!!” (Scoon die) we all knew she was shouting “Hurrrry!… hurry hard!”

Chances are you may hear phrases like “Skynd dig!” in your own curling rink as immigration to rural Canada heats up. Manitoba has an aggressive immigration policy. It plans to bring close to 2,000 new immigrants to their rural communities each year. I suspect Olympic exposure will only intensify the interest.

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Of course when folks from other countries join our communities, they bring with them more than just new curling terms. That can be difficult for the natives.

I’ve often heard long-time residents say, “we don’t mind them coming, as long as they remember that it’s our town, our values, and they don’t try to change everything.”

I suspect that applies especially to sacred institutions like hockey and curling!

But I’ve discovered that a regular infusion of new blood into our communities is essential. I’ve been looking particularly at rural-urban migration. I studied the growth of Toronto churches in the 1990s.

To my surprise I found that an unusual proportion of the leaders were exports from rural Canada. They came from small, close communities where everyone’s participation was essential. So when the pastor said the church needed a council member or Sunday School superintendent, they knew they had to step up and do their part.

The reverse is also true. A friend of mine was involved with a widespread study of turn-around communities in Saskatchewan. Early in the study it became clear that visionary leaders were the most significant element in a rural community’s successful reinvention.

But just as important, he discovered that almost all of them were from away. Though they had become trusted members of the community, they weren’t born there.

So they brought two important gifts: awareness that there are other ways to do things than the way they’ve always been done; and they had some social freedom. They didn’t have three generations of relationships to maintain. They could afford to take some risks.

Leadership in smaller communities can be risky. Every new idea will have (and should have) opponents. It’s in the give and take, the struggle of competing rights and values, that decent plans are grown.

To lead that sort of debate, one needs a thick skin. There will be critique not just of ideas but of the leader, and it seems that trusted newcomers with less to lose can often handle that better than deeply invested old-timers.

Those new folks are coming. Saskatchewan Health reports that between June 30, 2008, and June 30, 2009 ,1,213 new residents registered on reserves and 1,248 in Saskatchewan towns and villages.

Let’s open our hearts. We need them.

Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.