wfn.org | Celebration Lifts Up Mission and Leadership of Small Churches

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

18-August-1999 
99265 
 
    Celebration Lifts Up Mission 
    and Leadership of Small Churches 
 
    Little congregations are encouraged to work hard, dream big 
 
    by Evan Silverstein 
 
FORT COLLINS, Colo. - With most of its aging members living on fixed 
incomes, and Sunday worship dwindling to 35 congregants at best, the Rev. 
Debbie Rundlett was told that the small Port Chester, N.Y., congregation 
that she was being called to lead had only a short time to live. 
 
    "The reality was that ministry and witness of the church to which I was 
called had all but died. And indeed, I was told by the presbytery that they 
expected it to die," Rundlett recently told hundreds of pastors and members 
of small congregations gathered here for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s 
"Small Church Celebration III." 
 
    When she arrived a decade ago at The Presbyterian Church, the 
117-member congregation was operating in the red, and demographics in the 
area were documenting a shift away from the Protestant faith. So the former 
advertising agent built a ministry based on worship, spiritual formation 
and equipping members for ministry. 
 
    "The fact is that I didn't feel called as an angel of death," she said 
during the four-day meeting that started on Aug. 7. "I felt called as an 
angel of life, because we surprised a lot of people with what we did." 
 
    What Rundlett and her congregants did is spread the gospel to people of 
all races and religious backgrounds in their community. The church amended 
its name in 1994 to include "All Souls Parish," to better reflect its 
openness to everyone. It also began marketing itself as a regional keeper 
of the faith, and implemented programs to lure younger members to its pews. 
 
    The campaign paid off. Staunchly refusing to fear change, the 
once-floundering congregation has evolved over the past 10 years into a 
role model for small Presbyterian churches, renowned for its stability and 
its faithfulness in serving its community in Christ. That's the true 
calling of any small congregation, according to many who attended the 
program at Colorado State University. 
 
    "More than anything we need to help people to share their faith, to 
hone their gifts and to discern and heed their call," said Rundlett, who 
originally expected to serve only two years as designated pastor of All 
Souls Parish/the Presbyterian Church. 
 
       While church growth is always encouraged, it isn't necessarily what 
small churches need. More important is their service as healthy providers 
of ministry. Chief among the ingredients for success are the development of 
strong leaders capable of empowering congregations with mission, and 
energetic, innovative outreach to new members. 
 
    "It's okay to be a small church," said Tony Aja, the denomination's 
Associate for Immigrant Groups in the USA. "Many immigrant churches, for 
example, might be 40, 50, 60 members, but they perform a tremendous service 
to their communities. They not only meet spiritual needs, but they meet 
social needs, emotional needs and community needs. And they may never grow 
to the standard which we have set for ourselves, these large mega-churches, 
but they're still very vital for their communities." 
 
    More than 450 people attended the conference on small-church ministry, 
exchanging ideas, attending workshops and listening to guest speakers with 
experience in ministry with small congregations. On the first night, 
small-church representatives from 48 states were among those who waved 
flashlights with strands of colored plastic representing the program's 
theme, "Connecting Circles of Light." 
 
    Participants journeyed to this college town about 60 miles north of 
Denver from blips on the map such as Kenvil, N.J., and Freeport, 
Kan.(population 7). There were people from Maine and Rhode Island, South 
Dakota and Texas, Illinois and Nebraska. So-called small churches - defined 
as congregations with average Sunday worship of 100 participants or fewer - 
account for more than 8,000 of the PC(USA)'s 11,300 churches. 
 
    "God must love us, or else why would there be so many of us?" joked the 
Rev. Ben McAnally, the opening-night speaker, a retired pastor from Tyler, 
Texas, who served in new-church development and church redevelopment. 
 
    For many, he said, the continuity of a small congregation provides a 
sense of  "being included, of being loved, of being accepted." 
 
    "We are here because God called us to be here. He has given us a task 
to do," McAnally said. "The real strength of the small church is its 
connectedness. ... We are part of the whole, and the whole is part of us. 
But there's another kind of connectedness that transcends our Presbyterian 
understanding of the church. That is, we are connected by being God's 
people." 
 
    To make that connection, small churches need committed clergy and lay 
leaders to show the way - another major emphasis of the Small Church 
Celebration, the denomination's first since 1996, which also featured 
singing, square and line dancing, ice cream and even a birthday cake 
marking the formation of the PC(USA)'s Small Church Strategy team 10 years 
ago. 
 
    "One of our learnings is that unless there's been a call, and the 
leadership, we will fail," said Rundlett, who served as the event's 
"Connector" of programming. "There have to be individuals who feel called 
and a vision for a particular ministry. One of the goals of our session is 
to find a way to help people discern and discover their gifts for ministry 
and living those ministries." 
 
    Plans for a small-church site on the World Wide Web in the near future 
were unveiled during the celebration, which was sponsored by the Small 
Church Network Team of the Evangelism and Church Development Program Area, 
part of the National Ministries Division. Other speakers included the Rev. 
John Fife, pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., and 
the Rev. Holly Haile Davis, a member of the Shinnecock Tribe in New York, 
the first Native American woman to be ordained in the PC(USA). General 
Assembly Moderator Freda Gardner spoke on the important role of small 
congregations. 
 
    The Rev. Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Brucken said that it was strategic 
thinking, coupled with strong ministry, that enabled tiny First 
Presbyterian Church to take root in rural Eminence, Ky., during her first 
four years as pastor there. 
 
     "It's a mix," she said. "I think our church needs to have some 
strategy to think about, because we've been sitting back too long and not 
talking about our faith." 
 
    The aging 45-member congregation is embracing programs meant to draw 
kids to the church and help immigrants feel at home there. The "Wild and 
Crazy Kids" program gives less fortunate youths a chance to discover the 
church - often for the first time - while getting help with their homework. 
 
    "We're very much within our own little world, and these are children 
who have parents who cannot read, children of abuse and violence," said 
Kirkpatrick-Brucken, who led a youth-in-crisis workshop that examined 
ministries to children at risk. 
 
    "How do we reach out to provide to them some stability in a world that 
has none? How do you teach them about the faith? How do you teach them that 
the church is a safe place, in a world where everything they know tells 
them that nothing is safe? " she said. "That's one of the biggest things 
we've done." 
 
    Other things the congregation has done to carve a niche in the town of 
2,500 include weekly adult Bible studies, language classes for immigrants, 
and March of Dimes education classes for Hispanic women. 
 
      Now that it has a permanent pastor for the first time in more than 
four years, the Kimball Presbyterian Church in Kimball, Neb., is looking 
forward to experimenting with new ways of luring prospective members 
through its doors. One effort already under way involves attracting young 
people to weekly after-school programs. 
 
    "A lot of people from our church that we don't see on a regular basis 
(attend)," said the Rev. Craig zumBrunnen, who will celebrate his one-year 
anniversary as pastor next month. "So we're hoping (that) by trying to 
reach youth, we can also reach their families.  If you get the kids 
involved, hopefully you get their parents involved." 
 
    The church's 100 to 125 members also have made pot luck dinners and 
picnics regular events since zumBrunnen's arrival. And the pastor has 
jump-started the congregation's newsletter. The church is thinking about 
launching an "Invite a Friend" campaign. 
 
    "I'm trying to make myself more visible in the community so that people 
all of a sudden match who I am and what church I'm from," zumBrunnen said. 
"We're just trying to gear back up with what we can." 
 
    At St. Peter Presbyterian Church, a 116-member African-American 
congregation in Fort Worth, Texas,  "we're basically concerned with 
reclamation and trying to reach younger persons,"  said the pastor, the 
Rev. William Blye. 
 
    Blye, who has been pastor for about eight months, said the congregation 
of mostly older people has yet to initiate a specific vision or growth 
statement. "We're just trying to be more friendly," he said. "It takes a 
while for people to adjust themselves to the idea that they want to have 
new people come in." 
 
    Fear of change can be paralyzing. 
 
    "Fully opening our doors has brought tremendous pain, painful changes," 
Rundless said. "... But change is the name of the game, and our growing 
pains continue until this day. We struggle to make God's call our ministry 
and focus. We still struggle with membership." 
 
    Some worshipers may leave out of fear that "we'll lose the intimacy and 
the love that has bound us together - that there's not enough love to go 
around," she said, adding: 
 
    "There's always enough love." 

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