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Small congregations

When the two words small congregation are used, what picture comes into your mind? The answers to that question will be as varied as the people who answer it. For me it is a little church in the countryside that shared a pastor with an even smaller congregation. It was heated by coal and I, in my early rebellious years, put the stoker into the hot coal furnace and heated it red hot, then proceeded to burn my initials into the wooden boards of the coal bin.  When the building was torn down I managed to find that board and I still have it.

Others will answer the question by identifying a certain pastor who connected with them in the midst of a boring VBS experience. One might point to a Sunday school teacher who really had bad theology but had a genuine love that hooked them on a vibrant faith. Someone else will describe a building with a steeple and bell or a cemetery surrounding the church building while others may say it was right across the street from a busy gas station.

CLPs serve churches in transition; opportunities in new, old places

Kiskiminetas Presbytery, situated in a rural slice of western Pennsylvania, has 88 churches. Probably only 40 percent of them are served by a full-time minister.

Some are searching for a pastor "and are likely to look for years to find somebody, or they're permanently vacant," said Erin Cox-Holmes, the associate general presbyter. "We're representative of declining, small rural churches that are never going to have a pastor again."

Not, that is, if they have to attract a seminary-trained minister and find a way to pay that person a living wage. But many small Presbyterian churches are finding new life by utilizing commissioned lay pastors -- often people who already live in the area, have other means of support, and who feel called by God to preach and serve a church.

A former nurse and CLP finds a new way to help heal

She grew up in southern California and became a nurse in Anchorage, where she met the man she'd later marry. She stayed in Alaska, raised three sons and welcomed seven grandchildren. After 37 years in nursing she "felt the call to drop that and go into ministry."

Now Heather Smith is the commissioned lay pastor at Kuukpik Church in the village of Nuiqsut. "We are about as far north as you can go in Alaska," she says, "and then you turn right."

Smith serves a congregation of 42 in a town of about 550. She started as a commissioned lay pastor doing pastoral care in her home congregation, Trinity Church in Anchorage. Then her husband grew ill and died, and she told David Dobler, who then led the Presbytery of the Yukon, that she felt called to work with native people.

Called again

Smaller churches can offer a pastor great opportunities for service/fulfillment, but lack the budget to pay well. Retired military men and women often take on second careers with a secure income from their retirement.

Does anyone see a potential for a mutual, God-given calling? My response is yes!

As I was finishing my Air Force career in Montgomery, Ala., I saw quaint towns where small churches scramble for ministers and pulpits stand vacant. Presbyterian churches had no full-time pastor due to their small sizes and budgets, and the financial expectations on these churches by the denomination.

Upon retirement in 2005, I returned to my home state, California, with the desire to attend San Francisco Theological Seminary near that city. As I explored northern California, I discovered a similar situation -- dozens of towns with unfilled Presbyterian pulpits in what is called the Northern parish of the Presbytery of the Redwoods.

20 minutes with Harry Hassall

Editor's Note: Harry Hassall, retired pastor and resident of Franklin, Tenn., has spearheaded the development of the Wee Kirk Conference ministry program that has been operating for nearly 30 years. Outlook editor Jack Haberer recently sat down with Mr. Hassall to talk about the support of wee kirks.

JH: When I met you about 20 years ago, you were serving as associate pastor in one of the largest churches in the PC(USA). Yet you have a heart for wee kirks. Tell us about that. 

HH: Before going to Dallas, I had served 16 small churches, beginning with [the third week of] my first year at Centre College in Kentucky. ... That particular month I started working in McDonald Center in what was called the Knobs -- a patch of bad land in the beautiful blue grass area of central Kentucky. The people who lived there were poverty-stricken, ... doing subsistence farming, and suddenly this city boy  -- I did grow up in Nashville, in a middle-size church of 500 or 600 ... found myself in a group of 20 people out in the country, hardly able to scratch a living. Through that experience I became a Knobby, that is, I began to see life from the perspective of a person who did not have adequate sources of income and living nor of church life.

From that point on I served other churches wherever I was. Even at Highland Park, I served two small churches utilizing two interns and my own self to minister and care for the people there. It's just been a part of me.

Commissioned Lay Pastors and the Book of Order

It is high time that the Book of Order has a unified, single chapter on the Commissioned Lay Pastor.

I say this because there is presently no such unified chapter and issues may arise that require constitutional guidance.  Some say that the Book of Order is already too big, and it may be. That being said, since the use by the denomination of lay pastors seems to be on the increase, we could well have a better sense of direction about several matters.

At present, in the Book of Order, there is one brief section about these important church employees, (G-14.08000 and following.) The section on the minister of Word and Sacrament is familiar and extensive. It deals with the whole process of preparation from inquiry to ordination (G-6.0100 and G-14.0300 and following.) Educational requirements for the minister of Word and Sacrament are well laid out. Presbyteries have a Committee on Preparation for Ministry which, if well led and staffed, can guide the potential minister through the hoops, sometimes blazing, which lead to the final destination of readiness for a call.

From that point on, the Committee on Ministry takes over.

The law enforcement-friendly congregation

Law enforcement officers and their families make great church members. Police officers are passionate volunteers, generous with their time and money when they see a need, and genuinely care about people with problems. And, what church wouldn't want a law enforcement officer on their property committee to advise the church about security issues? Police officers have many gifts to offer local churches.

The problem is too many congregations don't understand the law enforcement culture enough to be welcoming of this special segment of society. Officers often report they don't feel welcome in many congregations. Small insensitivity issues are enough to keep officers away. One officer was asked to leave his gun at home, so he quit attending. Another couldn't face the glares of a church member he had arrested for domestic violence months before. Pastors who bash the government from the pulpit drive officers away.

Sessions cannot tailor the church to fit each member, but for prospective law enforcement officer/members, sensitivity issues can be overcome with a little education and willingness for the congregation to learn about the law enforcement culture.

Test & Measure

I use the term "metrics" to describe the seventh key factor of Church Wellness.

I could as easily use words like "measurements" or "statistics" or "numbers." The point isn't the label, but the "test & measure" principles behind it:

"¢        we need to try out reasonably promising ideas 

"¢        we need to measure the outcomes of what we do

"¢        we need to be guided by those outcomes, making our next decisions on the basis of what worked or didn't work.

How effective is your church’s Web site?

An effective Web site is the heart of Communications Strategy.

To see how your church's Web site stacks up, try this simple method:

Open a search engine, type in the name of a church you admire, and open its Web site. Bookmark it. Find six or more, including your church's likely competition. Open your church's Web site.

Now click from one to the next. Scan it for five seconds -- the amount of time the normal Web user will give to a site's home page -- and then click to another.

Make note of your immediate reaction. First impressions are everything on the Web.

A proposal to make meetings more Christ-centered and Spirit-filled

I  Introduction
A. As a Church, our whole focus is to serve God by becoming the Body of Christ that reveals the kingdom of God that is among us (Luke 17: 21). As members of the Body, we are to find ways to maintain unity while integrating the different gifts of the Spirit in our individual and communal ministries (I Cor. 12: 12-31). 

B. The reality is that while many in the Church are Christ-centered in their faith, human pride and sin lead all of us still to become self-centered. This self-centered pride often leads us to strive for power and control within the church. The battle for power can spread division throughout the church as the desire of certain individuals and groups to wield and maintain that power and influence within the Body becomes a stronger motivation than the desire to seek the will of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

C. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has adopted Robert's Rules of Order as its standard guide to practice in conducting its meetings. Robert's Rules of Order, while an effective program for conducting business and political meetings, is a wholly secular program. It is not a program that seeks to discern God's will. It was created by a military general as a way creating a standard procedure for debate in order to conduct meetings in a more effective and efficient manner. It is rooted in the desire to channel the human tendency to fight, rather than in the spiritual yearning and to seek God's truth and will.

D. The purpose of the following guide to discerning God's will as the Body of Christ is to offer a way of conducting meetings within the church -- within the Body -- that emphasizes seeking the will of God rather than the will of the people (as Robert's Rules of Order does); that emphasizes pastors and elders exercising spiritual leadership rather than temporal leadership; and that emphasizes discernment over debate. 

Creating a Robert’s Rules of Discernment

After reading the final report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity (PUP) of the Church, I was astounded. I never imagined that they would offer our heady, theology-obsessed denomination an emphasis on humble and prayerful discernment of God's will. 

Those of us Presbyterians steeped in the Christian mystical, spiritual tradition have long recognized the glaring absence of an approach to church polity emphasizing humble, communal discernment. Our denomination has been trapped in a cycle of continual debate and disagreement over issues such as the definition of "Reformed," what the essential tenets of the church are, worship styles, ordination requirements, and scriptural interpretation. What has been missing is a willingness of people on both sides of the debates to sit down with their theological adversaries, and to humbly ask together what Christ is calling us all to do, and what the Spirit is leading us to do.