Small Church Ministry - Resources for the Season(s) Ahead
Holy Week Passport
We featured the “Holy Week Passport” as one of the “Ten Trade Secrets” provided in our Council workshops. The passport is a great way to encourage congregants to participate in the liturgies of Holy Week and reflect on their impact in our life of faith. Click here for an editable pdf of the passport and additional instructions for use. If you have any problems accessing or using the passport, email leyla.king@dwtx.org for help and/or other options.
TEC’s Holy Week Explainer Videos (plus)
In partnership with Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, The Episcopal Church has put together a short video series explaining each of the five liturgies of Holy Week that might be worth sharing in your own context as a jumping-off point for talking about the importance of these days. You can find the videos here, along with a number of other helpful resources. I particularly encourage you to check out the “Invitation” and “Sermons that Work” sections.
Christian Formation Resources for the weeks and months ahead
As you begin planning for Christian formation in Easter and beyond, check out these well-tooled resources for easy plug-and-play Sunday School offerings:
The Letter of James study written by the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian
This is a very plug-and-play 7-week study on the book of James. Each week of the study takes a look at a passage from James and includes a 2-page reflection and a few questions for discussion. The reflections are short enough that this study requires no prep work! Simply read the James passage, read the reflection, and discuss the questions with your study group.
Traveling the Way of Love videos season 2
This is a 7-week video series from the Episcopal Church Evangelism Network on the themes of the Way of Love. Each of the 6-9 minute videos examine one of the themes. The series includes transcripts and a discussion guide (also available in Spanish) for each video. You can also find season one of this series on the Episcopal Church website.
Yale Bible Study on Women in the Bible
This is a 12-week Bible study produced by Yale Divinity School on the topic of Women in the Bible. It includes a 9-15 minute video, study guide, discussion questions, and additional resources for each episode.
Podcast Theology
Another resource that was mentioned during our Council workshops, this plug-and-play series invites participants to listen to particular episodes of various podcasts and then engage in discussion about the topic.
Funding for Small Church Supply Clergy
Small churches without clergy assigned to regularly serve them for worship are invited to participate in a program funded by fellow-small-church Messiah, Gonzales. Having extra financial resources, the good people of Messiah would like to share that wealth with other congregations of small size and have established a $5,000 fund to help churches pay for supply clergy. Churches who would like to use this funding should contact Archdeacon Mike Besson at mike.besson@dwtx.org, who can both outline ways to access the funds and help small churches find supply clergy to provide the Eucharist.
Digital Registers for (Small) Churches
The Golden Register
Another one of the resources featured in our Council workshops this digital membership register built specifically for small churches (though useful for churches of any size). The Golden Register replaces the book probably kept in your office where clergy or lay administrators are required to keep membership and baptism data, liturgical and sacramental records and information about participants’ canonical status (as “members in good standing”) and will automatically provide parochial report data for you to fill in that information with ease each year. Use the code EPISCOPAL to get a special DWTX discount.
TEC’s Register App
Recently, The Episcopal Church has released this new app, also with the parochial report in mind. A short video at the link provided explains how the app is used and it seems to be a digital replacement for your service register (how many people attended which kind of liturgy) rather than your membership register. This app has not been tested by any small church leaders particularly, so I don’t yet know how useful it will be to us in our contexts with particular challenges and needs, but if anyone checks it out and has some feedback to share with other small churches, please send that my way!
SCBI’s Podcast Season 4 is now available!
If you don’t already know about the Small Churches Big Impact Collective’s podcast, now’s the time to check out every season for lots of good shared learning about what it means to be a small church. And, SCBI’s most recent season 4, with a focus on what “social justice” looks like in a small-church context (it’s probably not what you think!), has recently been released. Listen to all the episodes of all four seasons here or wherever you get your podcasts.
