Allison: Somehow, regardless of what the church says otherwise, it seems like the message we keep getting as congregational leaders is, size matters. So we've come together to seek a different message, and to identify and amplify the beauty and grace of small, small churches. No matter the impact you think you're making, join us to hear more about small churches making big impacts with God walking right alongside.
You're with the Small Churches Big Impact Collective.
And in this season four of the Small Churches Big Impact Collective podcast, we are so pleased and excited to be partnering with the Episcopal Divinity School. To explore what social justice and small churches looks like. I am your host for this episode The Reverend Allison Sandlin Lyles. I am the vicar of St.
Stephen's Episcopal Church Which is located just outside of Fort Worth, Texas And my guest today is Elizabeth Mae McGill. So Liz welcome Thank you. It's so exciting to be here. I'm excited that you're here, too. Why don't you tell us where you are in the world and about the churches that you serve?
Liz: So I am presently living in a small town in Massachusetts, a suburb of Worcester, Massachusetts, and I serve a a church in Asprinham, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Fitchburg.
And I say suburb, these are rural, small towns, and I am serving a micro congregation that our worship runs eight to ten each Sunday. And the church in Ashburn Ham is in the Small Church collaborative, which is the joining of the Ashburn Ham Church and the UCC Church just across the border in New Hampshire, in Ridge, New Hampshire, and that's also a micro congregation, but a little bit larger.
Worshiping 15 to 18 on Sundays. Both of them are rural congregations. Everybody lives far apart from each other. And while the church is in downtown, there isn't much else in the downtown.
Allison: I love the term micro congregation. I haven't heard that before and it's so descriptive without feeling like a pejorative the way that you're describing your congregation.
And thank you for clarifying that. People that you're serving do not necessarily live right there by your two churches. And so, are those two churches of the same denomination or are they different denominations? So one of the
Liz: churches is UCC and United Methodist combined, although really everyone in the congregation identifies as UCC.
And the other congregation is, the one in New Hampshire is completely UCC. And my ordination is with the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. There aren't very many of those in this area, so I have mostly served UCC churches.
Allison: Thank you. And how long have you been working in this small church
Liz: collaborative?
The collaborative is about three years old. I was in Ashburnham for three years before that, so I'm just finishing my sixth year in Ashburnham, and the two have been worshipping together for three years.
Allison: It's such an interesting development, the idea that you were already serving one of these congregations and then they joined together in this collaborative way.
Will you talk a little bit about this initial call and how you envisioned these two churches either working together or how you were going to serve them?
Liz: Yeah, so the church in Ashburnham hired me half time. Our first work was figuring out whether they could survive. And the answer was definitely that they could not survive with a half time pastor.
So they were thinking about going to quarter time. I was thinking that I couldn't stay at a church that was only quarter time. But as we'll talk about later, they also were doing significantly important ministry in a very conservative town. They were the liberal voice. So I felt like it was very important that we figure out some way that they could continue to be the church in that town.
I started checking in with other pastors of other churches in the area, and it turns out that entire area The northern part of Worcester County, Massachusetts, and the southern part of New Hampshire is all micro congregations. It is all tiny groups. So we started having meetings of all of those congregations.
We had six churches from New Hampshire come to our What's a Small Church collaborative meeting, and about five churches from northern Worcester County come to that first Zoom meeting asking, is there some alternative way we can work together? It turns out that churches can mostly change what they're doing when they're in pastoral search.
So of all those that came, and many were very interested, the church in Rindge had an interim. She gave notice that she had her next call, and that made them very eager to figure out what to do next. The collaborative started with probably 12 churches interested, three were kind of interested, but when it came to figuring out the contract, we ended up with these two churches that are sharing me as a pastor.
Allison: There were just several things in that that I feel like are very indicative of small church ministry when it's done. done really well, the idea that you're all coming together and asking that question, how can we do this differently? Instead of being tied to, well, we've always done this. Our churches are shrinking, but we've already have this millstone around our necks and so we can't take it off.
And instead, really thinking creatively. about how this ministry could look different moving forward, especially knowing that this church in Ashburnham has a purpose. You know, we always ask that question, if our church disappeared, what would be missing? Would the neighborhood even notice? And the resounding, yes, like we need to be here.
We need to figure it out is so inspiring.
Liz: And I have to say that even though only two churches ended up joining, my experience with small churches is they are willing to consider a wide variety of options, that the 12 churches that came to the first meeting were actually quite serious about imagining they might do something different, and it didn't work out in particular.
in this case, but I hope that people don't hear that as small churches being unwilling to change, because I've found many of them very willing to imagine something new. They need help with that work, but if they get help, they are glad to think about that.
Allison: And so did you have an idea of how you envisioned it working once you identified the two churches that you were going to serve?
Liz: So I have a very biased view of ministry. I am all about community organizing and being active in the town, and I'm not that interested in worship. And this was going to be a three quarter time position. Wrenge had enough for a halftime pastor and Ashburnham for a quarter time. So from the very beginning, I said, that means I'll have one Sunday a month off.
I'm not going to both churches every Sunday. I wanted the time to be at local community events, the time to be out connecting the congregation to the community. And so I didn't want to spend huge amounts of time on attending worship and worship planning. So that was definitely one of the things that affected whether churches were We're interested.
Certainly for many churches, Sunday is the most important thing. But for me personally, that is not what I was looking for in my work life.
Allison: I think it's a gift to everybody to be able to name that up front and say, this is how I envision it. I was, Coached by an original member of our small churches, big impact collective, Susie Schaefer.
When I was negotiating my letter of agreement, I'm 20 hours a week that it needs to include one Sunday off a month. And when people hear that they have a knee jerk reaction because Sunday is so important. But when you're not working on that Sunday, there's so many more hours you can put into the community and to the pastoral care and to the rest of the week when you're not.
Doing all the sermon writing, bulletin printing, all the other things that a small church pastor does. I hear you say that community organizing is really important. When you move into a new call, how does that look for you? Where do you start to figure out what community ministries or organizations, like where the overlap is between your church and the community?
Liz: So I wrote a book, Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers, and it's about how to use community organizing to make your food pantry or meal program involve the people who need the food as volunteers. to run the program. Each of these churches has a food pantry, and so that's where I started, is by going to the food pantry and meeting people.
I expect that most pastors listening to this know, often an existing program, Is not going to change just because there's a new pastor there.
Allison: Right.
Liz: Both programs have excellent leaders, very hardworking people in their congregation running those ministries. But they were not interested in my new way of doing food ministry.
So the other thing I always do. What I find myself doing is going to, what's going on in the chamber, what's going on in, in Rindge, I go to the women's club, going to library events, meeting people in town, but I just keep looking for who are the people. in town who I can get to know and find out what's going on.
Each church I had do a community organizing project where they are asked to ask everybody they know what does this town need and they write it on index cards. I have a fantasy that that will result in An excellent ministry for any church. The reality is not very many people go and do it
Allison: That was my question I was wondering how many people actually went out and did that or if they were just too scared to bring up scared Yeah,
Liz: they're too scared.
The goal is a hundred index cards and I would say in ashburnham We got 25 and in Ringe, we may have gotten 40
Allison: And what, the ones that you did get, was it helpful in discerning what you were going to do as a congregation? I
Liz: will say that in Rindge, definitely people talked about concerns about racial justice and appreciating differences, and that did end up being a project that we did.
Allison: So you have these cards that reference racial justice in Rindge. Was there something that was already happening in that town? What was going on and how did your ministry connect with it?
Liz: Yeah, so when I arrived in Rindge, the library was in the middle of running a program that invited people of color in the immediate area to share what it was like to live in this all white, very conservative area.
It was not on days I could go, I'm part time, but I was very excited that they were doing it. So I immediately contacted the library who was running the program and said, we're interested in doing more about. this topic, what, you know, what do you recommend? And the librarian knew that the people who came to that program that the library ran were meeting to learn some strategies for talking across difference.
I gave her an email that she sent to her email list and out of that group about 16 people replied to me that yes, they would like to keep doing some work. on racial justice.
Allison: That's 16. I mean, that's bigger than your congregation size. That's wonderful.
Liz: Yeah. It was a great, it was a great response, even better than that.
So we had gotten a racial justice grant from the Southern New England Conference of the UCC to spend 5, 000 between the two congregations on racial justice materials. We, um, you arranged an active bystander training that happened once in Rindge and once in Ashburnham. 40 people signed up for it in Rindge and 30 of them came to that first event that we did.
Allison: Wow. And so were people in your congregation in Rindge attending that training, or is it mostly community members?
Liz: It's most by a large majority community members. I would say four people from the congregation came to the active bystander training. At the active bystander training, we had surveys and people listed what they wanted to do to do more work on racial justice.
And that led us to create community conversations. And at the beginning, the planning committee for the community conversations was four people from. the town and three people from the congregation in Rindge.
Allison: So it really was a shared collaborative ministry.
Liz: It started shared. The people who came were already people who were doing a lot of things.
So at this stage, the planning committee is now five or six people from the town of Rindge plus
Allison: So you have this leadership team that began with members of your congregation and now made up more of community members rather than church members, who are some of the other people that have joined this leadership team?
So
Liz: going back to our actual meetings, our first conversation, which this group of old white people put together and announced with flyers and Facebook and things like that. We're sitting at this, we set up, I think, nine chairs because we didn't want to imagine too big a group. And there were eight of us, so we hoped there'd be somebody beyond us.
And we're getting ready for that conversation. Outside the window, I see this van pull up, and it turned out that at Franklin Pierce University, which is in Rindge, New Hampshire, the director of DEI had seen that we were having this discussion and got a van load of six black and brown students and brought them to be part of this discussion.
So the first thing that happens is our heart's like, Oh, I hope we're doing this right. And we had this amazing discussion. At the end of that, the director said, So it would be easier to get students here if some of the meetings happened at the university. And we right there on the spot decided that every other meeting would be at Franklin Pierce University.
So this was like this complete change of, let's have white people talk about whiteness and how it affects racial diversity. And it also changed because a number of the people who came were queer.
Allison: Hmm.
Liz: So the change of our name from a racial justice committee to abridging differences, both to make it more that people in the town of Rindge could hear it, but also to make sure we were including LGBTQI people in addition to race issues.
We stumbled along some months. They got a new director of DEI at Franklin Pierce, and that person agreed to be on our leadership team. And then one, the student who's in charge of the residence hall directors, was interested in how these conversations affected what was going on with residence hall life at the university.
So now he's also on the leadership team. And then the church had a discussion about. We have this racial justice money and we keep doing things and nobody asks to be reimbursed for the money. So we're not spending the grant. So we started this year by meeting at Franklin Pierce and providing dinner. So then we went from having 12 to 15 people to having 22, 23, and it's about half students and half old white range people.
Allison: So you have, like, old white people, and then you have younger people who are also a racial minority as well. How, how are they doing at actually bridging differences and listening to one another?
Liz: It, it's pretty shocking. We do a lot of small groups. We count off and we just deal with whatever happens. But we've managed to have good questions about where you come from and what you love about your culture.
Because we rotate facilitators, there's different styles. So one of the students of color did a On microaggressions to the whole group, and then we broke into small groups and talked about our experiences with that. I would say that we are not at deep relationships with each other, but we are at trust of each other, and I'm imagining that in this next year, we can get to a deeper level of relationship with the people who are coming.
Allison: It feels like church. It's what church should be. Okay, so I hear you are saying that now you're the main representative from your church and wrench on this planning committee, like on the leadership team. Does the church still consider it one of their ministries, even though they're not actively participating in it?
Liz: They do. One of my jobs as the pastor of a micro congregation is to help them narrow what they're working on. So one of our projects was to come up with a list of what are our main ministries. And they were quite adamant. That this is one of their ministries. They know that that's what I'm spending time on and they're paying for that time.
We actually had an incident in our church building. Our church building is owned by the town, which is a complicated thing that I don't want to spend a lot of time on. But we invited, uh, English as a second language group. to meet in our building and they met in the side that's owned by the town instead of on our side and a times person came in and was quite upset.
That there were foreigners in the town's building.
Allison: The
Liz: leadership of this congregation responded to that by saying, isn't this the ministry we're doing? When we say that we support this bridging differences group, doesn't that mean we also support this group that's doing English as a second language? So they voted to make it a ministry of the church, which Basically covers insurance issues, makes it so the group doesn't need insurance and went to the town hall and complained about the complaint that had happened and showed up at the next meeting to make sure that the people coming to this were feeling supported by the town.
I would
Allison: say that they're really on board. I would definitely agree and I mean the complaint that was made is an example of why this bridging differences group is so important. Why these voices need to be heard and recognized and that there are differences that need to be bridged. So it sounds like this has been a very organic process.
You got to arrange the library was having this program. The library connected you with people who wanted to keep working, which turned into the active bystander training, which turned into this conversation group. It just keeps. Picking up steam like one thing is organically leading to the next thing and as a leader, it seems like you just need to be open to what is next and try instead of trying to steer the ship yourself being open to what's coming at you.
Liz: That is very much my leadership style. I am interested in hearing what people want to do and providing the support so that they can proceed with that. One of the things that happened just recently is one of the people in the leadership team became, became very interested in creating a local NAACP in our area.
And so, Now, when we have our community conversations, one of the topics we talk about is how to do the work to create an NAACP in our area. I have been a member of the NAACP like I send my dues in, but I've never actually been involved and it's never would have been my idea. And I'm very excited to be helping a group of people make that happen in our immediate area.
Allison: What a rewarding. ministry this must be for your entire church and for you, if this was your hope going into this small church collaborative to really spend your time out in the community and making an impact, this micro church is certainly doing that.
Liz: It feels like church to me to go to the discussions and I really believe that the church of the future, the ones that will survive are the churches that matter to their local neighborhood.
That's definitely my calling around, um, leading congregations, and it feels, it feels very hopeful, honestly. in a way that I don't necessarily feel hope right now in our political environment. And yet I have this group of people who want to talk about how we can talk to each other.
Allison: Thank you for sharing this justice ministry in range that I mean, we're using the term for this whole season, like social justice and reality.
Like you said, you're going to church. Going to these meetings is not a justice meeting. It is a church meeting. Like, this is what we're supposed to be doing in our ministry, in our churches. And I think it's very encouraging for small churches to think, like, well, we don't have a lot of human resources. We don't have a lot of financial resources.
What do we have? We are paying a pastor or we have lay leaders who can go into these different organizations in the community that you named and you have a building. So you have this building that you can use and leverage in the community and really use it. Towards good for groups that don't have places to meet or safe places as evidenced by the ESL student.
Wow. Okay. So that is one of your churches, which feels like a full time job. I mean, you mentioned that you couldn't go to all of the meetings. So you do have good time boundaries. We are hearing that you respect those. So you're spending about 20 hours a week. Is that right? In Rindge? 20 hours a week in Rindge.
So now we're going to move over to Ashburnham and you've got 10 hours a week you're spending there and what do the connections with your local community look like in this context?
Liz: So, Ashburnham is, is such an interesting church. When I arrived, they were in mourning. They had, were already thinking about closing and their pastor had died very suddenly.
So a lot of the first work with them was simply about the mourning. I have a lot of experience as an interim, but this was a very different interim because normally you'd come in and be pushing change right off, but they needed to mourn this really traumatic loss. But I did what I tend to do somewhat accidentally.
I walked into their office. It's the first day and they were showing me around and I said, it's really weird that you have a rainbow flag in the office and you don't have one outside. Just calling attention to it. I'm just noticing. I'm just noticing this. In Asprinham, when that was Wednesday, when I arrived at church on Sunday, that flag was hanging outside.
Allison: Wow. So Liz, I mean that you made them think like you got them to think also how encouraging to know as a leader, you have people that are listening to you right off the bat, like you haven't established a relationship with them, but you've made them think. noticed, like, who are we telling that we're an affirming congregation when this is inside?
That's great. And so what was the, what effect did that have once it was put outside for everybody to see?
Liz: So the council right away had a discussion about it. The person who was most conservative on the council said, I think it's important that we take a vote on this and that we all agree with what the majority says.
And he abstained, and everyone else agreed with the decision. We got phone calls from the town, from people who lived in the town, thanking us for having the flag, that they didn't know that there was a place in Ashburnham where it was safe. I would say, The town of 6, 000 people, I got a call once a week for the first six months.
A lot of positive response.
Allison: Were you expecting that or were you expecting pushback from the community?
Liz: One of the questions about putting it up was what to do if somebody burned it. Um, that has not happened. We had complaint from some members of the senior center and the complaints were mostly along the lines of it's kind of in your face.
We had one parishioner ask whether it was a good idea. She went to the most conservative person on the council who said, I hear what you're saying and if you'd like to bring it to the council for discussion, I would be willing to help you with that, but did not in any way undercut the rest of the council.
And she wasn't willing to do that. So the flag stayed up. Wow. And this is a congregation at that point of all straight people. So it's really been a delight to be at this congregation.
Allison: Yeah, I bet. So you've put the flag up. You're having a positive response. Is this like in range where one thing led to another?
What comes next?
Liz: Absolutely. Except this is longer ago. So this is six years ago. So it's pre covid. So we created a rainbow circle. We invited people to come talk about L. G. B. T. Q. I. Issues in Ashburn ham. 20 people came to that first meeting and it turned out there were issues in the public school system.
Teachers were being harassed for having rainbow flags in their classroom. So the teachers, they came to this rainbow circle. They came to this discussion and we developed plans of things we were going to do. We discussed politically what's most astute in terms of do we make a stand or do we instead try to build relationships?
We had a lot of ideas. I don't really remember them because all of this happened about a month before COVID.
Allison: Oh gosh. So you have all of this enthusiasm, and then COVID hit. So you're not meeting in person, I guess, after that. How did you harness all of that excitement?
Liz: At first, we didn't at all. Then there was an election in which a very anti gay candidate was running.
And our Rainbow Circle Facebook group went from about 40 people to 300 in less than a week. The people who were in that group successfully supported the candidate who was already on the school committee, who was going to be more supportive of LGBTQI people. She attributes winning that election to the work that people in this rainbow circle did.
We were struggling with COVID. We were struggling. It was very difficult for us to do online worship. We tried some outdoor worship. Sometime in 2021, one of the people on the Rainbow Circle got the idea to meet and play games together. Online. So, we started rebuilding relationships, rebuilding connections.
The school system changed, there was a new superintendent. Teachers weren't sure they wanted to address this issue till they knew the new superintendent. So, all of what we had done kind of faded. Then we had two or three people come to us. And say, to go to a LGBTQI luncheon, the closest one is an hour away in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Can't we do that here? So I have this congregation of seniors,
Allison: and
Liz: I have this rainbow circle of many ages, but what is the obvious overlap? Is senior LGBTQI people. So I have this list of 300 people. I invited them and 8 people came to the planning meeting to talk about whether we could do a meal program.
And, uh, One of the towns folk who came, goes to a lot of meal programs, so she, like, she knew what was needed. And in this case, four people from the congregation were there. And then three, probably three people for the first meeting of the rest of the town. And we started having meals. And are you having them at, you had them at the church?
We have them at the church. Some of the people who volunteered to be on the planning team turn out to be amazing cooks. Well, that worked out well. And so like they could give advice of, well, if you're making mashed potatoes for 20 people, this is how you do it. So we started with, I don't know, eight, Or nine people came to the first meal.
The police came at our request because we were so nervous. I have a, um, communications assistant and her main job on Facebook is hiding all of the negative comments. That appear every time we promote this event, but now we regularly have 25 people get together and have dinner
Allison: once a month and it's public.
You're posting this on your public Facebook page so anybody can come. Anybody
Liz: can come. And it's, we get a lot of complaints that it's only for LGBTQ people. That's not fair, but it actually says it's for LGBTQI people, they're friends and family. And I'm like, if you can be nice to queer people, then please come.
Please come. You gather typically once a month? Once a month, uh, in the winter, it's a Saturday afternoon so that people aren't driving after dark, but all the rest of the year it's a Friday night dinner.
Allison: And are members of your church coming as
Liz: allies? There are five regular volunteers, which for a church that has an average attendance of eight to ten is pretty good.
That's a huge
Allison: percentage, yeah. Yeah.
Liz: A townsperson was, was leading each meal, like what's the food, what's the plan. And we just this year switched, so of the volunteers on the, on the organizing committee, each one has one month's meal to be in charge of. And that's some people from town and some people from our church taking on that responsibility.
Allison: Has that changed the relationship between your congregation and the town? I think that it really has.
Liz: We were the liberal church in town. We now are known as the liberal church in town. So it has helped us live into who we were. I will say that in Ashburnham, I certainly had this fantasy that this was true, but it has turned out to be true, is that we have people coming because we have the rainbow flag up.
And it is mostly not people from the meal. But it is people, mostly straight people, but some gay people, are coming because they want to be in a church that is welcoming. Many of them say, well, I wasn't going to go to a church that wouldn't accept my aunt, or my cousin, or my sister, so I decided to come here.
Allison: We have the same experience at our church. We host a transgender support group that met in our church pre pandemic and now is on Zoom. And the facilitator is on the PFLAG board and is a member of our church. But she's the only church member who typically comes, but it's very much a church ministry. Our church is really proud of it.
And I think it becomes this metric, you know, that people are using, like, what kind of church is this? Oh, they've got a rainbow dinner. Oh, they've got a trans support group. So if they have this, then I know that they're going to have this. This, this, this, and this. I know what their theology is going to be.
I know how they're going to welcome people. We don't have very many trans members. We have a lot of people who love trans people. And they, exactly what you said, if my child wants to come to church on Christmas, I want them to be able to come and be embraced just like everybody else.
Liz: Exactly. So we have two queer folk who have joined.
since we've been doing this, but we have others who are coming who are not. I will say that we're a tiny church, so some people come and they're very excited, but they don't come back. And I'm sure some of that is we do not have the place to be anonymous. You cannot hide in a small church. Our sanctuary seats 150, so we sit in a circle up front.
In a circle of chairs. So you can't even sit in the back.
Allison: No, you can't. And if you come in late, everyone sees it. Yes. Imagine the courage it takes. If you are part of that community, it seems like the rainbow dinner is a great way for people to ease back into church, to be in church without the preaching, without the liturgy, and then share, do what we're supposed to do in church.
We're sharing meals together and fellowship. Yeah. Exactly. So, have you seen other ways that this ministry has impacted your congregation there? So, in
Liz: Ashburnham, it has built their personal confidence in who they are as a church. They believe that they are doing good ministry. And they are, but because they were already thinking about closing and then had this tragedy, there was this way that they were thinking that they weren't enough.
And there is not a lot of anxious talking about, shouldn't we be doing this or shouldn't we be doing that? They say, this is our ministry and they're proud. I
Allison: have this image of Lazarus in the tomb and Jesus commanding that he come out and that he's all bound and he needs to be unbound. And that's this congregation.
Like they were all but in the tomb ready to be closed. And now they have, it's like a bonus life. It's a resurrected unbound life now that they have where everything they get to do is, you know, done. It just feels extra, you know, it just feels like something they didn't envision seven years ago that they might be able to do.
Liz: As part of the grant, the racial justice grant we got, we also got outreach money for each congregation from the same grant. And we just recently had a discussion in our council meeting. We have not successfully spent the money from the grant. We decided to get bags and t shirts that say we're still here.
We sold our building, so some people think that we're not in business still. So we're still here. But the most interesting thing in the discussion was one of the members of the council said, Just listen to us. We're saying how can we spread the good news. And just a year ago, all we were talking about is how can we save money and that the conversation has changed completely to a conversation about how do we spread the good news of Jesus Christ instead of how do we take care of ourself.
Allison: I imagine there are just so many people. Who are listening, who serve congregations, who, who exist in that scarcity mindset of always needing to, to limit, to limit everything because of fear, mostly it's such a unique position to be in where you have this extra money. You have this calling, you have this new purpose and you ha you know that you have a gift to share with the community.
Like you are a living example of this radically generous love of God. And so like how do you get that out there? Yeah. Wow. It feels really good. Clearly, as the pastor, you're leading them through this and guiding them, shepherding them, but being able to watch them. Articulate who they are as a congregation and who they are as disciples of Jesus must be really rewarding.
You know, it's so, it's so hard being a pastor right now and especially in small churches, but this feels like a great sign of hope.
Liz: It feels very hopeful to me. It feels like that's exactly the point of a small church in a small community is to identify some, some group of people and then just figure out how to meet those people's needs.
Allison: Yeah. Do you have words of wisdom for other small church leaders who are looking to form meaningful connections with their local community?
Liz: In all these cases, when I was starting, it seemed impossible, and that there wasn't a clear direction, or more accurately, that people would like guess at things that we should do without any input from people in the community.
And that really waiting until the thing that a lot of people would come to was really valuable. I would say on the rainbow dinners, we tried other things that, you know, don't get included in the success story, but we tried to have a pride service, a pride celebration in Ashburnham. We tried a rock painting event for kids.
We've tried to have a trans support group. And it's, it's okay to try things and then not do any more with them. Mm hmm. But just to keep trying. Just keep trying, waiting for what's the thing that has energy in the town. I do think that a lot of our success comes from assuming that we did not have all the people to do the work.
We could only proceed with something that had townspeople coming and wanting to be leaders of.
Allison: Yeah, that's a great point, Liz. I, I think that often we don't try things because we know we don't have enough and then there's some more fear. You know, we don't want to invite other people in. They might take it over or for whatever reason.
You lose ownership a lot of times if you're inviting other people in. You have the same We don't have enough people, but looking at it as a, so who do we ask? Who are our partners? Who are our allies? And that goes back to the very first conversation you were having with all of your local pastors about the, having a collaborative ministry, like we need to think of a different way to do this so that we can have an impact in these congregations.
Liz: I also did a great deal of work at the beginning in each congregation about the idea that the purpose of outreach is to meet people's needs, not to get them to come to church. And one of my lay people said, after one of the rainbow dinners, I can't believe how much more enjoyable it is to do this ministry.
only because people need it, not because I'm trying to think in my head how to invite them to church. That underlying basis that the purpose of the ministry is to meet the needs of people is very, very critical to being confident as we do it.
Allison: Yeah, that is a message that we talk about often at our church, that we're not Intentionally trying to grow our congregation, but if we move outside of our walls and are the people that Christ has called us to be, then we likely will grow as a result of it.
But that's not the goal. You know, growth is not the goal. It's the making an impact and being disciples. That is the goal. Yes. Yeah. And that's such a different mindset, especially for these micro churches that feel like if they don't grow, they're dead. And that death is the worst part.
Liz: One of the things that's happened in Ashburnham is that death has stopped feeling like the worst part.
So we discuss regularly whether we can keep going. We just finished selling our building three months ago. And in February we have again a congregational meeting where we'll ask, do we want to keep going? I feel like one of the things that's happened that's good is that, for one thing, they all can imagine going to the church in Rindge.
Once a month, they worship with the church in Rindge. So if they do decide to close, they can imagine going somewhere else. But also, staying open doesn't mean they have to do more than they're doing now. What they're doing is complete. Their church is complete. Doing all the parts of church
Allison: and the people said I'm in yeah is there So, okay.
How long have you been ordained? You've been ordained a while, right? I was ordained in 2002 in 2002 So 20 22 years amazing. Okay. So now that you have been doing this a while Do you have any? insights about congregational leadership or small church leadership in particular. The thing that I love the most
Liz: about being old is that it's so obvious that very little of what's going on is about me.
So it's so much easier for me not to take offense. That has just made every bit of ministry easier. I went into ministry believing in the ministry of the All the Baptized. I was part of the Living Stones Collaborative in the Episcopal Church and am now part of the Living Waters. Group that is working on lay leadership, but at the beginning it was so easy for me to take over What could be the ministry of lay people and as I've gotten more experience?
I'm so much better at helping lay people do all that they can do instead of Doing it for them What I always believed, but is still shocking to me, is how good it is for lay people to run their own church. How good they feel about that. How skillful they are. Both of my churches now have a regular rotation of lay preachers.
One of the things in the latest evaluation of the Small Church Collaborative was how much the rest of the congregation loves hearing lay people preach.
Allison: Wow. Just that perspective and the idea that it's that it's not about you makes it easier to put yourself out there and take some risk to go to the women's club to go to the Rotary meeting to the library to ask those questions about community engagement and when it doesn't work, then it's not your fault.
Like, it's not all because of you. It just wasn't the right time. You know, we're just going to try something else.
Liz: The stuff that didn't work was just steps along the way. And similarly, the stuff we're doing now, that's hugely effective, I believe, if they stop happening, that's okay, too. We're doing good ministry now.
If we have to stop that. That's okay. That is okay.
Allison: And I think that the the way that you've described these two ministries in these two different context, the impact that you have won't go away, even if the congregations. do dissolve. You know, the, the lives have been impacted. The conversations have been had.
The people have been loved. It's really inspiring. I'm so grateful that you were willing to come on this podcast, Liz, and share with us this really unique collaborative ministry that you have. I'm thrilled to talk about it!
Well, as we come to a close of our conversation, we always ask this last final question. So Liz, what is something small that's recently brought you big joy?
Liz: So, my husband and I just joined the Y. And I went and did 45 minutes of aqua aerobics, and it makes me feel good.
Allison: That is perfect. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Small Churches Big Impact.
We hope this has been a chance for you to explore how your ministry and the ministry of those who surround you are making an impact, no matter how small you may feel. We hope you'll continue noticing that even in small ways, God is making a big impact in your life. You've been with the Small Church's Big Impact Collective.
This season of the Small Church's Big Impact Podcast would not be possible without financial support from Episcopal Divinity School. If you are interested in financially supporting our work and partnering with us to guarantee that the voices of small church leaders are amplified, please reach out to us at Small Churches Big impact@gmail.com.
You're with the Small Churches Big Impact Collective.
And in this season four of the Small Churches Big Impact Collective podcast, we are so pleased and excited to be partnering with the Episcopal Divinity School. To explore what social justice and small churches looks like. I am your host for this episode The Reverend Allison Sandlin Lyles. I am the vicar of St.
Stephen's Episcopal Church Which is located just outside of Fort Worth, Texas And my guest today is Elizabeth Mae McGill. So Liz welcome Thank you. It's so exciting to be here. I'm excited that you're here, too. Why don't you tell us where you are in the world and about the churches that you serve?
Liz: So I am presently living in a small town in Massachusetts, a suburb of Worcester, Massachusetts, and I serve a a church in Asprinham, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Fitchburg.
And I say suburb, these are rural, small towns, and I am serving a micro congregation that our worship runs eight to ten each Sunday. And the church in Ashburn Ham is in the Small Church collaborative, which is the joining of the Ashburn Ham Church and the UCC Church just across the border in New Hampshire, in Ridge, New Hampshire, and that's also a micro congregation, but a little bit larger.
Worshiping 15 to 18 on Sundays. Both of them are rural congregations. Everybody lives far apart from each other. And while the church is in downtown, there isn't much else in the downtown.
Allison: I love the term micro congregation. I haven't heard that before and it's so descriptive without feeling like a pejorative the way that you're describing your congregation.
And thank you for clarifying that. People that you're serving do not necessarily live right there by your two churches. And so, are those two churches of the same denomination or are they different denominations? So one of the
Liz: churches is UCC and United Methodist combined, although really everyone in the congregation identifies as UCC.
And the other congregation is, the one in New Hampshire is completely UCC. And my ordination is with the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. There aren't very many of those in this area, so I have mostly served UCC churches.
Allison: Thank you. And how long have you been working in this small church
Liz: collaborative?
The collaborative is about three years old. I was in Ashburnham for three years before that, so I'm just finishing my sixth year in Ashburnham, and the two have been worshipping together for three years.
Allison: It's such an interesting development, the idea that you were already serving one of these congregations and then they joined together in this collaborative way.
Will you talk a little bit about this initial call and how you envisioned these two churches either working together or how you were going to serve them?
Liz: Yeah, so the church in Ashburnham hired me half time. Our first work was figuring out whether they could survive. And the answer was definitely that they could not survive with a half time pastor.
So they were thinking about going to quarter time. I was thinking that I couldn't stay at a church that was only quarter time. But as we'll talk about later, they also were doing significantly important ministry in a very conservative town. They were the liberal voice. So I felt like it was very important that we figure out some way that they could continue to be the church in that town.
I started checking in with other pastors of other churches in the area, and it turns out that entire area The northern part of Worcester County, Massachusetts, and the southern part of New Hampshire is all micro congregations. It is all tiny groups. So we started having meetings of all of those congregations.
We had six churches from New Hampshire come to our What's a Small Church collaborative meeting, and about five churches from northern Worcester County come to that first Zoom meeting asking, is there some alternative way we can work together? It turns out that churches can mostly change what they're doing when they're in pastoral search.
So of all those that came, and many were very interested, the church in Rindge had an interim. She gave notice that she had her next call, and that made them very eager to figure out what to do next. The collaborative started with probably 12 churches interested, three were kind of interested, but when it came to figuring out the contract, we ended up with these two churches that are sharing me as a pastor.
Allison: There were just several things in that that I feel like are very indicative of small church ministry when it's done. done really well, the idea that you're all coming together and asking that question, how can we do this differently? Instead of being tied to, well, we've always done this. Our churches are shrinking, but we've already have this millstone around our necks and so we can't take it off.
And instead, really thinking creatively. about how this ministry could look different moving forward, especially knowing that this church in Ashburnham has a purpose. You know, we always ask that question, if our church disappeared, what would be missing? Would the neighborhood even notice? And the resounding, yes, like we need to be here.
We need to figure it out is so inspiring.
Liz: And I have to say that even though only two churches ended up joining, my experience with small churches is they are willing to consider a wide variety of options, that the 12 churches that came to the first meeting were actually quite serious about imagining they might do something different, and it didn't work out in particular.
in this case, but I hope that people don't hear that as small churches being unwilling to change, because I've found many of them very willing to imagine something new. They need help with that work, but if they get help, they are glad to think about that.
Allison: And so did you have an idea of how you envisioned it working once you identified the two churches that you were going to serve?
Liz: So I have a very biased view of ministry. I am all about community organizing and being active in the town, and I'm not that interested in worship. And this was going to be a three quarter time position. Wrenge had enough for a halftime pastor and Ashburnham for a quarter time. So from the very beginning, I said, that means I'll have one Sunday a month off.
I'm not going to both churches every Sunday. I wanted the time to be at local community events, the time to be out connecting the congregation to the community. And so I didn't want to spend huge amounts of time on attending worship and worship planning. So that was definitely one of the things that affected whether churches were We're interested.
Certainly for many churches, Sunday is the most important thing. But for me personally, that is not what I was looking for in my work life.
Allison: I think it's a gift to everybody to be able to name that up front and say, this is how I envision it. I was, Coached by an original member of our small churches, big impact collective, Susie Schaefer.
When I was negotiating my letter of agreement, I'm 20 hours a week that it needs to include one Sunday off a month. And when people hear that they have a knee jerk reaction because Sunday is so important. But when you're not working on that Sunday, there's so many more hours you can put into the community and to the pastoral care and to the rest of the week when you're not.
Doing all the sermon writing, bulletin printing, all the other things that a small church pastor does. I hear you say that community organizing is really important. When you move into a new call, how does that look for you? Where do you start to figure out what community ministries or organizations, like where the overlap is between your church and the community?
Liz: So I wrote a book, Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers, and it's about how to use community organizing to make your food pantry or meal program involve the people who need the food as volunteers. to run the program. Each of these churches has a food pantry, and so that's where I started, is by going to the food pantry and meeting people.
I expect that most pastors listening to this know, often an existing program, Is not going to change just because there's a new pastor there.
Allison: Right.
Liz: Both programs have excellent leaders, very hardworking people in their congregation running those ministries. But they were not interested in my new way of doing food ministry.
So the other thing I always do. What I find myself doing is going to, what's going on in the chamber, what's going on in, in Rindge, I go to the women's club, going to library events, meeting people in town, but I just keep looking for who are the people. in town who I can get to know and find out what's going on.
Each church I had do a community organizing project where they are asked to ask everybody they know what does this town need and they write it on index cards. I have a fantasy that that will result in An excellent ministry for any church. The reality is not very many people go and do it
Allison: That was my question I was wondering how many people actually went out and did that or if they were just too scared to bring up scared Yeah,
Liz: they're too scared.
The goal is a hundred index cards and I would say in ashburnham We got 25 and in Ringe, we may have gotten 40
Allison: And what, the ones that you did get, was it helpful in discerning what you were going to do as a congregation? I
Liz: will say that in Rindge, definitely people talked about concerns about racial justice and appreciating differences, and that did end up being a project that we did.
Allison: So you have these cards that reference racial justice in Rindge. Was there something that was already happening in that town? What was going on and how did your ministry connect with it?
Liz: Yeah, so when I arrived in Rindge, the library was in the middle of running a program that invited people of color in the immediate area to share what it was like to live in this all white, very conservative area.
It was not on days I could go, I'm part time, but I was very excited that they were doing it. So I immediately contacted the library who was running the program and said, we're interested in doing more about. this topic, what, you know, what do you recommend? And the librarian knew that the people who came to that program that the library ran were meeting to learn some strategies for talking across difference.
I gave her an email that she sent to her email list and out of that group about 16 people replied to me that yes, they would like to keep doing some work. on racial justice.
Allison: That's 16. I mean, that's bigger than your congregation size. That's wonderful.
Liz: Yeah. It was a great, it was a great response, even better than that.
So we had gotten a racial justice grant from the Southern New England Conference of the UCC to spend 5, 000 between the two congregations on racial justice materials. We, um, you arranged an active bystander training that happened once in Rindge and once in Ashburnham. 40 people signed up for it in Rindge and 30 of them came to that first event that we did.
Allison: Wow. And so were people in your congregation in Rindge attending that training, or is it mostly community members?
Liz: It's most by a large majority community members. I would say four people from the congregation came to the active bystander training. At the active bystander training, we had surveys and people listed what they wanted to do to do more work on racial justice.
And that led us to create community conversations. And at the beginning, the planning committee for the community conversations was four people from. the town and three people from the congregation in Rindge.
Allison: So it really was a shared collaborative ministry.
Liz: It started shared. The people who came were already people who were doing a lot of things.
So at this stage, the planning committee is now five or six people from the town of Rindge plus
Allison: So you have this leadership team that began with members of your congregation and now made up more of community members rather than church members, who are some of the other people that have joined this leadership team?
So
Liz: going back to our actual meetings, our first conversation, which this group of old white people put together and announced with flyers and Facebook and things like that. We're sitting at this, we set up, I think, nine chairs because we didn't want to imagine too big a group. And there were eight of us, so we hoped there'd be somebody beyond us.
And we're getting ready for that conversation. Outside the window, I see this van pull up, and it turned out that at Franklin Pierce University, which is in Rindge, New Hampshire, the director of DEI had seen that we were having this discussion and got a van load of six black and brown students and brought them to be part of this discussion.
So the first thing that happens is our heart's like, Oh, I hope we're doing this right. And we had this amazing discussion. At the end of that, the director said, So it would be easier to get students here if some of the meetings happened at the university. And we right there on the spot decided that every other meeting would be at Franklin Pierce University.
So this was like this complete change of, let's have white people talk about whiteness and how it affects racial diversity. And it also changed because a number of the people who came were queer.
Allison: Hmm.
Liz: So the change of our name from a racial justice committee to abridging differences, both to make it more that people in the town of Rindge could hear it, but also to make sure we were including LGBTQI people in addition to race issues.
We stumbled along some months. They got a new director of DEI at Franklin Pierce, and that person agreed to be on our leadership team. And then one, the student who's in charge of the residence hall directors, was interested in how these conversations affected what was going on with residence hall life at the university.
So now he's also on the leadership team. And then the church had a discussion about. We have this racial justice money and we keep doing things and nobody asks to be reimbursed for the money. So we're not spending the grant. So we started this year by meeting at Franklin Pierce and providing dinner. So then we went from having 12 to 15 people to having 22, 23, and it's about half students and half old white range people.
Allison: So you have, like, old white people, and then you have younger people who are also a racial minority as well. How, how are they doing at actually bridging differences and listening to one another?
Liz: It, it's pretty shocking. We do a lot of small groups. We count off and we just deal with whatever happens. But we've managed to have good questions about where you come from and what you love about your culture.
Because we rotate facilitators, there's different styles. So one of the students of color did a On microaggressions to the whole group, and then we broke into small groups and talked about our experiences with that. I would say that we are not at deep relationships with each other, but we are at trust of each other, and I'm imagining that in this next year, we can get to a deeper level of relationship with the people who are coming.
Allison: It feels like church. It's what church should be. Okay, so I hear you are saying that now you're the main representative from your church and wrench on this planning committee, like on the leadership team. Does the church still consider it one of their ministries, even though they're not actively participating in it?
Liz: They do. One of my jobs as the pastor of a micro congregation is to help them narrow what they're working on. So one of our projects was to come up with a list of what are our main ministries. And they were quite adamant. That this is one of their ministries. They know that that's what I'm spending time on and they're paying for that time.
We actually had an incident in our church building. Our church building is owned by the town, which is a complicated thing that I don't want to spend a lot of time on. But we invited, uh, English as a second language group. to meet in our building and they met in the side that's owned by the town instead of on our side and a times person came in and was quite upset.
That there were foreigners in the town's building.
Allison: The
Liz: leadership of this congregation responded to that by saying, isn't this the ministry we're doing? When we say that we support this bridging differences group, doesn't that mean we also support this group that's doing English as a second language? So they voted to make it a ministry of the church, which Basically covers insurance issues, makes it so the group doesn't need insurance and went to the town hall and complained about the complaint that had happened and showed up at the next meeting to make sure that the people coming to this were feeling supported by the town.
I would
Allison: say that they're really on board. I would definitely agree and I mean the complaint that was made is an example of why this bridging differences group is so important. Why these voices need to be heard and recognized and that there are differences that need to be bridged. So it sounds like this has been a very organic process.
You got to arrange the library was having this program. The library connected you with people who wanted to keep working, which turned into the active bystander training, which turned into this conversation group. It just keeps. Picking up steam like one thing is organically leading to the next thing and as a leader, it seems like you just need to be open to what is next and try instead of trying to steer the ship yourself being open to what's coming at you.
Liz: That is very much my leadership style. I am interested in hearing what people want to do and providing the support so that they can proceed with that. One of the things that happened just recently is one of the people in the leadership team became, became very interested in creating a local NAACP in our area.
And so, Now, when we have our community conversations, one of the topics we talk about is how to do the work to create an NAACP in our area. I have been a member of the NAACP like I send my dues in, but I've never actually been involved and it's never would have been my idea. And I'm very excited to be helping a group of people make that happen in our immediate area.
Allison: What a rewarding. ministry this must be for your entire church and for you, if this was your hope going into this small church collaborative to really spend your time out in the community and making an impact, this micro church is certainly doing that.
Liz: It feels like church to me to go to the discussions and I really believe that the church of the future, the ones that will survive are the churches that matter to their local neighborhood.
That's definitely my calling around, um, leading congregations, and it feels, it feels very hopeful, honestly. in a way that I don't necessarily feel hope right now in our political environment. And yet I have this group of people who want to talk about how we can talk to each other.
Allison: Thank you for sharing this justice ministry in range that I mean, we're using the term for this whole season, like social justice and reality.
Like you said, you're going to church. Going to these meetings is not a justice meeting. It is a church meeting. Like, this is what we're supposed to be doing in our ministry, in our churches. And I think it's very encouraging for small churches to think, like, well, we don't have a lot of human resources. We don't have a lot of financial resources.
What do we have? We are paying a pastor or we have lay leaders who can go into these different organizations in the community that you named and you have a building. So you have this building that you can use and leverage in the community and really use it. Towards good for groups that don't have places to meet or safe places as evidenced by the ESL student.
Wow. Okay. So that is one of your churches, which feels like a full time job. I mean, you mentioned that you couldn't go to all of the meetings. So you do have good time boundaries. We are hearing that you respect those. So you're spending about 20 hours a week. Is that right? In Rindge? 20 hours a week in Rindge.
So now we're going to move over to Ashburnham and you've got 10 hours a week you're spending there and what do the connections with your local community look like in this context?
Liz: So, Ashburnham is, is such an interesting church. When I arrived, they were in mourning. They had, were already thinking about closing and their pastor had died very suddenly.
So a lot of the first work with them was simply about the mourning. I have a lot of experience as an interim, but this was a very different interim because normally you'd come in and be pushing change right off, but they needed to mourn this really traumatic loss. But I did what I tend to do somewhat accidentally.
I walked into their office. It's the first day and they were showing me around and I said, it's really weird that you have a rainbow flag in the office and you don't have one outside. Just calling attention to it. I'm just noticing. I'm just noticing this. In Asprinham, when that was Wednesday, when I arrived at church on Sunday, that flag was hanging outside.
Allison: Wow. So Liz, I mean that you made them think like you got them to think also how encouraging to know as a leader, you have people that are listening to you right off the bat, like you haven't established a relationship with them, but you've made them think. noticed, like, who are we telling that we're an affirming congregation when this is inside?
That's great. And so what was the, what effect did that have once it was put outside for everybody to see?
Liz: So the council right away had a discussion about it. The person who was most conservative on the council said, I think it's important that we take a vote on this and that we all agree with what the majority says.
And he abstained, and everyone else agreed with the decision. We got phone calls from the town, from people who lived in the town, thanking us for having the flag, that they didn't know that there was a place in Ashburnham where it was safe. I would say, The town of 6, 000 people, I got a call once a week for the first six months.
A lot of positive response.
Allison: Were you expecting that or were you expecting pushback from the community?
Liz: One of the questions about putting it up was what to do if somebody burned it. Um, that has not happened. We had complaint from some members of the senior center and the complaints were mostly along the lines of it's kind of in your face.
We had one parishioner ask whether it was a good idea. She went to the most conservative person on the council who said, I hear what you're saying and if you'd like to bring it to the council for discussion, I would be willing to help you with that, but did not in any way undercut the rest of the council.
And she wasn't willing to do that. So the flag stayed up. Wow. And this is a congregation at that point of all straight people. So it's really been a delight to be at this congregation.
Allison: Yeah, I bet. So you've put the flag up. You're having a positive response. Is this like in range where one thing led to another?
What comes next?
Liz: Absolutely. Except this is longer ago. So this is six years ago. So it's pre covid. So we created a rainbow circle. We invited people to come talk about L. G. B. T. Q. I. Issues in Ashburn ham. 20 people came to that first meeting and it turned out there were issues in the public school system.
Teachers were being harassed for having rainbow flags in their classroom. So the teachers, they came to this rainbow circle. They came to this discussion and we developed plans of things we were going to do. We discussed politically what's most astute in terms of do we make a stand or do we instead try to build relationships?
We had a lot of ideas. I don't really remember them because all of this happened about a month before COVID.
Allison: Oh gosh. So you have all of this enthusiasm, and then COVID hit. So you're not meeting in person, I guess, after that. How did you harness all of that excitement?
Liz: At first, we didn't at all. Then there was an election in which a very anti gay candidate was running.
And our Rainbow Circle Facebook group went from about 40 people to 300 in less than a week. The people who were in that group successfully supported the candidate who was already on the school committee, who was going to be more supportive of LGBTQI people. She attributes winning that election to the work that people in this rainbow circle did.
We were struggling with COVID. We were struggling. It was very difficult for us to do online worship. We tried some outdoor worship. Sometime in 2021, one of the people on the Rainbow Circle got the idea to meet and play games together. Online. So, we started rebuilding relationships, rebuilding connections.
The school system changed, there was a new superintendent. Teachers weren't sure they wanted to address this issue till they knew the new superintendent. So, all of what we had done kind of faded. Then we had two or three people come to us. And say, to go to a LGBTQI luncheon, the closest one is an hour away in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Can't we do that here? So I have this congregation of seniors,
Allison: and
Liz: I have this rainbow circle of many ages, but what is the obvious overlap? Is senior LGBTQI people. So I have this list of 300 people. I invited them and 8 people came to the planning meeting to talk about whether we could do a meal program.
And, uh, One of the towns folk who came, goes to a lot of meal programs, so she, like, she knew what was needed. And in this case, four people from the congregation were there. And then three, probably three people for the first meeting of the rest of the town. And we started having meals. And are you having them at, you had them at the church?
We have them at the church. Some of the people who volunteered to be on the planning team turn out to be amazing cooks. Well, that worked out well. And so like they could give advice of, well, if you're making mashed potatoes for 20 people, this is how you do it. So we started with, I don't know, eight, Or nine people came to the first meal.
The police came at our request because we were so nervous. I have a, um, communications assistant and her main job on Facebook is hiding all of the negative comments. That appear every time we promote this event, but now we regularly have 25 people get together and have dinner
Allison: once a month and it's public.
You're posting this on your public Facebook page so anybody can come. Anybody
Liz: can come. And it's, we get a lot of complaints that it's only for LGBTQ people. That's not fair, but it actually says it's for LGBTQI people, they're friends and family. And I'm like, if you can be nice to queer people, then please come.
Please come. You gather typically once a month? Once a month, uh, in the winter, it's a Saturday afternoon so that people aren't driving after dark, but all the rest of the year it's a Friday night dinner.
Allison: And are members of your church coming as
Liz: allies? There are five regular volunteers, which for a church that has an average attendance of eight to ten is pretty good.
That's a huge
Allison: percentage, yeah. Yeah.
Liz: A townsperson was, was leading each meal, like what's the food, what's the plan. And we just this year switched, so of the volunteers on the, on the organizing committee, each one has one month's meal to be in charge of. And that's some people from town and some people from our church taking on that responsibility.
Allison: Has that changed the relationship between your congregation and the town? I think that it really has.
Liz: We were the liberal church in town. We now are known as the liberal church in town. So it has helped us live into who we were. I will say that in Ashburnham, I certainly had this fantasy that this was true, but it has turned out to be true, is that we have people coming because we have the rainbow flag up.
And it is mostly not people from the meal. But it is people, mostly straight people, but some gay people, are coming because they want to be in a church that is welcoming. Many of them say, well, I wasn't going to go to a church that wouldn't accept my aunt, or my cousin, or my sister, so I decided to come here.
Allison: We have the same experience at our church. We host a transgender support group that met in our church pre pandemic and now is on Zoom. And the facilitator is on the PFLAG board and is a member of our church. But she's the only church member who typically comes, but it's very much a church ministry. Our church is really proud of it.
And I think it becomes this metric, you know, that people are using, like, what kind of church is this? Oh, they've got a rainbow dinner. Oh, they've got a trans support group. So if they have this, then I know that they're going to have this. This, this, this, and this. I know what their theology is going to be.
I know how they're going to welcome people. We don't have very many trans members. We have a lot of people who love trans people. And they, exactly what you said, if my child wants to come to church on Christmas, I want them to be able to come and be embraced just like everybody else.
Liz: Exactly. So we have two queer folk who have joined.
since we've been doing this, but we have others who are coming who are not. I will say that we're a tiny church, so some people come and they're very excited, but they don't come back. And I'm sure some of that is we do not have the place to be anonymous. You cannot hide in a small church. Our sanctuary seats 150, so we sit in a circle up front.
In a circle of chairs. So you can't even sit in the back.
Allison: No, you can't. And if you come in late, everyone sees it. Yes. Imagine the courage it takes. If you are part of that community, it seems like the rainbow dinner is a great way for people to ease back into church, to be in church without the preaching, without the liturgy, and then share, do what we're supposed to do in church.
We're sharing meals together and fellowship. Yeah. Exactly. So, have you seen other ways that this ministry has impacted your congregation there? So, in
Liz: Ashburnham, it has built their personal confidence in who they are as a church. They believe that they are doing good ministry. And they are, but because they were already thinking about closing and then had this tragedy, there was this way that they were thinking that they weren't enough.
And there is not a lot of anxious talking about, shouldn't we be doing this or shouldn't we be doing that? They say, this is our ministry and they're proud. I
Allison: have this image of Lazarus in the tomb and Jesus commanding that he come out and that he's all bound and he needs to be unbound. And that's this congregation.
Like they were all but in the tomb ready to be closed. And now they have, it's like a bonus life. It's a resurrected unbound life now that they have where everything they get to do is, you know, done. It just feels extra, you know, it just feels like something they didn't envision seven years ago that they might be able to do.
Liz: As part of the grant, the racial justice grant we got, we also got outreach money for each congregation from the same grant. And we just recently had a discussion in our council meeting. We have not successfully spent the money from the grant. We decided to get bags and t shirts that say we're still here.
We sold our building, so some people think that we're not in business still. So we're still here. But the most interesting thing in the discussion was one of the members of the council said, Just listen to us. We're saying how can we spread the good news. And just a year ago, all we were talking about is how can we save money and that the conversation has changed completely to a conversation about how do we spread the good news of Jesus Christ instead of how do we take care of ourself.
Allison: I imagine there are just so many people. Who are listening, who serve congregations, who, who exist in that scarcity mindset of always needing to, to limit, to limit everything because of fear, mostly it's such a unique position to be in where you have this extra money. You have this calling, you have this new purpose and you ha you know that you have a gift to share with the community.
Like you are a living example of this radically generous love of God. And so like how do you get that out there? Yeah. Wow. It feels really good. Clearly, as the pastor, you're leading them through this and guiding them, shepherding them, but being able to watch them. Articulate who they are as a congregation and who they are as disciples of Jesus must be really rewarding.
You know, it's so, it's so hard being a pastor right now and especially in small churches, but this feels like a great sign of hope.
Liz: It feels very hopeful to me. It feels like that's exactly the point of a small church in a small community is to identify some, some group of people and then just figure out how to meet those people's needs.
Allison: Yeah. Do you have words of wisdom for other small church leaders who are looking to form meaningful connections with their local community?
Liz: In all these cases, when I was starting, it seemed impossible, and that there wasn't a clear direction, or more accurately, that people would like guess at things that we should do without any input from people in the community.
And that really waiting until the thing that a lot of people would come to was really valuable. I would say on the rainbow dinners, we tried other things that, you know, don't get included in the success story, but we tried to have a pride service, a pride celebration in Ashburnham. We tried a rock painting event for kids.
We've tried to have a trans support group. And it's, it's okay to try things and then not do any more with them. Mm hmm. But just to keep trying. Just keep trying, waiting for what's the thing that has energy in the town. I do think that a lot of our success comes from assuming that we did not have all the people to do the work.
We could only proceed with something that had townspeople coming and wanting to be leaders of.
Allison: Yeah, that's a great point, Liz. I, I think that often we don't try things because we know we don't have enough and then there's some more fear. You know, we don't want to invite other people in. They might take it over or for whatever reason.
You lose ownership a lot of times if you're inviting other people in. You have the same We don't have enough people, but looking at it as a, so who do we ask? Who are our partners? Who are our allies? And that goes back to the very first conversation you were having with all of your local pastors about the, having a collaborative ministry, like we need to think of a different way to do this so that we can have an impact in these congregations.
Liz: I also did a great deal of work at the beginning in each congregation about the idea that the purpose of outreach is to meet people's needs, not to get them to come to church. And one of my lay people said, after one of the rainbow dinners, I can't believe how much more enjoyable it is to do this ministry.
only because people need it, not because I'm trying to think in my head how to invite them to church. That underlying basis that the purpose of the ministry is to meet the needs of people is very, very critical to being confident as we do it.
Allison: Yeah, that is a message that we talk about often at our church, that we're not Intentionally trying to grow our congregation, but if we move outside of our walls and are the people that Christ has called us to be, then we likely will grow as a result of it.
But that's not the goal. You know, growth is not the goal. It's the making an impact and being disciples. That is the goal. Yes. Yeah. And that's such a different mindset, especially for these micro churches that feel like if they don't grow, they're dead. And that death is the worst part.
Liz: One of the things that's happened in Ashburnham is that death has stopped feeling like the worst part.
So we discuss regularly whether we can keep going. We just finished selling our building three months ago. And in February we have again a congregational meeting where we'll ask, do we want to keep going? I feel like one of the things that's happened that's good is that, for one thing, they all can imagine going to the church in Rindge.
Once a month, they worship with the church in Rindge. So if they do decide to close, they can imagine going somewhere else. But also, staying open doesn't mean they have to do more than they're doing now. What they're doing is complete. Their church is complete. Doing all the parts of church
Allison: and the people said I'm in yeah is there So, okay.
How long have you been ordained? You've been ordained a while, right? I was ordained in 2002 in 2002 So 20 22 years amazing. Okay. So now that you have been doing this a while Do you have any? insights about congregational leadership or small church leadership in particular. The thing that I love the most
Liz: about being old is that it's so obvious that very little of what's going on is about me.
So it's so much easier for me not to take offense. That has just made every bit of ministry easier. I went into ministry believing in the ministry of the All the Baptized. I was part of the Living Stones Collaborative in the Episcopal Church and am now part of the Living Waters. Group that is working on lay leadership, but at the beginning it was so easy for me to take over What could be the ministry of lay people and as I've gotten more experience?
I'm so much better at helping lay people do all that they can do instead of Doing it for them What I always believed, but is still shocking to me, is how good it is for lay people to run their own church. How good they feel about that. How skillful they are. Both of my churches now have a regular rotation of lay preachers.
One of the things in the latest evaluation of the Small Church Collaborative was how much the rest of the congregation loves hearing lay people preach.
Allison: Wow. Just that perspective and the idea that it's that it's not about you makes it easier to put yourself out there and take some risk to go to the women's club to go to the Rotary meeting to the library to ask those questions about community engagement and when it doesn't work, then it's not your fault.
Like, it's not all because of you. It just wasn't the right time. You know, we're just going to try something else.
Liz: The stuff that didn't work was just steps along the way. And similarly, the stuff we're doing now, that's hugely effective, I believe, if they stop happening, that's okay, too. We're doing good ministry now.
If we have to stop that. That's okay. That is okay.
Allison: And I think that the the way that you've described these two ministries in these two different context, the impact that you have won't go away, even if the congregations. do dissolve. You know, the, the lives have been impacted. The conversations have been had.
The people have been loved. It's really inspiring. I'm so grateful that you were willing to come on this podcast, Liz, and share with us this really unique collaborative ministry that you have. I'm thrilled to talk about it!
Well, as we come to a close of our conversation, we always ask this last final question. So Liz, what is something small that's recently brought you big joy?
Liz: So, my husband and I just joined the Y. And I went and did 45 minutes of aqua aerobics, and it makes me feel good.
Allison: That is perfect. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Small Churches Big Impact.
We hope this has been a chance for you to explore how your ministry and the ministry of those who surround you are making an impact, no matter how small you may feel. We hope you'll continue noticing that even in small ways, God is making a big impact in your life. You've been with the Small Church's Big Impact Collective.
This season of the Small Church's Big Impact Podcast would not be possible without financial support from Episcopal Divinity School. If you are interested in financially supporting our work and partnering with us to guarantee that the voices of small church leaders are amplified, please reach out to us at Small Churches Big impact@gmail.com.
