165: Small Churches & Big Events | with Cheri Kulhawick

Laurie Graham and Cheri Kulhawick share tips for small churches organizing large community events, including ...

• The importance of early planning
• Building a diverse team
• Befining a clear purpose
• Being flexible when things don't go as expected

Cheri also shares a candid story about pivoting after an event had more supplies than attendees. 

This episode is full of practical wisdom and encouragement for small churches wanting to make a big impact.

3 Core Values For A Successful Event

Join our free Facebook Community: www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry


Rate, Review, & Follow Laurie on Apple Podcasts

"I love Laurie and The Small Church Ministry Podcast!!" << If that's like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps Small Church Ministry support and reach more people -- just like you -- in small churches! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then, let us know what you loved most about this episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This is the best way to stay updated on the new episodes we release weekly. If you’re not following, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on future episodes. Follow now!

Get the Ministry Bundles here!

Get the Ministry Bundles here!

Transcript

Laurie Acker: 0:01

Hey, this is Laurie Acker, welcome to the small church ministry podcast. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the small church ministry podcast. We are talking today about small churches doing big events, and by that I mean anything from outreach events to, you know, community car washes the trunk or treat nights, the the picnics in the park, just anytime when small churches are really looking at doing a larger event that involves the community, maybe involves other churches nearby, because there are some really common mistakes and missteps we can do and solutions that can help things go smoother. We have a community of churches near and far that have had tons of success doing some larger events. And I have one of our experts. I'm going to call her an expert today on the podcast. Sherry cohovic has been doing ministry for decades, and I would honestly consider her an expert with larger events. She's super organized, but doesn't organize where she stresses everybody out. I don't know if you have ever been around people like that, where it's like, oh my gosh, it's just too much. And she's got some really, really great tips for us. So Sherry, Hey, you want to tell everybody where you're coming in from. Hey,

Cheri Kulhawick: 1:29

I am coming in from Rockwell, North Carolina. Awesome.

Laurie Acker: 1:34

And what kind of church are you in now? Like, What size is it a church plant? I know you've been in. I know you've had a couple moves in your life, and you've been in some smaller churches in a lot of different settings. So what kind of church are you in now?

Cheri Kulhawick: 1:47

Our church is between 45 and 60 people on a Sunday. It is a church plant, but it's in a unique situation, because we were a church plant for two years. A year ago, our pastor stepped down for personal reasons, and we have a new pastor coming in, so it's almost like a new church plant all over again.

Laurie Acker: 2:07

Wow. So you've had the transitions with pastoral leadership, which a lot of our listeners listening right now probably are like nodding their heads, because oftentimes that can be pretty tumultuous for people in a lot of different ways, certainly a lot of adjustments and things like that. So tell us about why you love small churches. Because you you when you've moved you've had options, right? You can go to big churches, medium sized churches. I know you've seen them all. So what is, what are a few things you love about smaller churches, and why do you choose them?

Cheri Kulhawick: 2:42

I love small churches because I like the community. It's easier to get involved, it's easier to do things, it's easier to meet your neighbors. The kids can aren't lost in the numbers. When the kids were younger and we had youth group our children's church, you know, they were able to just jump in and be embraced by small churches right away, instead of being somebody that just kind of came to visit. Yeah, yeah. I

Laurie Acker: 3:07

love it. So very cool. Yeah. Okay, so since I brought you on here to talk about big events and give some of your favorite tips, do you want to just talk about some of the larger type events you've done and maybe what's been unique about them,

Cheri Kulhawick: 3:21

sure, sure. The most recent large events that we've done is a back to school bash in the community park. And wow. The first year they did it before I came, and they had planned for 300 backpacks, and they had 500 people show up. Wow. The second year, we planned for 700 backpacks. We got 700 backpacks, and 1200 people came. There were about 900 kids.

Laurie Acker: 3:52

Oh my gosh, okay, Sherry, I'm going to stop you right there, because this is just one type of large church event you've done, and I want to stop because, in case people didn't catch it, you're in a church of 40 to 60 people on a Sunday. Yes, and you're saying that you've done events for hundreds of people in the community. And before we get into numbers, because, you know, we don't care that much about numbers as far as a measuring impact by it, but that that's still just like shocking for many people, even to hear those kind of numbers. And I also know if you're in a church of 40 to 60 people on a Sunday, those 1200 people, those 700 people, those 500 people, didn't come back to your church on a Sunday, right? They

Cheri Kulhawick: 4:40

did not our intention was to bless the community. And I think two families have come because of it,

Laurie Acker: 4:47

yeah, yeah, and I love that your intention was, because I know that's one of your tips you're going to give us about, you know, like knowing your purpose for large events. But I just wanted to say that straight up, because when people start evaluating. On the success of an event by how many people come back on a Sunday? I think we've missed the boat. So I love that you just wanted to bless your community. Okay, so you've done the back to school nights. Do you want to mention any of the other types of events, even at other churches, you've done, we've

Cheri Kulhawick: 5:14

done the Hallelujah nights, we've done community car washes. We're involved with a multi city prayer event, and we did a pastor appreciation one time for that, we've done groups with in our churches. We've done groups with bigger groups and smaller groups. Wow.

Laurie Acker: 5:33

Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so with all these types of events, let's talk about some commonalities, because you've also been around the small church ministry for a long time. Sherry has written a lot for our website. She's been involved in the conferences. She managed, helps manage the Facebook community, so you see the questions, the struggles, the responses, the advice, sometimes that little bit of what is going wrong. Why isn't it working? So can you give us some of your best tips on how to do these big events in a way that we feel good about

Cheri Kulhawick: 6:12

absolutely first, you can't you, obviously, and we know this. You can't do it by yourself. You need a team, and you need to plan in advance. So for the Back to School Bash, I start planning in January. So like six months ahead event is in July. Yes, okay, seven months ahead. Seven months ahead, because you need that time to rally people that haven't had that vision and don't understand it in your church. What that is you need that time to contact people in the community, and they need time to plan and budget accordingly. People want to help. People want to give us backpacks and school supplies, but if you tell them two weeks before the event, they don't have time to shop for sales, they don't have time to build it in their budgets, they don't even have time to ask their employees, you know. So you start planning ahead of time, and you let them know what's coming. So that's super important, super helpful.

Laurie Acker: 7:06

Okay, so you just gave two tips, and I want to unpack them just a little bit, because I know you, and I know what you mean by building a team, and I want to make sure people caught this. So for a lot of people, when we think plan ahead and build a team, right and have a team like, don't do it alone. They have this little ministry team that's meeting together, or maybe three people or five people who are doing the event together, and it never goes beyond that, and that's what they think the team is. And you mentioned rallying other people in the church. You mentioned communities. You mentioned you know, people in the community, other organizations. You mentioned, stores. So when you're talking about a team, you're not talking about a core ministry team that's just running the event, like five people. Are you?

Cheri Kulhawick: 7:50

No, no, we have about five people that do the bulk of the planning. And then we all reach out to people. You know, we reached out to a lady in our church that had a local business in town, and talked to her about partnering with the event. And she actually was on a on a committee of local businesses, so she rallied 20 or 30 local businesses to do a collection drive for us, that's amazing. And then we talked with I talked with local churches that had food banks or clothing pantries, and one of those churches joined us, and they gave out school supplies, and of course, we want them to be at our event, such as an outreach event, because they could tell the community what they have to offer as well. We're not trying to get people to join our church for this event, we're trying to get them to meet a need and see what else is there. So the other church was talking about their food pantry and their clothing closet. And then we had the local radio station came out, Christian radio station came out, and they gave away school supplies, and they just wanted to be part of the community. So with that, and then when you tell your people at your church, you know we're collecting school supplies, we tell them in advance, because a lot of people want to get the best value for their money. So they want wait for the sales they have, like,$20 to give. They don't want to spend $20 on five notebooks. They want to spend $20 on 40 notebooks. So, yeah, we do that too. Yeah.

Laurie Acker: 9:25

So, plenty of time, and when so for this specific event, just because we're kind of talking about the backpack bash, you, I think, didn't you have, like, a whole bunch of people come to, like, put the backpacks together one year,

Cheri Kulhawick: 9:36

that was amazing. We did at the backpack stuffing party. And we have a one of the men has a business that has a really large conference room, and so we brought the backpacks, and then we invited people from the church and people from the community that were already supporting the event to come and help stuff backpacks, and then we get pizza for everybody afterwards. Okay,

Laurie Acker: 9:57

so for that one event, your little church. To 40 to 60 people on a Sunday. Yeah, you, if you, if you try to add up, how many people, like, contributed, helped, gave, you know, from the community that other church partnering like, how many people do you think were really involved in throwing that backpack event for the community?

Cheri Kulhawick: 10:18

We had five different community partners, not counting the 20 stores that collected supplies, we had 20 some volunteers in our church that came. We had outside people donate school supplies that we don't know to just from the community that dropped dropped off collections. So do

Laurie Acker: 10:38

you think there were, like, hundreds of people who would say that

Cheri Kulhawick: 10:41

100, probably or more, because then we also went to ask just for donations in the community. And so we had somebody donate our Porter pots, which is a necessary thing for the event, if you have hundreds of people coming, yeah, you know, we had the grocery store donated hot dogs and hot dog buns. Somebody else donated all the water. So, yeah, yeah.

Laurie Acker: 11:02

So you all when, if you heard Sherry say, you know, plan with the team, don't do it alone. She's not saying the people that come to the meeting only like, I think sometimes we get really short sighted, and we think the people who are committed will come to the monthly meetings, and they have to do it all. And I do really think this is one of your superpowers. Sherry is you. You like seek out what people have to give, and you invite them where they're willing and able and even comfortable, right? Because some people just they'll never come to a meeting, but they'll stand and grill hot dogs any day, absolutely. So I love that about you. Okay,

Cheri Kulhawick: 11:36

I was walking into the church one time, and I had donations that we were taking to our local neighborhood that we outreach to. I just had bags of food because we're going to give a food distribution anyways. A couple people came up afterwards to me that day in service and said, Hey, did I miss a food collection? I said, Oh, no, we're just doing this for our local group. Well, let me know next time. So these are people that I'm making a note to invite to come and distribute food or cleaning supplies. When we come and let them know, because they want to be involved, sometimes people just don't know how or what they can do. Yeah,

Laurie Acker: 12:10

yeah. And I think honestly, so many of us, self included, you know, we've had rough experiences volunteering. We've gotten sucked in. We have been with people who are, you know, like a little bit like conflict, attraction, you know what I mean, things like that, where, you know, sometimes, I think when people stay back, or, you know, are, are hesitant to join a committee, it doesn't mean they don't want to help. It just means that space, that that task, or that space is just a lot of times just feels unsafe to them. So I love that you do this. So I also wanted to hit on this one thing you mentioned kind of in passing, but I know it's going to be a really great thing for us to talk about, but defining your purpose of the event. So a lot of people would say, well, our purpose is to give out backpacks, or our purposes to so how do you go about doing this? Because I'm not sure if you've written for the website on this, I kind of think you have, or it's definitely come into some of your posts before. Can you talk a little bit about defining the purpose of a large event and where we can go wrong with that, or where you've seen people struggle with that?

Cheri Kulhawick: 13:20

There is an article on the website. It's called three core values for a successful event at your small church. And that does talk about purpose.

Laurie Acker: 13:28

Okay, we'll drop that link in the show notes. By the way, if we talk about any other kind of articles here, for those listening, we promise we will drop the links in the show notes. Excellent. So

Cheri Kulhawick: 13:38

for your purpose, the bottom line is, what you want to I don't I want to say, like your takeaway or your giveaway. You want people to get backpacks. You want people in need to have school supplies. You want people to have a great time at a painting party. You want to raise money for a youth group event. So if you think about your purpose as what the bottom line is that you're trying to accomplish, then you work everything you do towards that bottom line. So at a pace,

Laurie Acker: 14:14

where do we go wrong? Or where do you see people go wrong with this? Is it that they have too much purpose or not enough, or everybody has different ideas. Or what have you seen?

Cheri Kulhawick: 14:24

Everybody needs to be on the same page with your purpose. A lot of times, people are either too vague with their purpose. We just want to bless the community that's very wide open. That's that could be a million things, yeah. Or we want to, if you, if you base it towards your numbers, because numbers is something you can't control. You can't control how many people are going to show up to an event. You can't control if people are going to be happy at your event, but you can control that you're going to give away backpacks. Whoever comes that needs them you are going or you can. Control. We are going to train our people to greet everybody with a smile, and we're going to provide hot dogs for this fundraiser event. Or we are going to make sure you get your baseball tickets ahead of time, so that when you come you have them already. Versus, you know, you can't control whether they show up at the game, but you can't control that you've given them tickets and give them everything they need to be there.

Laurie Acker: 15:56

That's such a great point. I think a lot of times we put in our mind the things that we can't control, like, you know, even you know, we want to make everyone feel loved. Well, we can't make everyone feel loved, but we can greet everyone who walks in the door. You know, I mean, I mean our grocery stores do that sometimes, you know what I mean, like we can control what we do. Okay? So I love that tons. Okay, I feel like we could have just done an entire podcast episode just on your backpack bash. Because I know churches try to do this all the time, and they'll say, Well, nobody came, or people just came and took the backpacks and left. And for you, if that was your goal, that's great. People came and took the backpacks and left like that was our goal. But I also want everybody before we move on, if you're listening to hear how many people in the community, Sherry and her church had involved in order to make that so successful. You had over 20 business partners, you had another church, you had different partnering organizations. Like, you know, like, this is how to do a big event, right? Like, that's how to do a big event. Start early, build a team and go broad and wide. Okay, what's another great tip you have for us?

Cheri Kulhawick: 17:12

When you start early, include everything that you need to don't just think about we're going to plan the event, and then all these other things will happen later, like plan your advertising, plan your partners, plan your donations, a lot of a lot of bigger companies. They have their donations. They give out their donations in January, so or February. So know what your know, what your thought is, and who, who takes donations, when, who gives you things when? The other thing is, work within your event budget, and especially not like you

Laurie Acker: 17:50

have a little experience with this one

Cheri Kulhawick: 17:54

the first year, I don't think they they just, they had some startup money, and so they didn't have a budget. They just did what they needed to do and whatever they felt like doing at the time. And last year, we actually had a budget that we were working with, and we had to think of everything we wanted to do for the event. Okay, now let's see what works within the budget. Okay, we wanted to do a face painting or caricatures, and we reached out to somebody that does caricatures, and he's like, you know, here's my fee. Well, this is a it's an event. It's community to give back. He goes, Well, find someone to sponsor me. So that kind of put on the went to the need, really important. To the end to, well, we don't have that in our budget. If it comes, we'll do it. If it doesn't, we won't. That wasn't a make or break. It was part of the fun. But the main goal and the main purpose was giving away the back tax and school supplies, yeah. But you can also pivot and understand this is, these are basic things, and if God brings more money, great, we can add this, and we will add this, and we will add this. So there's keeping in mind you don't want to you don't want your event, whatever it is, whether it's a Back to School Bash or a fundraiser or a party or a community fun, hallelujah night to put your church further into debt. Yeah,

Laurie Acker: 19:17

you know what? As you mentioned, budget. I'm always so surprised how many people do events without a budget, like, there's almost this thing, like, oh, it's going to be okay. And oftentimes that puts a lot of burden on your generous people in your church who weren't intending to pay for things. And I think we need to watch that. I think we can be responsible with that. I want to talk about advertising. Sherry, you are so good at this as well. I've seen it. I know how much time you've put it into it before. What are some things that you've seen people do differently that you're like, oh my gosh, do it this way instead? What are some good tips you can give us about advertising or larger events

Cheri Kulhawick: 20:02

when we make posters or flyers to put in the local stores to promote whatever we're doing, less is better. Less cluttered is better. Just give your basic information and not try to do so many graphics. People can't see your information. Okay? You know, when we do announcements at church, if they're boring, people tend to not hear them. If you have, if you have, like

Laurie Acker: 20:28

how you were kind of sweet about that. If they're boring, people don't. Really hear them.

Cheri Kulhawick: 20:32

You know, if you do a skit, then people love it. You know, there are two guys in our church that they're just, they're just fun to begin with. They've got great personalities. So they have, they came up with, they took a saw and made a pencil, a four foot pencil, out of a piece of two by four, and they passed it back and forth while they were just telling the details of the event for the Back to School Bash. So that's not an expensive thing, but it's memorable.

Laurie Acker: 20:59

Yeah, I love that. The memorable, the memorable aspect of that is so good. Now, you mentioned putting flyers at local businesses. I know you've done bulletin boards, coffee shops, things like that before. Can you tell me about your success rate with that, because I've definitely talked to people in smaller churches saying that doesn't work, like we've tried, that we don't get anything from that. What are your feelings? Because you still do that. We're, we're

Cheri Kulhawick: 21:21

in the south, and we're in a small town, and coming from the north, coming from Ohio, at one point in time, it's a it's a little bit of a different culture in our small town area. I don't, I don't know if all of this house is like that, but there are bulletin boards, many places, coffee shops, all have places to put up your events. So I think that people have said they've seen our things, and that's why they've come. I don't know what the percentage of success rate is. Yeah, I know that people have invited, you know, when they're out in a local restaurant, they've and you bring up conversations with your server, hey, come to our event. People have come because of the one on one invites. Oh,

Laurie Acker: 22:01

that's very cool. You know, when you think about flyers at places also, I just want to throw this out there. I don't know how many points of touch it takes for people to see things, but this is why we have advertisement everywhere, right? Like, you don't buy something when you've seen one commercial, but your recognition goes up. And I would think, for a church that is regularly putting out like a quality little flyer that doesn't cost that much money to stick on a bulletin board over time, the people visiting that coffee shop or that grocery store, or wherever you're putting it, I would imagine for many churches that feel like nobody even ever sees us right, that you're even just the recognition that you exist and that you're serving the community. I think sometimes we need to look at that like a little more about public relations, where maybe it doesn't translate to I came to that event, but over time, I'm getting to know you, because I'm seeing that you're serving the community and like a name recognition. So do you do much with social media and what? What are your best tips about that? If you advertise with social media for your big events? Sure,

Cheri Kulhawick: 23:10

yeah. What? Let me go back to the flyer. For one thing, when we do flyers in our little town, we try to hit like every store on the block. Hey, can you put this up in your window? So when people are walking past, they don't just see it in one store window. They see it in every store window that they walk past, and they're continually seeing that, and that's helping them remember, helping them to think, and giving them time to think, okay, yeah, let me look at this. Maybe this is valuable for me, you know, no, that's very cool. And it also it lets people know if you're looking for donations, but it also lets people know, hey, come to our

Laurie Acker: 23:44

event. Yeah, little double whammy, double whammy,

Cheri Kulhawick: 23:47

social media. And this will come in a little bit later when we talk about, like, my craziest, awful experience on an event, because we did not hit the social media blitz like we did for the previous two years, okay, and so because that social media, I think that is pretty much how we got those 1200 people to that backpack drive one day, our pastor sent out a thing saying, hey, everybody share this now, because, you know, if you get a bunch of shares all at once, that hits it on more people's feeds in the neighborhood and in the community. So we did that. We lacked that this year, and the numbers show death, and I'm looking at numbers, but I'll, I'll, yeah, we'll get to that story. Yeah,

Laurie Acker: 24:37

well, and I always say to like, numbers are an indication. Like, I look at numbers all the time. I think we need to look at numbers. They're just not always the best measure of our success. Like, I think that's what we need to look at. So I love what you talked about social media, because I know churches who pay for Facebook ads, which, by the way, I don't recommend that at all. For smaller churches for your events, they usually don't do much, but when you're saying is, have the people in your church share it, because what happens then is it's hitting everybody's little circle. And when you can tag friends, it's very, very different. We do that for our conferences, right? We have people. We say, Hey, you got your ticket. Share this with a friend. We give prizes away. We're like, we give prizes away, because when people share it on their own sites, then their friends see it. And I think that's a great way to use social media well

Cheri Kulhawick: 25:27

also. And this was a, this was one sponsor that we were. And they actually use this as a way to promote their church, to kind of let people know they existed, and not to invite them, but to just try to get more people into the church. They The town has a Christmas tree display where businesses and churches can put up a Christmas tree. So we put up a Christmas tree. Well, then the youth pastor had this brilliant idea of he had got a $10 coffee gift card or Chick fil A gift card. Hey, I'm going to give a random drawing. Anybody who goes to our Christmas tree takes a picture in front of the Christmas tree and hashtag our church. Then I'll take a drawing from there, so that way people are excited to go, be telling their friends, go, you might get a gift card, take your picture, and hashtag church, and then it just kept multiplying on the on the social media. That's

Laurie Acker: 26:20

a really fun idea. I love those kind of things. Well, we are kind of running out of time. I knew we would, because we have way too much fun, you know, geeking out about ministry things, but I want to make sure you have time to share your challenging story that you kind of referred to earlier. So so it's kind of it's always fun to share our successes, and I think it's also fun to share disasters a little bit, because it lets us know we're not alone, but also we can learn a lot. So did you want to share a disaster? Is that

Cheri Kulhawick: 26:50

I want to share disaster and then I want to share something really fun and a favorite, great so the disaster was, and I'll say it this year's Back to School Bash, okay, partly due to the fact that, you

Laurie Acker: 27:05

know, you just went public with that, like I know the world, okay.

Cheri Kulhawick: 27:08

I took a deep breath, but, but we all, we all in our church, we all know what it was. And I will say this, the event was amazing. In my mind, I had to regroup my mind to realize that wasn't a disaster. The event was amazing. The pastor loved it. He loved the community that we had involved because we had five community partners. He loved that we gave away backpacks to people in need. He loved seeing our team rally and serve at this event. He loved the planning, and we really were well organized. We were giving away free haircuts because we had local barbers come to give free haircuts. He does that itself. Was great. Where I call it the most challenging thing. And I don't want to say disaster. I'll say most challenging was that, you know, the first year they did the event, they had 700 people come, 500 back, 300 backpacks, 500 people. The next year, they had 1200 people. So we were expecting, in my mind, we were planning for more than 1200 people, and we had 300 backpacks we gave away out of the 900 that we brought to the park. So

Laurie Acker: 28:19

you had 900 donated backpacks filled, and you gave 300

Cheri Kulhawick: 28:25

Away, away, yes, now mostly due to, in part, that we did not advertise Well, okay. And there was another town next, next town over, that had a big event that day, but it was mostly because of our advertising. We did very little Facebook things we did not, we did not hit it like we should have, okay, but let me tell you how God connected the dots. For me, first of all, the event. Purpose was to distribute backpacks and school supplies to families in need. That happened. People that came got backpacks and got school supplies. Great. Second of all, we were intentional. In the amount of backpacks we purchased like we really felt like this was the number the Lord was giving us. So we bought what we thought the Lord was giving us. And one thing I love about being intentional is to be if you have intentional, there's no reason to have a regret. You made the best decision at the time. There's no There's no room for regret because you did what you were supposed to do. Yeah, yeah. Here's what happened with the remaining backpacks,

Laurie Acker: 29:29

and that was 600 so you gave 300 away, and you had 600 left,

Cheri Kulhawick: 29:32

600 sitting under tents.

Laurie Acker: 29:35

Did you cry? Did people cry like Did you cry?

Cheri Kulhawick: 29:38

No, but I sure I wanted to. I just, but I tell you, our pastor is amazing, and he really, I think he knew I was not in a good frame of mind. And he just kept telling me to him, it was a success. You saw people in the church that really hadn't done an outreach event before, because remember, we're also in that church transition with new people from a different church, and they had never really done an outreach event like this before. He had said that he never thought this was even possible, like how he was great. So okay, 600 backpacks left over. Okay, one of our vendors, because we're in small towns, so you know, the chihu, please has has another a side business. He's part time, maybe he's full time, but he has a side business doing inflatables and bouncy houses. Wow. So as he was tearing down his bouncy houses, he. Wait,

Laurie Acker: 30:31

so your bouncy house vendor was the chief of police from a

Cheri Kulhawick: 30:34

different town, from a different town. Yeah, that's great. Yes, yes. And so anyways, he actually needed backpacks for a giveaway. I'm not sure how we made that connection, but we're like, really, here you could have some backpacks. So the backpacks that were left over went to kids in need in that town over there. And then we took 100 of those backpacks to that neighborhood that we have adopted, that we go to quarterly, or more often, given cleaning supplies or food or whatever. We took 100 backpacks to those kids and those teenagers in high school and those kindergarteners, and gave them backpacks that they really needed. Wow. And then the chief of police that took all those backpacks called called me up and said, Hey, we have some backpacks left over. There's another chief of police in another local little town that needs backpacks. Can I give him? What's so? So although the backpacks didn't get distributed to the way I thought they would be at the park. God oversaw that. They got to everybody who needed

Laurie Acker: 31:39

them. That's so cool. Like, maybe that's what it was supposed to be this year,

Cheri Kulhawick: 31:43

exactly. So you can't, like, you can't think about when you make your purpose, your purpose is to give away backpacks. You can't think about my purpose is to give away 1200 backpacks, because that, you know, is what we did last year. No, your purpose is to meet the need of somebody, and God moves them to the numbers of where he needs it. Wow, wow. So, yes, yes.

Laurie Acker: 32:07

All right, as we close up, Sherry, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Okay? I want to know what you would say to somebody right now who's listening and they're listening to your stories, thinking that's really nice for them, that you're like, a special snowflake church, but their church could never do that. Like, I mean, this happens, right? Like, we see people who are in tiny churches, you know, having these amazing like, food pantries, or, you know, doing these amazing things, like, like this event that you do, like, that's, it's amazing to see a small church like yours doing that, but when people listen, sometimes they're like, I wish our church could do something like that, but we could never do that. What would you say to that listener?

Cheri Kulhawick: 32:51

I would say, tune in to God and see what his plan is for your church. And then once you kind of have a plan with a few other people, you can't do it by yourself. You have to have a few other people that you're talking with. There's wisdom and a multitude of advisors. You know, not 20, but like five, you know, one church we were at, the person planning the event had not thought of trash cans. We had all kinds of food that we were doing, cotton candy, pizza, pop, you know, so advisors are important, but I think that God gives us what we need, and sometimes we and what works for one church doesn't work for another church. Yes, this happens. This is kind of like, I don't want to say the perfect storm, but a really great combination from because there's people in the community that wanted to be involved. We had a team of people that really had a heart and wanted to bless the community. They weren't trying to get people to go in the church. So, so tune into God, get his plan, and then follow how he leads you to plan it. I mean, it may be, it may start off small, and it may get bigger. It may not, but think about the intrinsic and the the value of pouring into people instead of pouring into how many people, just pouring into people, if, like, here, 300 backpacks were given away. But those people were blessed. They felt the love of God. They were so thankful. They got haircuts. They were so thankful for us. So So, yeah,

Laurie Acker: 34:25

yeah, yeah. I love that. Because the point isn't that every church should or could have a successful backpack event. We're talking about small churches doing large events, and they're different everywhere, like we have atria out in Oklahoma. I believe, who did that, that foster that amazing, like Christmas, foster thing or Halloween. I can't remember what it was, but it was for foster families. And you know, we do have some churches that have amazing food pantries. I'm talking to Alistair in Scotland, they have a food pantry that they've made into a cafe, which will have him on the podcast soon, because they wanted to bring the dignity. And so it's literally, it's a food pantry with a cafe where people get served coffee. Like, I just like, every church is so different, like, the nuances that the people that that are around you, it could be that elementary school across the street. And I think sometimes we see these things that other churches are doing, and like, why can't we do that? God has something different for your church? It's going to be perfect. Um. In so many ways. So

Cheri Kulhawick: 35:33

let me say this too, really quick, because we had a pastor start this ministry who is not the current pastor. You know, even as I was praying the other day, the Lord was telling me it's gonna be different, because the original giftings that were here are not here, so you have a new set of gifting. So yeah, there's a transition in your church. It's God puts people who are gifted for what they're gifted in. So yeah, seek out those giftings and use those.

Laurie Acker: 36:03

This is why we love to pivot and be nimble and do what small churches can do, which is really like, we can catch the wave coming in. We don't have to stay the same every year or every season, and we can, we can be nimble. So I love it so much. Sherry, thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Such a fun episode. I hope everybody shares it, and please you all like share this with somebody the hope that you're finding or encouragement or just joy just hearing these great stories, or hearing from other people in small churches that hope or encouragement, that that you're hearing, that you're catching by listening to the podcast, other people need that too. So please just, just share this episode with one other person and have a discussion about it, like say, hey, you know Sister, Hey brother, hey friend, hey, elder. Listen to this podcast. Tell me what you think. Let's talk about it afterwards, because that's how we can keep this fire alive and going and just watch small churches continue to change the planet. So All right, everybody until next week, be a light you