177: The Small Church Advantage & The Vital Role of Laity | with Teresa Stewart

In this inspiring episode of the Small Church Ministry Podcast, host Laurie Graham sits down with Theresa J. Stewart, author of "The Small Church Advantage," to challenge traditional views of small churches. 

Theresa shares powerful insights on how smaller congregations are not deficient, but unique "test kitchens" for innovative ministry. 

Learn how volunteers and lay members are the secret sauce of church vitality, and discover how embracing your community's specific gifts can transform worship. 

Whether you're feeling discouraged about your small church's size or looking for fresh perspectives, this episode will encourage you to see your congregation's incredible potential.

Connect with Teresa Stewart:
www.smallchurch.org

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


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Transcript

Laurie Graham: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in. You. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the small church ministry Podcast. Today we have a another special guest on the podcast. I'm so excited to introduce you to Theresa J Stewart. She is a lover of small churches and the author of the small church advantage, but with no further ado, Theresa, welcome to the podcast. Thank

Teresa Stewart: 0:43

you. Yes, I am small congregations are my passion, and have been for 20 plus years. So this is a delight. Thank you.

Laurie Graham: 0:51

I'm so happy to be kind of this part of this movement of small churches, because we had a pastor who recently connected you and I and he helps small churches. And it's so fun watching people who are just really have a heart for small churches, and they're watching them kind of impact the planet. So Theresa, can you share a little bit about you, where your love for small churches came and what you're doing now? Because I know you are off helping churches, even traveling and doing things with denominations. So can you give us kind of an overall

Teresa Stewart: 1:19

Sure, I spent a lot of years writing original resources for small congregations, but staying within kind of three hours of the Kansas City area, which is where I am. And those started, those resources started getting requested, enough that I eventually left just serving a church and set about writing and studying and working with retreat groups. And the result of that was the book, which is the small church advantage, seven powerful worship practices that work best in small settings. And I, by the way, I don't believe there are just seven worship practices that work best in small settings or ministry. I believe there are many, many, many more. We are just starting to put language around this. And so now I travel around the country working with groups of pastors and laiety, learning, relearning. These are not kind of new, newfangled things that Theresa came up with these. These practices really go back deeply in the Christian tradition, but they're incredibly strong suits that small congregations can work out of and so much of what I have noticed is, in the past 20 years, we moved into what I call a pathology realm, where we started looking at small congregations like they were a series of deficits, of failure To thrive places of things that just weren't really working. And we developed resources as if they were miniaturized big places with flaws. And we started trying to fill the flaws in kind of like spackle and painting over them, yeah, kind of pathologizing or weakness based stuff gets us into trouble. And 20 years ago, when I would talk to groups about small congregations and what I was saying, I got a lot of head shakes like Oh, but we already know the best way is a big congregation way and the particular things that we can do there. But now I am seeing this beautiful, fascinating shift, because across denominations and across this country, we are seeing people say, oh my goodness, the way to learn new things is to turn our small settings into test kitchens again. Let them take risks, let them work differently and see what can be learned for building the kingdom of God for the next 500 years, and there's really been a shift, not entirely, but remarkably and beautifully, in understanding that small congregations will resource the church in in ways and work differently, in ways that medium and large places, uh, simply cannot by by virtue of their having to manage and wrangle, uh, sizes and systems differently. So yeah, I

Laurie Graham: 4:11

love it, and I'm so excited you just brought that up, and I was going to ask you what shifts you have seen over the last couple decades, because it is true, we went through this whole phase of people saying, If you build it, it will grow, and if it's healthy, your church will get big, and pastors feeling like failures, and volunteers feeling like they're in a failing church. But when you really look at life change, life change happens in smaller communities, in you know, individual relationships, like Jesus modeled it. But also, while you were talking, I kind of chuckled a little bit, because in my head, I was picturing miniature, miniature doll furniture, and going, nobody would ever look at the craftsmanship of miniature doll furniture like these can be super expensive, right? Like these really expensive, beautiful craft. Pieces of of doll furniture. Nobody would ever look at that little, tiny, beautiful armchair and say, Oh, that's a broken big chair. No, they would never say that. They would be like that is a beautiful piece. Look how it's constructed. Who had the skill and the specialized, you know, just vision even to do something that small. And I even, as

Unknown: 5:23

you were talking about pathology, the other thing I was thinking was like, how diseases and microbes and little things have these

Laurie Graham: 5:28

huge impacts, and it can be the same on the benefit, on the plus side. And so I just love that you love smaller churches. So what have you seen that's really helpful, or that's maybe makes a big difference in a smaller church that might feel like they're struggling and like turning the corner, like if it's not growing big, yes, how do you help them? And

Teresa Stewart: 5:53

this is not, let's be clear, we use this phrase small church as if there is this one thing called small church when right? I think that it is much fairer to say that there is a huge variety of small churches, and it matters whether it used to be 500 people and now it's worshiping 70, and their narrative is they want to get back to something, or they were 30 before COVID, and 30 through COVID, and now they could. So one of the things we have to do is recognizing the plurality of this thing that we have shrunk down and taken to mean this one unhealthy, uh oh, possibly overloaded resource that just can't get to where it needed to be. We've got to start unpacking the huge variety. So I talk in terms of micro churches and approaches and ministries. And there are, there's, we have to start talking about that differently. One of the things that I have seen is it used to be that every denomination assumed that they needed to have people in house that did their resourcing and teaching. We did not work across denominational lines and so true. What I am seeing is denominations saying, wait a minute, there's something we don't just want to be enforcers of our small congregations getting it right. We want to be curious observers of what can happen and unleash them, instead of enforce a particular kind of code of what they need to do in order a little bit closer to a model that never fit them to begin with. But I think the thing I have to start with is that every time I talk to a group, the main topic is this, small congregations are not miniaturized big ones. It's a little like comparing cats and apples. They they are. They have different systems. They pull different demographics. Growth and vitality look very different, different in each one of them, the the strengths of each where they we know that in every kind of 500 year cycle of the church, the stuff that we need for that next change in culture will reside In margins and edges and small places. And this is, this is the beauty of returning to our small settings have enormous value, because they're not just shrunken down big things, but they are very different creatures. If you try to treat a cat and an apple the same way so each could flourish, you'd end up with a sick kitty and a dull Apple, right? And yes, figure out how we work differently with small congregations to unleash them to work differently as well. Yeah,

Laurie Graham: 8:55

love it. So I know we talked before. You know, before we booked this podcast interview that my audience is largely volunteers, and sometimes when I say that to people, they're like, Why in the world are you doing that? Why aren't you speaking to the leaders? Why aren't you speaking to the staff, not why aren't you speaking to the pastors? And your reaction was completely

Teresa Stewart: 9:15

different. My reaction was, where have you been all my life? And I love you, because this is, this is the sweet spot for where things happen. And one of the things I always start, typically, I will only agree to work with congregations, groups of congregations that come in pastors and laity, because it turns out the laity is the secret sauce for the vitality of small congregations. And in fact, when I'm teaching this book about the seven different kind of powerful worship practices that really big places can't use, but small places can, and they're deeply forming. If I'm trying to teach them to just pastors, the pastors go home to their congregations, and it's like they've learned in the. Language, but they have no one to practice speaking it with when they come with laity. And I've seen this in groups that I've worked with over a two year period, the small congregations that come in with a pastor and maybe five lay members or more, or they don't just move a little bit faster into a fuller vitality, or twice as fast. They move exponentially faster, because it becomes a shared culture as they're figuring it out together. But it is the laity. I can look at groups in a workshop, 100 folks there, and you know, they're divided into congregations of some pastors by themselves and some pastors with laity, and even some laity that show up by themselves because they share a pastor over and I will tell you that the the ones who will make the greatest strides are actually the ones with the highest proportion of laity receiving this And recalculating. Hey, wait, we're not miniaturized. We are different. Here are our strengths. Which ones do we want to start? Start with,

Laurie Graham: 11:08

yeah, you know, as you use the term laity, can you kind of define that? Because we definitely have listeners who don't have that in their denomination or in their churches. What do you mean by laity? Laiety

Teresa Stewart: 11:19

would just be the people in worship the and maybe you want to call the members, maybe, but you don't have to call them members, but it would be somewhat other than the the clergy member leading the congregation. It's, it's the work of the it's the people who do the work of worship. And worship is,

Laurie Graham: 11:39

yeah, hey, you all, whoever's listening right now, the lady is, you like, we don't step up and say, hey, I want to be part of the laity. If you're going to that church and you're not paid on staff, you are exactly who Teresa's talking about here, being the core, you know, agent of change, of being the person who with other church members, with the pastor, with with staff. If you have staff, like, it's all of us together. You know, sometimes when I talk to to laity, to volunteers, to people who are serving in churches, they'll talk about supporting the pastor. And I'm like, you know, even that term, like, I do believe we should support our pastors, but it's more than that. It's it's co laboring, it's be it's being the church together. And it's not just supporting the leader, it's being the church together.

Teresa Stewart: 12:30

And in fact, I really encourage pastors to work very differently and CO create things with the laity. And it's about facilitating something, participating deeply in this work together. That's that is the sweet spot for and if you think about it, this is a prime idea, reflection of a strength of small settings, because in big settings, when you're worried about navigating 2000 anxious bodies in a space or coordinating, you have to have strong one size fits most programs, you have to have clear, expert leadership who is on staff and they coordinate small congregations. Get to get into the messy stuff of what real life is like for most people and find those needs. And I avoid even the term worship leader, because everyone feels like, Oh, if I'm going to be up there helping pastor, then I, you know, I'm not qualified to do that. Oh, my goodness. In our tradition, being part of a community of faith means this work is yours. I encourage as many workers as possible. If you are part of a congregation, a church, you are a worship worker, you are a ministry worker,

Laurie Graham: 13:55

yeah, yeah. So good. You know, when you talk about CO creating, that's one of the reasons we do what we do like we teach a concept called Planning parties, and it is about getting the feedback, the input, the co creation with people. It's about it's a little bit about decentralizing, where just this leadership team is making decisions to do ministry for people or to people, but doing ministry together, so I'm totally resonating with everything you're seeing. So how do we make that shift from, I don't know, traditional where our modern churches have come, where there's a bit more leadership team? Does that you make that shift? One of

Teresa Stewart: 14:37

the things we have to get used to is that part of the reason why we ended up with these teams of experts that coordinate and it's top down, is because that's what it takes practically to manage big groups. But that is not what it takes to manage small groups. And in fact, we are not playing small congregations. Don't. Have to play by the same set of practical rules that big ones do, and in some places, I will see that they've taken on the limitations of big places as if it's theologically important, and it is not so everyone. What happens is in a big setting, in order to command the attention of everyone, you want to use ideal resources, expert leaders, the best singer, the best well, that kind of goes against our theology, actually, that welcomes in all gifts and all people. And this is where small congregations can just flourish, and where you start seeing a new sense of abundance is once you make that switch from what I call a performance esthetic into a participation esthetic, you start seeing that the resources available to you for ministry and for worship are so abundant and so rich and and they need to be for your particular community, not to market a video and show your production of something. Yeah,

Laurie Graham: 16:04

so good. You know, we talk about, like, not recruiting, but developing, because, and I had worked in a large church setting when I was much younger, and large churches, they recruit, they find the experts, they hire the experts in smaller churches, and I believe it's a gift to be able to develop people like there's nothing like being part of somebody's development, like being part of learning together and growing together and watching us all just grow in gifts. It is very different and often detrimental when we look for experts outside and hire them to come in and fix us or come in and help our people, because in small churches, we we already are a community, and sometimes that can even be more difficult. But I do want to ask you, so it does seem quicker to hire an expert, and when we are about participating together and developing people, how do we get that five step quick fix?

Teresa Stewart: 17:01

Well, you don't. And in fact, what I want to, what I usually encourage places to do, is switch from this idea that there is the pastor who leads worship, and we have certain categories of areas of expertise that we must have somehow, either by developing it or and I say instead, start thinking of your roles as curating, curating worship and ministry. Now, what a curator does is something different. It looks at all the collection, and if you think about it, our whole collection in the Christian tradition, in your particular denomination or setting in your community. Take all of those resources and out of that, you pull together the richest ways for this community to worship God with the particular gifts of these people. That's that's a big switch from we are enacting a model that is pretty rigid and, oh my goodness, I hope we have it in the right categories, and maybe we can grow someone in this category to saying, What if we started with a model of curating? And then the next thing I start talking about with pastors and laity is there will always be someone in a congregation who has this particular gift. It is the ability to see what lights people up, whether it is someone who gets lit up by their rock collection or knitting or their baking or whatever that is, and they the congregations, are encouraged to literally keep a notebook guided by someone whose work it is to just in the whole community, not just the congregation. The whole community know what gifts are present, what unlikely gifts are present? And then understand that when those are offered, not performed, but offered, that the richness of that and ministry and worship just becomes very powerful.

Laurie Graham: 19:30

So good when you were talking about curating. I've been watching Top Chef recently, and it is so fascinating when they're given ingredients and told create something beautiful. And sometimes there's this look like, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with that. What if we looked at our churches and went, these are the ingredients we have. What does God want us to create? Instead of, we're missing this ingredient. We're missing this ingredient. We're missing that because nobody, nobody rises in Top Chef if they have to have certain like, it's, it's like, this is what you have create something beautiful. And I think there is so much significance in that, in the body of Christ. And

Teresa Stewart: 20:09

in fact, we know from business development coaches and education sources and all kinds of academic resource that our highest creativity is actually when we don't have everything that we think we need. Otherwise, 100% yes, otherwise, what we do is we just try to replicate the thing that we already. In mind, and this is where small congregations start trying to replicate this picture of what it looks like in a big setting, and forget that a lot of the things that are happening in a big setting are because of their practical limitations and managing big crowds, not because of their gifts of offering lavish worship with the people in that community for that particular place.

Unknown: 20:57

Yeah,

Teresa Stewart: 20:59

so good. Pretty exciting, isn't it?

Laurie Graham: 21:03

I think it is. I think it's so exciting. So if a volunteer is listening right now, Teresa, and they're like, What do I do? Like, like, you're getting me all excited, but I don't know really what to do in my church. My church does feel like a place where people feel like we don't have enough people. We were discouraged because we don't seem to be growing. We do outreach events that don't bring people back to the pews or to the seats. How would you encourage the volunteer who's listening right now, who is who is not? The pastor.

Teresa Stewart: 21:36

I say, you work with your pastor, and you start keeping that list of gifts in the community, and then for each worship service, you are thinking about, how can let me give you an example, one small, and this also fits in with what I'm going to call gap closers, which small congregations are really great at this, and big ones not so much. So a kid in a community was always kind of on the outs. Didn't socially fit in. He couldn't bond well with peers. His mom was an important part of the church, and always was looking for ways. But this he he was always on the outside of things. But the one thing this kiddo could do is talk rock collection. And he had an amazing rock collection. He could tell you every every piece of every rock that he had, and just go on endlessly about that. And some smart lay member said, Hey, let's include this in worship. So the pastor and the lay member invited this kiddo to come in and put his five favorite rocks in the chancel area and tell why each one was exquisite. And then they shared a psalm about the beauty and glory of creation. And it was that would never have happened at a big place, but it was a stunningly holy moment. Also, you are the ones who will diagnose, not big flock management of sheep, but remember that God's in the lone lamb chasing business, and small congregations can do that really well, so I will see laity identify. Oh, here's a kid who, since the age of five, all he's wanted to do is open up a popcorn business, and the lay member who very gently nurtured him to come in and talk about popcorn on Pentecost and this explosion of energy and when, when we whether that's children or adults, that we bring in and show them that their gifts matter in worship to the whole community, trust that there is that abundance, but also that their care, that they are curated into This participation of the community in building the kingdom of God and lavish worship together that is powerful

Laurie Graham: 23:59

so and you know these two, these two examples you just shared, those kids and the people who are there watching, seeing this happen, their lives were changed by the church. They feel part of the church. You know, so many people these days in smaller churches are very frustrated because kids aren't coming back. How do we get them to come to Sunday school? How do we how do we get them to stay in the church? You know, this is, this is how we include them as the church, as sharing their gifts, as like, I think there's so much not just beauty like this isn't just a sensitive tear jerking. Oh, that was really sweet. This is impactful.

Teresa Stewart: 24:34

Yeah, when I was teaching small congregations, it was the pastors and small congregations worship and sacrament. I initially started off the course by asking, When have you experienced excellent worship? And then and I got these stories of how glorious things and the perfect sermon and all of these pieces, and then I changed the question to when have you been deeply formed by worship? And got a whole different set of answers that are really within the wheelhouse of small settings, because everyone had a job, and someone remembered teaching the kids to help everyone coming through the door to remember the joy of their baptism with the water. And they had gave everybody a job that together, created this beloved community, this body together.

Laurie Graham: 25:27

Wow, just so good. So good. And. And I just want to say to everyone listening, and I have to remind myself of this as well. Like you matter, your being a light matters. You make a difference in your day to day life, and in your small church. And when we show up and we know we matter and we know we're significant, we hold our head differently, we respond differently. We react to others differently. We see differently when we really realize that, yeah, God did call me to significance. I don't have to go to seminary to be significant. I don't have to be the pastor to be significant. I don't have to be the women's ministry leader to be significant. My presence on this planet, created by God, gives me significance. And like, if we saw that as a gift and just didn't let it go to waste, like I think, I think our worlds would change.

Teresa Stewart: 26:27

And I even push that a little further and say that what we are learning in small congregations are not just about small congregations. They are lessons for the church writ large, the whole church. We need you to be small congregations, because you will ultimately resource and change our thinking and reintroduce areas of theology that the church has kind of dropped for a while. It will only come up if you're not doing certain kinds of work. Who will

Laurie Graham: 26:58

yeah, great way to close the podcast, Teresa. Teresa, how can people get in touch with you? Find your book, reach out if they have questions. What's the best way

Teresa Stewart: 27:09

the book is available? You can order it on Amazon. You can also pick it up that my publisher is Market Square publishing. You can also just send me a note and my email is Theresa at small church.org I would just ask that you give me like a week, because my assistant has taken down the website and is redoing some things right now. But hang on to that email and send me your stories, because there's another book that's going to be coming out with the stories of the marvels and successes that I've seen in the last couple of years, tracking congregations like yours.

Laurie Graham: 27:46

Love it, Theresa. I'm so glad to be connected, and I'm pretty positive we're going to stay connected. And you all who are listening. I'm pretty positive this is not the last time you'll hear from Theresa J Stuart, and hopefully you'll be even speaking at one of our conferences in the future. I would just love that so much. I just think this is a beautiful connection, not just for me, but also for our community. So thank you for being here today. I

Unknown: 28:09

look forward to it. Thank you.

Laurie Graham: 28:12

All right, everybody until next week. We've got another episode on the small church ministry podcast in between now and that be a light.

Unknown: 28:34

You