Minute for Mission: Small Church Ministry
In the early 1990s, a group of pastors of smaller membership churches in one South Carolina county got together for prayer, study, discussion and fellowship. Out of that grew the Greater Laurens County Cluster of Smaller Membership Churches, an exciting model for ministry that is responding creatively to the call to “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.”
Working together, these congregations have sent seventeen tons of relief goods to the hurricane-ravaged Dominican Republic. Moreover, members go to Haiti and the Dominican Republic on mission trips each year. Closer to home, the cluster has partnered with students at Presbyterian College in Clinton in mission trips and service projects in the community. The cluster also hosts international students each Christmas through Christmas International House, a hospitality and peacemaking program of the denomination.
Every summer the cluster sponsors a week-long residential camp for youth. This program of Bible study, puppetry, mime, mission education, journalism, and recreation offers youth ways to live out their faith in the larger community. Activities range from cleaning up cemeteries and repairing homes to visiting in nursing homes and centers for the disabled.
Cluster churches have come together in worship and musical programs as well as meals and special prayer events. Currently, the cluster is developing an older adult ministry.
From worship to outreach, from youth to older adults, this cooperative parish model is a practical working out of Presbyterian connectedness. Not only are these smaller churches surviving, but they are reaching out beyond themselves, responding to Christ’s mandates to go and make disciples and to minister in his name.
—Herb Codington, Ann Felton, Sadie Hunter Goldsmith, Hampton Hunter, Lawrence Peebles, and Lucie Eggleston, Greater Laurens County Cluster of Smaller Membership Churches
Holy God, you have called your people into communities of faith with the promise of your presence where two or three are gathered. For rural congregations challenged by declining populations and inner-city churches buffeted by changing neighborhoods, pour out your spirit of love, hope, and purpose to inspire them with your vision for their future. We ask all this in Christ’s name. Amen.
2 Sam. 7:1–14a
The God of Abraham Praise
PH 488, HB 89, WB 587
Ps. 89:20–37
How Firm a Foundation
PH 361, HB 369, WB 425
Eph. 2:11–22
The Church’s One Foundation
PH 442, HB 437, WB 582
Make Us One, Lord
STF 2224
Mark 6:30–34, 53–56
Come and Find the Quiet Center
STF 2128
Come Away with Me
STF 2202
Daily Lectionary
Ps. 19, 150 Ps. 81, 113
1 Sam. 23:7–18
Rom. 11:33–12:2; Matt. 25:14–30 |
