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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From Experimental Laboratory. This is the
Try Tank podcast where we talk about all
things related to innovation in the church.
I'm Father Lorenz la Brija. Thank, uh, you for joining
us,
and welcome to the Try Tank podcast. I'm Father
Lorenzo Labrija, uh, from Try Tank Experimental
Laboratory. This is episode
zero one seven on emerging
ministry models. I actually,
this is a really, really good conversation because I have
the honor to get to talk to the
Reverend Nandra Perry, PhD. She is the
executive director of the Iona collaborative at
the Seminary of the Southwest. But perhaps more
importantly, or just as important for our conversation here, she's also
a vicar, a non secondary vicar of a small church
in Texas called St. Philip's Episcopal Church.
Uh, today we're talking about this emerging
ministry changes, uh, that are coming,
uh, because the church itself is changing. So we talk
about some of the statistics where 56% of
episcopal clergy at this point are less than
full time clergy. Um,
we'll also discuss whether or not can these small
congregations that we're seeing with bivocational or lay
led congregations, can they, are
they sustainable? Is it a growing model? Can
we see them grow? Can they actually grow to be
more than just small congregations? Uh, what
does this mean about our episcopal ecclesiology that has
always held up a priest as being the exemplar
of what a congregation should be or who should
be leading that congregation? And of
course, knowing me, right, I'm always going to bring this up. What
about the buildings? Uh, do we still need all these
buildings? So, uh, let me tell you a little
bit about our guest who is joining us, because
she's not only she fun, she's also wicked
smart. She's just a really good person. Like I said,
she's the executive director of the Iona
collective, um, uh, at the
collaborative. Sorry, I'm saying collective, but it's collaborative. At the seminary
of the Southwest. She joined the seminary staff and faculty
as director, uh, in June of
2020, right around Covid. Right. In her addition to
her role at the seminary, Perry serves as the vicar of St. Philip's
Episcopal Church in Texas since
2017. She's a graduate of the Iona School for
ministry in the Diocese of Texas and was ordained to the
priesthood in 2017. She received
her PhD in renaissance literature
and religion religious studies at the University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill in 2003.
She is on the cutting edge of
all things to do with this growing model
of smaller churches that are
lay led, smaller churches that may have a
very, very, very part time clergy person.
So I hope you enjoy the conversation. It's a really
good one. And, yeah, here we
go.
And Nandra welcome to the podcast. So glad
you could be with us today.
>> Nandra: It's wonderful to be here with you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So, the church.
Shocking news. Breaking news, everyone. The, uh,
church is changing. Da da da da da. Right. Um,
and in particular, we've been talking about this on the podcast for
a bit now that the church is indeed changing. And
what we want to talk about, particularly today,
is the new sort of emerging models of
ministry, because that has been the focus of the
work you all are doing with both, uh, the Iona collaborative
and convenings that you all are doing.
Um, but just to sort of begin with that, this, uh, is from
a presentation I was fortunate enough to go to, one of your convenings,
and the presentation that was made by the Reverend
Alastair. Uh, so, shoes, I
believe I said that, right? Or maybe not from the church pension
group. And it was just interesting to
at least it was a little bit shocking, um, to me,
here's a couple of statistics that I think will inform our
conversation. Um, people
entering the pension
group in 2010,
there were 325 people that were
entering the pension. They were just beginning
sort of to pay into it. In other words, they were beginning their
priestly ministries, um, which
already, by the way, was the
retirements that year was
470. So already we begin
to see the gap, that there are fewer people coming
into ministry than there are people that are exiting
ministry. Fast forward to 2022,
where the number, it was 411
priests that retired, but only
225 priests
entered the workforce, as it were. So already we can
see that the gap is getting wider in the number of priests
that are out there for the ministry, then even
those priests that we have out there. And this is the thing that sort of,
like, shocked me. What they called, they themselves call a new
ministry model. And, ah, the emerging
ministry model is that
56% of the clergy right
now. So that is.
That's already a majority and only continuing to go
up. 56% of priests are
not in what's called the traditional model. The traditional
model is a full time priest in a full
time cure, doing the job that, as we sort of have been
trained for and sort of did it. Right. The emerging
model is where they're bivocational or
non stipendiary. And
even aside from that, what we are
seeing also is the number of
clergy that are
just, or rather the number of churches that are lay led.
Right? So I sort of
vomit all those statistics out to sort of, uh,
talk about our conversation. When you hear those
stats, what does that make you think for the
church?
>> Nandra: It makes me think several things. And I think one of the
things that's always interesting to me about
the way this conversation begins is how we always
lead with clergy numbers.
Um, and in some ways that's
an effect of the fact that the church pension group collects stats
on clergy. Right. Because those
are the people the church pension group is responsible for
pensioning.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Correct.
>> Nandra: Um, but I think what our
conversations sometimes obscure is
congregations. And so I think
always, um, when I hear those numbers, my
first thought isn't, um,
we don't have enough clergy, but
what do our congregations look like and what do
we hope that they look like in the future? So I tend
to, I tend to think it's healthy to sort of reverse the
lens and think about, think about all of this through the lens
of the communities that
clergy serve. And when I flip
that lens, I think there are
lots of things I see, and I don't want to,
um, elide the
difficulties and the complexities of all of the
change that is happening right now. But one of the things I
see is an enormous opportunity
for congregations to
operate in ways that,
um, are, um, a
little bit more bottom up, a little bit less hierarchical, opportunities
for laypeople to be
more, um, engaged fully in the life of the
church. And that strikes me as really
good news. So, um, that's one of the
things that I think about, um, I also
think about some really hard questions that we have
coming our way, um, about,
um, how we get the work, just the work
of church done. Because that rosy picture
that I just painted, um, it's
easy to take what I've said, um, and sort
of, um, smooth over
the day in, day out difficulties
of having a church that has no
paid staff. Correct. One, um,
of the things that we work at, the ona collaborative, we
work, um, exclusively with churches
that are bivocationally led, and we define that
broadly. But, you know, anything from
a congregation led by a full time clergy person
serving two calls to an entirely lay led
congregation. In all of those cases, one of
the realities that becomes clear very
quickly is, um, how much
work it takes to be
episcopalian, how much institutional
maintenance is involved, um, in the
choice to be episcopalian. And that
labor, um, hits these small
by vocationally led congregations, um,
sort of disproportionately, um, because,
you know, it's just as much labor, um, to do a
parochial report if you're small as it is if you're large.
Arguably it's more labor because you don't have any staff,
when you get those numbers auditing, you
know, we don't, we don't have people who are
accountants in my congregation. The work of
upkeeping our beautiful historic
sanctuary. Nobody's getting paid to make
sure that that happens. Um, and
so, um, I think that's something
we're going to really have to reckon with. Um, the ways that we
do business, for lack of a
better way of putting it,
presume, um, um, a lot
of, a lot of
paid limber, right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: When these policies were put into place, it was a time
when churches were growing. It was a time when
you had. When there were still
curacies for people, right, at a seminary, they weren't
put in charge of a congregation or two or three
in the middle of somewhere that there were. So that's when they were
created. Actually, I do a little bit of
good news, if I may. Try Tank is currently
working on an application
that will be basically a website that people, uh,
can go to. And it is made for
small congregations and it is made for those,
as we have fewer staff. It
utilizes artificial intelligence to help build
a lot of these reports and to help do all that for them. So
all you would do is just click on something and it would create it for
you, rather than you having to create it from scratch. So if you want to do a
parochial report, if you want to do, uh, it will be as
simple as entering the data every week onto the computer,
and then it'll take care of the rest of the broker report for you.
So if people can actually keep up in doing that anyway. So
we are creating, we're working on that tool. I think it'll be really
good. But for that point that you just made,
it is when, when someone
is in ministry and you're. I've
seen people that are in ministry, uh, that are one quarter
time. So theoretically they have 10 hours.
If you think about the fact that Sunday already takes the bulk of
that. And if you want any sort of
sermon, uh, that's going to help people grow in their, in their own
sort of vocation as a Christian, um,
there's not a lot of time left after that. You know, it
takes. So, so
as with these folks that you were dealing with, with
that they own a clever, and in particular
lay leadership. So I'm guessing like, like
we are, you're seeing those numbers go up as well, the number of lay led
congregations, um, because actually
going back to the numbers for a second, while the number of priests has gone
down, uh, that are entering the workforce has gone
down by a third. Uh, over the last sort of
decade, the number of buildings has only gone down about
3%.
>> Nandra: Right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So we still have a lot of buildings, even though
we have 33% fewer clergy entering the
workforce. Right. So.
And this doesn't even talk about the number of
clergy who are prematurely exiting
the priesthood as well, because they're burning out. Uh, all the things that
we just discussed. Right. When you just went into
ministry and you're doing this and you're burning out
and you're having also to work a second job, uh,
there comes a point, I think, in someone's life when you're like, I could
probably do more good for the world
by not trying to do all of it like this, you
know, so I'll just work in a nonprofit or something like that. And that might
be better. Let's talk a little bit
about ley led congregations. What does that sort of, for someone that's not
seen one or encountered one, what does that look like?
>> Nandra: A lot of different ways. Um,
I think usually what it looks
like, um, is,
um, a senior warden or some other,
um, appointed leader of the congregation
who's doing the work of a congregational
leader, not just the work of a senior warden. So it's like a super senior
warden that's kind of a typical model is the
senior, super senior warden. Um,
we see that a good bit. Um, another
thing we see, I think, is a church that's
led by, um, its
elders informally,
because so many of these churches are quite small
and also aging. There is just kind of a
natural community or
cluster, um, of elders of the
church who rule by committee, either formally
or informally. Um, and
much depends upon the spiritual health
of that small community within the community.
And so that's one of the things that we focus on at the
collaborative. I'm, um, really glad to hear that
tri tank is working on some of the administrative
details, um, because that's not what we do.
Um, we're really, um, focused on the
spiritual work that it takes, um, to
be a healthy lay led or bivocational
congregation, um, and so
providing spiritual support
for people who are providing
leadership in these spaces is mission
critical, um, because while we, you
know, I often hear clergy talking about how
they've been underprepared with the practical skills that it
takes to lead what is essentially a
nonprofit. That's what church is.
We've been under prepared with those skills, meanwhile,
um, because we haven't really focused
on lay formation with a lot
of intensity in the past
generation or so, um, lay leaders
often haven't had the spiritual support. They need
to do the spiritual work of leading a
congregation and, um, being taken seriously
as spiritual leaders by the church.
Um, and so one of the things we're really
focusing on at present is taking that
spiritual role, um, very seriously
and providing people with the
community that they need, um, to do that
work. We do think it is communal work. We think they need
spaces just like clergy leaders need spaces that
transcend their congregation, where they can come together and
be encouraged and um,
learn from colleagues and
peers who are having
similar roles in other congregations. Um,
and so one of the things I see
is a real need for that kind of support, and it's one of
the things we're busy, um, thinking
about.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Cry tank, by the way, also, I think I have something that can help you
in that as well. Another little side note here.
Uh, we're about to release a thing called
Kathy, which stands, uh, for
churchy answers that help you. And what
cathy is, is an episcopal church chat
bot GPT. She has been fed with over
1000, think of it as a bookshelf. She has been uh,
fed with over 1000 sources. Everything from the episcopal
church, uh, sort of the blue books from
convention, the website of the
church wide organization, many, uh, books from
forward movement, uh, the book of common prayer, a lot
of particularly selected sermons, uh, that are in
there. And so Kathy, uh, as we call her,
has been able to actually, she would have
passed this year's goes, uh, and
she actually can provide, uh,
churchy answers that help you. Uh, so if someone, let's say
a lay leader, uh, someone dies in their congregation,
they're like, I have no idea what to say or something. They can go to
Kathy and say, someone in my congregation, their grandfather just
passed away, give me some resources. And Kathy will
actually put out some resources for actual biblical
quotes, theologies that can be helpful during those times, even
hymns, uh, that people may avail themselves of.
So Kathy will also be a tool for those that
are seeking to be, to have a lot more
knowledge of different theologies, a lot. It's sort of augmenting
their abilities, uh, to do that, you know,
so little Try Tank plug there. But uh, going back
for a second to these late led congregations, I am
curious, bivocational or late
led congregations, we see that that is now
for bivocational is 56% of the clergy that's
out there. And do we have a number of how many lay
led congregations there are in the US at this point
in our church?
>> Nandra: No, so far as I know, we do not know. I think that's
one of the things that the numbers we do have,
um, reveals, I think, is how much we don't know, because
we have been so clergy centered in our data gathering.
Um, there's just this unknown
territory. How many churches out there are lay
led? Um, one of the things we're going to be focusing on in
coming years is actually mapping that
territory more closely because I think until, um,
we have some real data, um,
all of us, um, are in the
dark about what's needed.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You would think that's a simple question, right, on the. Perhaps even the parochial
report. Do you have a clergy that's assisting you, or are you a late led
congregation? That wouldn't take that much to ask?
>> Nandra: Yeah, yeah, I think we can get. I think it's. Yeah, it's
information that we can get. Um,
but then sort of drilling down one level deeper, I
think one of the questions I'd like an answer
to, um, um, and this isn't a
question, it's a series of questions. I'd like to spend some time
listening to those congregations and hearing
from them, um, first of
all, what they love about
themselves, and second of all, what they think
they might need. Um, I think, um,
we have a habit of arriving in
places with answers prepared for people. Um,
so I think there's some work to do, not just figuring
out who's who and what's what, but also
some deep listening that needs happen in these
spaces.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I'm curious. I firmly believe that a, uh,
bivocational, small congregation can be very healthy, can
be just a wonderful community that loves and
cares for each other. In fact, uh, one could easily make
an argument, right, that a lay led congregation,
I mean, those people are very faithful because that's what's keeping them
together. It would have been very easy for those people to say, like, we don't
have a clergy, we're going to go somewhere where there is a clergy. But no,
they stayed loyal to their little church, to their
community. Sometimes they're in rural areas, right? They've
stayed with us. So one could make a case that they're very
faithful people that are doing this work.
So I'm not taking away, uh, or my question is not
about whether or not they're good congregations, healthy congregations.
I am curious, have you seen a bivocational or
lay led congregation? This would be anecdotal only,
but that is showing growth, because part of
the. I think the
thinking out there is that if a congregation
doesn't have a priest, a full time person, someone
dedicated to doing this evangelism, right?
The job of growing the congregation is not going
to happen. Have you seen some of that are.
>> Nandra: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and again, all of this is
anecdotal, um, but
several of the churches in our thriving congregations
project, I'll speak first out of that
experience. Um, have experienced
growth. Now, it's not
impressive if what your, you know, if your frame
of reference is a program size
church, but, you know, when you think about one or two
people a year in a church that has
an ASA of, let's say, 15,
that's actually quite, quite a lot of movement.
And I think you heard me say this in a gathering.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I mean, think about it. If all of our churches had 10% growth each year, that we'd be
like, ecstatic.
>> Nandra: Exactly. Um, and if you add that up in a
diocese, I think one statistic, I'd love it if diocese
began collecting, is like, if all the little
churches in a diocese added one person a
year, and you've got 30 little churches,
that's 30 people, and that's a small congregation in and
of itself. Right. So we've seen
growth, you know, to the tune of one or two people a
year. And, you know, one of the things I always say is,
and again, this is just sort of my own anecdotal experience
as myself, a non stipendiary country
vicar, um, that it takes about
ten relationships to see one new member.
And so when we get one new member, what that means is we've
been out in the community making roughly
ten new friends. And that's not
wasted work, because
friends out in the community who are partners with
us in ministry, um,
multiplies our ability to
do the work that we do beyond the walls of
our sanctuary.
Um, so I consider one
person to be a huge
victory. Um, and we're seeing that, um, and I can think of several
little churches in our program. One in particular,
um, that I am remembering that really had gotten
down to just a couple of families. And they
were one of the first churches to participate with
us in this lilly funded,
thriving congregations grant. And
we, um, sent them a way to do some homework. That
was about, um,
we sent them away to do an energy audit. We had this tool that
we created, which was an energy audit, and they were figuring
out where the flows of
energy when and what.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I didn't think you meant like electricity, right? No,
yeah.
>> Nandra: Measuring, you know, what it. What do you do in a given week and who's doing
it? And, um, they went away and they
did their audit, you know, at somebody's house, because that's how they do
things and came back and one of them said, you know,
we had such a wonderful time,
um, doing this audit together. And one of the
things we
came to as a group was the
realization that it is likely that in
the next five to ten years we will die.
And I say this on a Zoom call with
five or six other congregations and you could have heard
a pin drop because they had spoken this thing,
um, that I think is every church's
deepest fear. And they just said it in this matter of fact
way. We're just looking at it and thinking we're getting
older and, you know, the odds
are that we will die, so we want to go
out joyfully and, you know,
doing God's work. Um, and that little church
has grown like they
said it, and it's grown. And I don't mean to imply that, you know,
every time you confront death bravely,
don't, um, because I think, you know, m need to be
able to confront death and then die, um, if we believe in
resurrection. But, yeah,
but it was just sort of amazing what
it did for them to face that possibility, and it
was amazing what it did for all of, all of us who were
listening.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That sort of reminds me a little bit of the theology of Miguel de la Torre,
who says we must embrace at some point hopelessness,
right? Because what they were able to do is like, if that is
what's going to happen, right? We've tried a whole bunch of things where we
haven't done, we haven't grown, we haven't done this thing, so
let's just embrace this hopelessness, right? We are it, so we're going to, we're going to be
joyful about this moment. And what
mister, um, M. Delatorius says is when you do that, you open
up new avenues that you hadn't even thought about when you were
still like, but I must do this because this is what I've been told I must
do. Now, these, these congregations that are growing by
one or two members per year, is that,
um, or maybe the, the story you just gave
sort of says the answer is that more than, is that,
is that a replacement rate in the sense of there will
be people who will die, there will be people who will move away. So if you
have 15, if you have
three people that move out or died within one
year, uh, so you're down to twelve, and if you only gain two,
you're now at 14. So yes, you did technically
sort of, uh, grow, but it wasn't a net growth,
right? So you're still dwindling little by little.
Is it a replace? Are they growing enough
to be able to replace themselves or is the number still going to
continue to go down?
>> Nandra: I think to be determined. Um, at this
point, some of them are growing at replacement rate and
greater, and some of them are not. Okay. That's going
to vary congregation by congregation. In every
case, though, um, where congregations are
growing, I would say what has happened,
um, is a move away from
programmatic solutions and a move
toward relational, a relational
model of church. And I think what has to happen is you
have to get so small that there is no
program that can save you. And you
realize that embracing hopelessness, right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah.
>> Nandra: Oh, well. Oh, ah, wait. There's no magic bullet. And
so we have to. And so
all we've got is Jesus and each other.
Turns out that's what we need.
And, um, that's really attractive, I think. I
mean, I know you think a lot about young people. I mean, one
of the things that with this small congregation is that it suddenly became very
attractive to young people.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, but it actually makes sense, right? We know young people
are the number one thing that they would
seek in a faith community. Don't say church to them.
That's out. But if you tell faith community to them,
the number one thing they're seeking is relational.
They want relationships, right?
>> Nandra: And so if these small churches can't, we've got several who have
really embraced that model and have had
surprising success
forming relationships with young people
who are hungry for
extended family, um, and
spiritual community, for wise, um, elders. For
wise elders, um, you know, I often
say to small congregations, don't tell me you don't have a children's program.
You are grandparents. And there are so many people
out there who could use some good grandparent energy.
And I think once, um, churches let
go of, um,
sort of some programmatic norms, what it means
to be church and just embrace who they already
are, um,
a lot more is possible.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Absolutely.
>> Nandra: And when I say that, you know, coming back to that question of
replacement rate, I don't know
if that's enough demographically.
I think it's enough spiritually.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: At the end of the day, Jesus said the bar, right? Two or two or three
are gathered. Well, here's a question,
actually, and we can round it up with this question. And I know that
some people will roll their eyes because I ask this question a
lot. Let's talk about buildings.
When you're a congregation of 15 and you yourself
just spoke, right? When they got together, they got together at someone's
home? Why not just go back to the
catacombs? Why not just go back to being house
churches that are more
in the relational rather than having to have. In
some cases, it's like an albatross of this
building that every day
has, uh, more deferred maintenance, that
it's getting harder and harder
to take care of the building. Why don't we, for the record, I'm not
saying that we sell the buildings, but we can certainly repurpose them.
Do community things in the buildings, offer it up, um, to the
community? Are
any of these congregations that you're working with, have any of them
opted to say, we're done with the building, we're still
going to be a congregation, but we're just not going to be
beholden to just St.
Strythans?
>> Nandra: Nobody in our
group as of yet has walked
away from a building.
They, uh, are people who I think are open
to that conversation, um,
and are in some cases weighing cost
benefits that have to do with
the value of using money to
do, let's say, some workout in
the community versus the value of using their money
to sustain, ah, a building.
Those are certainly conversations that are happening,
but we have yet to walk with a
congregation, um, who is actually making
the decision to walk away
from a building.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Do you think some of that is related to the.
I'm sorry, say that again.
>> Nandra: We've been in conversations with, with congregations who are
circling that possibility.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Got it.
>> Nandra: Yeah, but, but nobody has yet done that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And do you think that's related? Is that an, uh, episcopal
sort of thing, that the more, uh, would be
having it if they didn't have to at some point
seem like they're losing by going to the bishop and
saying, I'm sorry, it's just not going to work out for us. And
so we want to close our building this way and we still want to
meet. Do you think bishops would be open to that sort
of conversation?
>> Nandra: Yes, I think they probably would be, although it probably also
varies, bishop to bishop. Uh, but, you know, I think there are a couple of
things going on. One of them is just human
nature. It's hard for all of us to let go of
things we already have. So if you already
have a beautiful building,
and our buildings are typically very beautiful, it's
just hard to imagine what life
could be like on the other side of letting such a beautiful
thing go. Right. So that's just human nature. And
then I think, um.
Um, more seriously, in terms of what bishops need to be
thinking about our whole model of
what good church looks like
really is centered on a sanctuary. I
mean, we say it out loud all the time. You know, what we do is beautiful worship. What we do is
beautiful worship. And we do. But what these
churches do, well, often, even if they
are in a beautiful building, isn't beautiful worship. I mean, that's just
not always, or at least beautiful worship in
the way that Episcopalians tend to
imagine what beautiful worship is. I would argue that it is beautiful,
it's just not a performance. Um.
Um. But because we have held that
value up as such a value
house church is really hard for us to
feel. So we need some
help from bishops
imagining it. So, for example, here's an
example. I, um, think we're beginning to talk the
talk that ley led worship can be beautiful,
that morning prayer is beautiful, and
that, um, leyled sermons are
beautiful. But when have you ever
walked into a diocesan gathering that
was a, ah, that was not, you know,
a really impressive grand worship service? When have
small church people ever
seen what they can do on an average
Sunday celebrated and represented by
the wider church? Almost never.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I have not, and certainly not like a general convention. And
I think too, for, uh, the most part, we sort of
look down at. You're not a full
church. We actually, I think the way that our ecclesiology
is right now, we need to become way
more ecclesiastically flexible as to what
is church and what makes up church. And
beginning with, you don't have to have someone with
a collar there to do that. Right. The ecclesiastical
flexibility would be that a dinner church counts
as church. You know, when we gather around a table and we share
a meal and we talk about God and Jesus and how
the spirit has been in our lives, how is that
not church? You know, and we need, but we need
to, to your point, celebrate it and
raise it that enough so that it's
not the exception since it's going to be more
normal now, but also that this is also church and we
value this just as much as it's no better, no
worse than when you have a full eucharist with a
beautiful, you know, it's a different expression
of the, of the, of what church is.
>> Nandra: Um, and if you've never seen it, you can't imagine it.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's true. It's kind of the reason why they say
representation in media is important for those that
are on the margins. Right. Once you see yourself on there, it's like,
oh, wait, we can be that. We can do that.
Um, as we're coming here to the end, anything that I've
forgotten to ask you anything you want to share more about the.
I see it as a hopeful moment for the church also, by the
way.
>> Nandra: Yeah, I do too. Um,
I don't know that there's anything you've forgotten to ask.
I think I love the questions that you've asked. And I
think, um, the
invitation I'd love to close with is come and see
us. There
are amazing little churches out there punching way
above their weight in their communities. They are loving each
other, um, and they are
having deep lives with each other.
Um, and I
think, um. Yeah,
I think I just would like to invite more people to
experience the goodness that's out there.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: If people do want to find out more about the programs you all are
doing and how you're doing these trainings, or perhaps someone
that just wants to be a lay leader in a congregation
and they want to learn how they can become better at it.
Where can they find out more?
>> Nandra: Um, they can find more at our brand new website
that we're really proud of. Um, Iona
ssw.edu. um,
that's the place to find out about the
communities that we're supporting, um, right
now. And, um, yeah, come to a
gathering. Come meet more small church people.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's also a great point.
>> Nandra: Subscribe to our newsletter. We have a new newsletter called small
church voices, um, and you can subscribe
to that, um, on our website.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Excellent. So that's Iona dot
ssw.edu.
>> Nandra: Yes.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thank you so much. This, for me has been
just a. Again, I
think we're in a valley right now. The church is in a valley. And the
decisions we make today will be the decisions that will
tell us how long we remain in this valley. One, but two,
they'll tell us what our next peak will be, because
I think we're in this moment where we're making sort
of decisions that we'll be seeing the fruit of
for generations to come. Same way that they made decisions
in the fifties that we're still seeing sort of the output
of that, and in the eighties, that we're still sort of seeing the output of
that. And now we're in this valley. So,
therefore, time. So, uh, may God be with us on
this, on this journey as well.
Andrew Perry, thank you so much for joining us. It has been a
wonderful conversation.
>> Nandra: Thank you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thanks for joining us for this, the Try Tank podcast. We
hope you liked it. And if you did, make sure you leave a
review and subscribe. Subscribe. That way more people
will have access to it. To learn more about the
Try Tank Research Institute, visit
us@tritank.org that's
Try Tank dot uh.org.
also there you can sign up for our monthly
newsletter. The Try Tank podcast is a production
of Try Tank Research Institute and
resonate media. Again, thanks for joining
us. I'm Father Lorenz la Brija. May God bless.