Small Church Connexion National

There is a national team of Small Church Connexion headed up by Hilary Taylor, alongside Tim Lovejoy, Sue Hensby and Jonathan Martin. We have recently been awarded a grant by the BU Mission Forum to expand our work across the country. 

We plan to:

• Plant more small church hubs (physical and online)
• Establish a team of small church networkers around the country
• Promote partnership or twinning between churches for mutual benefit
• Encourage small churches to fulfil the Great Commission
• Encourage church body ministry
• Set up a Mission@Home scheme where requested (see below)
• Set up local or Association wide resource / expertise databases (see below)
• Work with partners with specific expertise to inspire small churches
• Explore interim / transitional ministers to come alongside small churches

The team also offer vision days, preaching, funding expertise and legal compliance advice.
To explore any of these, please contact the team.

Mission@home

When asked, small churches don’t usually ask for money, but people. Small church, I have found, is the best training ground for serving God and each other in many ways.  Although people are willing, they often lack the skills or knowledge.  Training would be helpful but a day’s course won’t help much.

What is the best way to learn? Someone doing the job alongside you for a period of time.

Mission@home is the scheme that Small Church Connexion are running, releasing kingdom gifts across churches, with mission in mind.  Small churches are always looking for ways to grow – they have to be mission minded.

Many people have energy, experience and time when they retire and want to do something for God.  There are some good examples of this working already - such as two retired lay people each giving their churches five years to come to a place to receive a full-time minister.  Hopefully, people of all ages will rise to the challenge and use their skills to make a difference.

Think of it as mission@home.  Many people would love to go on overseas mission but can’t afford it or have visa or health issues.  There are plenty of opportunities in UK where the world comes to us!   From inner cities to leafy suburbs, to rural villages.  This is mission, to offer skills and experience to another church, to teach others so they can continue when the time is up.

Also part of the attraction is that there is an agreed time limit – 3, 6, 9 or 12 months.

Each volunteer will have a different skill set and experience and so will be placed where they fit best.  Training or mentoring a Sunday school teacher, youth leader, worship leader, musician, treasurer, administrator…

We have been approached so far to provide someone who can:

• Help the new secretary and treasurer to build basic infrastructure
• Provide three months leading of the church so minister can go on sabbatical

Small church people can be on mission too – this is not just a large church helps small church project.  People from small churches are Association Trustees, District Ministers, lay preachers, to name but a few.  In Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas were part of the leadership and were sent out to do mission.  Our first volunteer was an elder in a large church.  Anyone can join the scheme.

Databases

This is an inter-church resourcing, kingdom thinking project which encourages working with others in our Baptist family across the UK. The pilot volunteer database of skills and expertise was set up in the London Baptists (LB) some years ago, run by the Small Church Connexion. ALL LB churches could volunteer people to join the database and ALL churches could ask for help from the database, which encouraged inter-church resourcing.

It is a database of people who volunteer to preach, lead worship, offer musical skills, help for treasurers etc. it also includes people in ANY church who are skilled or could give advice to someone in another local church. The skills could range from training a secretary or a Sunday school teacher, to advising how to organise Messy church, a building project or running a coffee shop.  ALL skills are welcome!

There is a response form for each volunteer to complete, then the church Leadership Team and church meeting endorse them in volunteering.  The form is sent to the Database Manager, who will contact them with more details.  The database information is NOT published, but kept by only by the Manager who subscribes to the BU Data Protection Policy.

To run this amazing resource, it only takes one person with a computer and a heart to serve. Could it be you? We are looking for people in each hub / Association to manage local information.