Episode 007: The Beauty of Intergenerational Ministry in Small Churches (& How Your Church Can Experience it too!)

Intro  0:01  
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the small church ministry podcast.

Laurie Graham  0:14
Hey, thanks for hitting play. Whether this is the first time you found me or you’re tuning back for more, I’m really glad you’re here. If you’ve tuned in earlier episodes, you’ve already heard four amazing things I love about small churches. 

Today we’re going to talk about one of those four things, intergenerational ministry.  We’re going to talk about how to do it well, and also why it doesn’t just happen in small churches.  We’re going to hit some great actionable steps to take and ideas to consider for your church too. 

Here’s the thing – when people of different generations get together in churches, instead of experiencing the beauty of intergenerational ministry, here’s what sometimes happens instead.  Whether it’s glaring or subtle, there’s often judgment, division, and misunderstanding, sometimes even criticism, defensiveness, and competition.  It’s kind of like an unspoken my generation is better than yours thing. 

Laurie Graham 1:09
In fact, common struggles I hear a lot from small churches or things like these. I wish the older people in the church supported the children’s ministry more, or young people just don’t value tradition. At the same time, youth feel misunderstood and often unwelcome by the older generations. But older people may get angry when children are running in the hallway. Or it’s noisy during church. Or what about these teenagers coming to church with ripped jeans or leggings? In some churches, the older people feel like their opinions just don’t matter anymore. As changes come and new ways are embraced. And in other churches, it’s the younger people who feel like their opinions don’t matter. Honestly, it’s usually a bit of both. 

So is this what God had in mind? If you’re thinking, why can’t we all just get along, it’s so much deeper than that. God has so much more for us all than just getting along. There’s so much depth and beauty and fullness of relationships waiting for us if we could just bridge these generational gaps. Deep down, the underlying value behind all this struggle is just our longing as humans to be loved, understood, supported, and valued. No matter what the age. The longing is fulfilled in relationships- relationships that are honest, filled with understanding vulnerability, and real connection, where we’re known, good, bad, and growing, and where we’re loved not just for what we bring to the table, but sometimes in spite of it. 

Laurie Graham 2:49
So what could this look like? What might God have in mind with different generations mixing together? Well, first off, I believe that God gave us intergenerational family systems on purpose, whether it’s biological, adoptive, or just based on proxemics. Proxemics is just about who’s gathered together in the same place. 

We are meant to relate across generations. And this is the church, it’s a family. It’s a gathering of people in one place. And beautiful things happen when we recognize the value of others, all others. And we lean into seeking out how we can contribute to each other’s growth, and even our understanding of God, different personalities, preferences, ages, and generations.  It makes it so much richer. Because the truth is we weren’t meant to do life in segmented demographics and age groups all the time. We were meant to do life together.

When talking about intergenerational ministry, churches often think – first have mentoring programs, where the older men and women mentor the younger men and women, and that’s amazing. I think the concept that everyone should have a mentor and a mentee is a beautiful idea. 

But I also think intergenerational ministry offers much more than just an organized mentoring program. You see, we all benefit from each other, not just the teacher to the student, but also the student to the teacher. Because aren’t we all teachers and students too?  From the youngest to the oldest, we benefit from each other, and we learn from each other. And I believe that is part of the amazing beauty in the body of Christ. 

Laurie Graham 4:33
Think for a moment about those in your church, or even those in society, who are sometimes marginalized. People with less talent, less beauty, less wisdom, or less height, spoken from somebody who’s kind of short. In our secular world, there’s lots of division between those who (perceived) have more value. Those who are leaders, those who are considered influencers. 

But in God’s world, each human has a place. Each human has immense value, gifts, and contributions. We all influence each other. No one is marginalized, is less than, or is unimportant. We are all on this planet to love and learn together. 

So if God set it up that way, then what’s the problem? Why doesn’t intergenerational ministry just happen, where we all benefit from one another where we all hold each other in high esteem or high value? Well, I personally think three main things get in the way. Number one is our selfishness. Number two is our pride. Number three is our perspective. 

Now, the first to selfishness and pride. Well, that’s a different topic for another podcast. But number three, our perspective, that’s something we can tackle in the next 20 minutes or so. Let’s shed some light on that and talk about a few next steps that you might want to implement in your church even next week. 

Our perspective matters a lot when it comes to relating to people of all ages, and all generations. You see, we’ve all been culture arised, meaning we’ve adapted to our culture, our modern-day culture. Even though each of us grew up with different, very specific influences, there’s also a lot that we’ve shared together. And not all of it is good. 

Laurie Graham 6:23
Unfortunately, most of us are very used to segmented age groups and lots of gathering with like people. So much so, that we’ve lost the natural feeling of mixed ages or people groups. Sometimes we even feel out of place with people who aren’t our age. We’re not sure what to talk about, or what we have in common, and it’s just plain awkward. 

After spending decades in school with our same age groups, it’s really no wonder. We join clubs and hobby groups with people who are more like us. And maybe we’ve even moved far away from our own extended families, where we would have had more generations mixing with generations, it’s just not the norm anymore. 

Now, if you’re in a smaller town, or your relatives or close by, you may have more common gatherings with different generations mixed in. But even then, I just have to ask, do you still have a kid table at Thanksgiving? I know we’ve done that. I’ve been part of churches who dismiss the kids to eat first or last, or even have a separate room for children or teens to eat together and gather, while the older people enjoy their food without the littles crying, or the youngers running through the halls. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. And some of it is really good. 

However, it might also leave us a little short-sighted when it comes to having relationships across the generations. So after being separated for a decade or two as children and youth from the adults, we wonder why the younger women don’t want to come to the women’s retreat where there’s a bunch of us middle-agers.  Or we wonder why we’re struggling to engage the young adults in the life of the church. Well, it’s really no wonder at all, they don’t even know us.

Whether you’re wanting to build a bridge across a huge chasm that exists between the older and younger at your church, or maybe you already have a very family feeling church with many adopted grandmas and grandpas in the midst, we’re going to talk about a few of the common challenges, how to overcome them, plus a few practical ways where you can try to up the connection across the generations even this month. 

Laurie Graham 8:33
First, we’ve got to talk about stereotypes and labels, because these get in the way a lot. In our modern culture, it’s common for the older generation to be labeled as critical, or not open to new ideas. Maybe not open to new leadership or resistant to change or even judgmental. Have you heard this, that the younger people want change, and the older people want to do it the way it’s always been? It’s a common story that gets talked about. Or maybe how about the teenagers and children? We hear people label the younger generation disrespectful, irreverent, unyielding, or even rebellious. 

Now, most of us know these labels are stereotypes. They are broad-reaching generalizations that of course, aren’t true for all individuals. In fact, they might not even accurately represent anyone in your church. 

If you check out some of the workplace studies or psychology-based research, you’ll actually find that some of the stereotypes currently buzzing around have little or even no evidence to back them up, including one of the common things that’s talked about. The younger generation is lazy, or they don’t want to work. And yes, I’ve heard that one many times, even in my small church, that the younger generation has no work ethic. Well, this actually is not true at all. And if you look it up, you’ll see they may desire different things in their work, but the young regeneration works very hard too. 

What about older people not wanting change? Is this even true? Well, I can tell you from personal experience, I’ve encountered tons of people over the age of 60, and even 70, who love change. In fact, they embrace technology more than I do. And they’re more open to change than some 20-somethings I’ve encountered. 

If you Google generational stereotypes, even today, you will find more information on why they are not correct – more than you would on why they hold true. Whether the stereotypes are accurate or not, these sweeping statements still take root in our thinking and our attitudes. In fact, the thoughts and beliefs that we have about differences actually cause more division and separation than our actual experiences. Not to mention that every generation throughout history tends to think of themselves as pretty cool or even right.

Instead of exploring where these beliefs come from today, or how often they’re true, or why we think our generation is more right than yours, the more productive question we’re going to talk about today is how do we bridge the gap? If you do believe we can all learn from each other, that we can love each other through our differences, and that the body of Christ includes us all, then stick with me for a few more minutes. 

Laurie Graham 11:26
Now, what bridges the gap? The easy answer here is relationships. Once there’s a relationship, there’s a bridge that’s built, the gap is diminished. And while having any kind of relationship makes this kind of true. As people see themselves differently, there’s still a gap. The more we see our sameness and our shared humanity, our value in Christ, any gap gets smaller and smaller. 

It’s kind of similar to the concept of the saint and the sinner. There’s a big division between a saint and a sinner, right? But once we realize that we’re all saints, and we’re also all sinners, wow, we have a lot more in common than we do apart. That’s the gospel message; Jesus died for all of us. No one is righteous, not even one. It kind of evens the playing field, right? 

How do we do this between generations– find more in common than we do apart? What we really need to do is start recognizing and highlighting our similarities, instead of focusing on our differences. Think about your closest friends, the people you’re close to. Don’t you share some similarities? This is natural and it’s normal. What bonds you together? Do you share hobbies? Are your kids the same age? Do you share singleness? What about the same kind of sense of humor or values? 

You see, the more we see similarities in others, we actually start recognizing that they’re not so different from us. This is exactly what closes that gap. This also can happen across generations, but it takes intentionality because we are fighting very broad, sweeping stereotypes that constantly tell us how different we are. 

It’s like swimming upstream. And of course, we don’t share the same memories of the space shuttle, or the same energy levels or the same depth of wisdom and maturity. But what do we share? 

In order to figure this out, hone in and grow this commonality; we need to enter in some curiosity and compassion. These two words, curiosity and compassion, have meant a lot to me in the past few years. I have grown tons in curiosity and compassion lately, and honestly, I think it’s caused more transformation in me than I ever would have dreamt. 

Laurie Graham 13:49
Curiosity seems like a pretty simple thing, and pretty common too.  A lot of people are curious about things like, where did that come from? How does that work? Who said that, etc. 

But you know, what blocks curiosity? Knowledge. If we already know something, there’s nothing to be curious about. I don’t need to be curious about tangerine crossvines anymore. When I planted my garden, I did a bunch of research, I talked to experts at several nurseries. I know how much water the tangerine crossvines need. I know what fertilizer they like. I know that covering their air roots is going to kill them. And I also know that hummingbirds love them. So I’m not as curious anymore. I know all about that. 

Here’s the problem with people groups and stereotypes. We think we know, but we really don’t. We need to grow in our humility and recognize and admit that we really don’t know all there is to know about that grumpy old man who just yelled at my child or about that rebellious teenager who wears his hat in church. Because if you think you have those people all figured out. There’s no room for curiosity. 

In truth, there is so much more to know about every single person on the planet, there is tons beneath the surface- more than we will ever uncover. So much so, that as long as we’re still growing, we’re still even learning things about our own selves, uncovering our own motivations, our own blind spots, our own defenses. If I’m still learning about me, and believe me, I am, how could I possibly know everything about you?

There’s a level of humility of just admitting, hey, I really don’t know that person or that people group. And then growing in curiosity, I wonder if what I think is true.  How could I find out the truth? What might I not know about that person or understand? 

Laurie Graham 15:56
Can you imagine if we even just open up our minds this much in our churches? If we started more conversations that sparked curiosity instead of judgment? – When somebody makes a snarky remark about kids these days, or older people not wanting to change? If you hear those comments, could you just be the one to say, “Really? Do we really know that’s true?” Or, I wonder why that is? Or what do you think they value? What challenges might they be facing? 

Churches can build curiosity across generations and demographics, through conversation program choices, activities, discussions, teaching, hotseat panel surveys, and so much more. Did you ever do the project as a child or hear about this where a child in elementary school has to interview someone of a different generation with a series of questions or talk to someone who had served in a war or suffered a tragedy? If those conversations were facilitated in a positive environment, can you imagine the amazing impact and bridges that could be built? 

Before we jump into some tangible ideas that you can put into use and use in your church right away, let’s talk about that other word I mentioned, compassion. Just keep these two words in mind: curiosity and compassion. 

Now that we’ve talked about curiosity, maybe starting to get rid of stereotypes we used to hold on to, or raising the questions of I really don’t know, the next essential step in bridging the generation gap is developing compassion. If someone or a group of people behaves in a way that we don’t like or maybe don’t understand, we naturally create a separation or a judgment. We might label them as angry, dismissive, grumpy, rebellious, standoffish. But what if instead of creating a separation, we develop some compassion? We stop that definitive labeling and instead consider humanity.

Laurie Graham 18:06
Typically, a person’s negative behavior is based on their own unhappiness. Most of us know this; nobody naturally wakes up one day and says, I want to be crabby today. I want people not to like me, right? Who desires their life to be filled with anger, or to hurt people, or to repel other humans? If someone is this way, there’s a whole lot of hurt behind it. Sometimes even trauma that you’ll never know about. 

God made each of us to desire relationships to crave belonging, as well as significance. So if there’s someone or an age group, or a people group that you don’t like, or you have a feeling of separation, here’s how to continue bridging the gap. Lean into both curiosity and compassion toward you, and also toward them. This is what it looks like: Why do I feel like this? What assumptions am I making? Where might I be wrong? And then turn your curiosity outward.  Why are they behaving like that? What might they value?  Ask the questions. What might they have experienced?

Then travel toward compassion. This is what compassion is. Compassion is a lot more than just feeling sorry for someone or recognizing that someone is hurting. The word compassion, if you get to the root words, means suffer with or suffer together, or share emotion. The root words – the beginning of the word COM, or CO, it means together or with. Think about combined, or CO- anything. The second part of the word passion is related to pathos. Those are even the word patient like one who suffers the patient. Compassion is suffering together or sharing emotions. 

If we could travel from curiosity to compassion, Then moving toward commonality toward our shared humanity or shared emotions, wow, that can do so much. Across generations, how can we share the suffering, understanding, or have compassion? A quick example is just taking a look at the generational stereotypes we mentioned earlier. Like why are old people crabby or resistant to change? Now, please hear me. I know many, many older people who are not crabby. This is just something I hear a lot. Why are old people crabby or resistant to change? I wonder? I wonder what it feels like to age and have knee issues or not see as well as I used to, to watch my family move away or attend funerals of lifelong friends. 

Or I wonder why the old way of doing things is so important. Like what would it feel like to have things that you love that you’re comfortable with? Not be valued anymore? To have so many things change around you? That even basic things like turning on the television becomes a frustration? Or how about the younger teens with tattoos? I wonder what he’s great at. I wonder what he struggles with. I wonder what he’s scared of and what he values. I wonder what his dreams are. 

Laurie Graham 21:16
Do you see curiosity and compassion moving together? You see, if we start practicing curiosity and compassion, it might even lead us to recognizing, hey, I felt that too. I may not share your experience, but I felt that emotion. Now, you might never have dared to wear a hat to your worship service. But maybe you remember being called rebellious when you as a woman wear pants to worship, or you as a man stayed out late with your friends. You may not be scared of COVID at all. But you might remember being scared during bomb drills of the Cold War. 

We’ve all felt defensive, hopeless, angry, and annoyed. The circumstances might be different. But we’ve all felt those emotions. We’ve all felt challenged as well as being challenged. We’ve all felt fear. And we have all caused fear. When we start to realize there’s similarities, what we have in common, the gaps between us get smaller. Do you see it?

We all have different personalities, different levels of openness, different comfort levels, and communication styles. Whether it’s in telling stories, or in sharing the depth of our feelings in being open, or even to hearing new information and relating to others.

Let’s talk about how we can practically encourage cross-generational relationships, conversations, and cohesive intergenerational groups in your small church. It’s really important to set up safe spaces to share and great systems and opportunities to foster these relationships. You may be changing a culture, and if so, there’s going to be a mix of teaching and programming and just conversations that happen. What you do not want to do -before I tell you what to do. You do not want to throw a group of people together and do a mass bingo game mixer that leaves a first grader in tears, a teen wishing she hadn’t come, and a grandma that got pushed over by the kids playing tag. 

Laurie Graham 23:22
Instead, here’s a process to follow if you want to foster some healthy relationships across the ages, plus some really actionable ideas that are all about successful baby steps leading to deeper relationships in your small church. In the first step, we’re going to start by growing awareness and appreciation. Step two, which we’re going to go deeper into, is about making connections. And step three is about fostering conversations. 

But let’s go back to step one and we’ll unpack it a little bit. Step one, start by growing awareness and appreciation between the generations. Begin the conversations, highlight generational groups, recognize honor, and show value across the ages. 

Here’s a few ideas to think about to get you started. Think about creating a church family timeline. Now I picture this on a wall in your welcome center. It’s life-size, and it’s done on cheap butcher paper. Someone has gone through and highlighted decades going back 60, 80, or even 100 years. Maybe this timeline actually started and you can see where World War Two happened, or where other historical events were. Encourage people in your church to add their timeline of stories to the church family timeline. Can you see it? Have stickers, or maybe if you’re doing it on a big bulletin board you could have colored pins, but encourage individual people in the church to put pins in the timeline or stickers. Know when they came to know Jesus’ marriages, tragedies, deaths, graduations, births, salvations, baptisms, and encourage pictures. 

You could even have the youth there scanning pictures for people who have vintage pictures, they don’t want to necessarily put it up on the wall because they’re nervous that it’s gonna get torn down or lost. Have the youth set up a scanning station where they could take pictures on their phone and print it out. This timeline could be filled with dates and names and times and photos. Can you imagine, without even having to have a conversation across the generations, you’ve just set up a timeline that starts to bridge the gap? 

Laurie Graham 25:42
Another idea to grow awareness might be to have a church-written devotional, you could choose a theme and ask for submissions. What’s the hardest day or season in your life? What did God teach you? Or have a scripture verse and unpack it. I would try to get submissions from all generations. Make sure you’ve got the Sunday school class gathering devotions written by five-year-olds or 10-year-olds. Get the youth involved, have them write devotionals, a simple scripture, and what it means to them. Publish it through the church. And watch what happens as people throughout the church are reading devotions that are written by this older person that they had seen sitting silently in the back of the church, or the little child who scampers around running into people during your fellowship hour.

Another fun idea would be a modern-day recipe book. Why not have comfort foods, maybe you could call it “When I’m sick, bring me this.” And people are listing their favorite recipes or memories of what it means to them when they’re sick, and their mom makes the mac and cheese. I have to say, if you do a little recipe book called, When I’m Sick, Bring Me This, it’s also a great tool for your care team. When people actually are ill or have hospitalizations – what you can bring them to cheer them up? Make sure if you do something like this, that you include the children and the teens, the middle-agers, and the olders. Get submissions from everyone. It’s an amazing ministry tool and also, again, bridges the gap because it engages a lot of curiosity. Can you imagine it? What does little Susie like when she’s sick? 

This is another way to grow awareness and appreciation: offer small groups, or training, or education, or sermon series on generational stereotypes on why we really all need each other. The health benefits of the older and the younger mixing together, the mobility of families with transfers, the international health crisis of loneliness. These are just a few ways you could grow awareness and appreciation of generations in your churches. 

Laurie Graham 28:01
Let’s go to step two, making connections. Making connections takes it a step deeper, and you’re actually connecting faces and people together. Maybe not having individual conversations yet, but check out a few of these ideas. I think a great option is having a hot seat panel or a panel interview. If you have an adult Sunday school class, consider having youth come in and sit on a panel or children. Or consider having a panel of adults or grandparents sit on a panel in a youth class or a children’s Sunday school and run it like a talk show. It could just be one week or a 20-minute type. But the goal of this is curiosity and compassion, not judgment. Definitely not judgment, and make sure you let everyone know that. 

Set up intentional questions ahead of time. You could even ask the kids, “If you could ask any question of the older people in church, what would you ask them?” And make sure to monitor it and keep it fun and positive. But include questions that would also help develop some compassion and empathy.  What’s your biggest fear? What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever gone through? What’s something about you that no one would ever guess? Have a facilitator or an emcee that keeps it fun and positive. Can you imagine the fun and the stories that would come out of having a panel like that?

Another great idea to make connections is to look at your service opportunities in ministry areas and try to create some intentional intergenerational opportunities there. If you think about ministry areas, generally volunteers kind of gravitate towards certain ministry areas based on their generations. Now, not always, but oftentimes. Sunday school – think about who’s serving in Sunday school as the teachers and how you can mix it up,  Or your prayer team. Does it generally gather people from a certain generation? How can you broaden it out?  What place could grandparents have at a youth lock-in? Have fun with this. It totally can be done! Or where could children serve in the prayer ministry? 

Laurie Graham 30:10
Another idea for making connections is just interviewing or highlighting different church members or volunteers in different generations in the newsletter or on a bulletin board in your welcome center, or even upfront during the announcements. Just interview someone, include fun bits about their life, challenging decades, something that no one knows about them, what they’re scared of. 

A great idea I’ve seen work wonders is having prayer partners. Now a lot of times I’ve seen this for children’s Sunday school or youth mission trips, setting up prayer partners to pray for the children. How to build more curiosity and compassion with prayer partners is this… Develop cards that have their pictures on them, of course, get permission from the parents if they’re minors. But instead of just “Hey, pray for this person: name, grade, and hobbies.” Include questions with the youth or children’s permission to include on the card like, what’s your biggest fear? If you could choose one prayer request for people in the church to pray for you? What would it be? 

If you look at these ideas for making connections, do you see how it’s deeper than step one? Step one is just about awareness, you’re starting to raise curiosity between the generations. Step Two: making connections. We’re talking about connecting faces and names, situations and emotions. If you are changing a culture, you do want to start with step one and step two before we thrust people into step three, which is fostering conversations, intentional conversations between individuals or small groups of different generations. 

Laurie Graham 31:44
Now, I also want to tell you, if you’re thinking, “Oh, my goodness, we already do so much, I can’t add another program, I don’t want you to add another program.” I would love to see you doing these things at activities you’re already having. Because I personally think most small churches over-program. We’re doing way too many things, instead of just getting more impact about the things we’re already doing. Think about adding intentional mixers, or guided questions, or fun bingo games, at some activities you’re already doing- like all church events, or potlucks, or even the gathering fellowship time before or after church or between services if you have that. But be intentional about relational connections at these events. When you’re gathered together. 

We actually have a resource of 15 plus ideas of ways to bridge the generations, you actually can look in the notes for this podcast. At your next all-church event or potluck or chili cook-off, think about this. Why not have a Name That Tune game going on, and have some music played from different generations? People could even share what songs were played at their prom or their graduation, mixing the generations fostering conversation. How about a bingo game of emotions? Everybody has a bingo card. Different emotions are listed instead of whatever’s usually there. You have to find somebody who will share a happy moment with you and you get to cross it off the list. Each person shares their story when they have felt happy, when they felt scared, and when they felt excited. You’ll get people mixing around in games like that. Again, for more ideas, check out that download we have for you. 

Fostering these intentional conversations between people of different generations will go far in bridging these generational gaps, and having some organic intergenerational ministry be happening in your church. 

Laurie Graham 33:44
I’ve got another reminder and a little caution to leave you with. One really important thing that you can do on your own. You don’t have to have a program. You don’t have to make it all church events or anything like that. You don’t have to plan or coordinate a thing. But it’s so important!  Change your own speech and your own conversations with people in your church. Don’t allow the sweeping statements of judgment or stereotypes to hang in your presence. Speak up for what you know to be true for those who break the stereotype. This is not a time to be timid or meek or just let things go. 

If you’re in charge of a ministry area, make it your mission to bridge the gaps that you see. To help others move toward curiosity and compassion. You can have an immense impact on your congregation just by changing your own speech in your own conversations.

And a caution to leave you with is this. If you are intentionally mixing generations, be very careful to help people feel safe. Be careful to offer opportunities but not force people. Small groups and pairs might be better than one-on-one conversations alone. You know your culture, you know your congregation. Just start safely and slowly. 

There’s happy people and there’s nice people in every generation. There’s also angry people and scary people in every generation. Never send a child or teen to talk to an older person where there’s no relationship. Never send an older person to talk to children or teens that are by themselves as well. You don’t want to end up with that big brother scenario where the big brother was mean, right? You want them to have a successful experience that challenges the negative stereotypes, not confirms them. 

Whether you’re ready to launch an all-out campaign to increase the amazing intergenerational ministry in your church, or you’re just ready to challenge your own stereotype that you’ve held in judgment for another generation, just do something. Set your intention to make a change.

Laurie Graham 35:53
Thanks so much for spending your time here with me today. If this is your first time hearing us, check out our website at the creative little church.com. Our free quarterly conferences just for small churches, and our ongoing ministry training specific for small churches, too. 

I want to give a little shout-out before I go to Sarah, who recently left this review for this podcast. She said, “I am so excited to hear more. You are my prayers answered. I thought we as a small church are struggling. But you’re shedding light on how we’re special and truly blessed at being a smaller, but very unique church in our community.”

Sara, thank you for sharing how this ministry is encouraging you. 

So before you leave me today, would you take a minute and just leave a rating and a review for this podcast? There are so many people in small churches just like Sarah, who are searching for help and support, who are frustrated and feel like failures. And they need to know that God is at work in their small church and they’re not alone. 

Your review helps us reach so many more people. As podcasts gain likes and stars and subscribers and reviews, they actually show up more in Google searches. This is how we can reach more people and you can be part of that. Reaching more people in small churches all over the globe. I can’t wait to talk to you again next week but until then go be a light. The world needs you.