062: Interdenominational Events & Partnerships: Tips To Keep The Focus On Who Unites Us Instead Of What Divides Us | With Amy Satterfield

062: Interdenominational Events & Partnerships: Tips To Keep The Focus On Who Unites Us Instead Of What Divides Us | With Amy Satterfield

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey everybody! Welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We have had such a fun season of interviews lately. People were saying “I love the interviews. I want more interviews.” So, we aim to please. So we’ve got another one for you today.

Laurie Graham 0:28
Today, we’re actually talking to my friend, Amy Satterfield. And Amy is amazing in like, 1,000,001 ways, but I wanted to have her on the podcast to talk about one specific thing, a ministry that she led for 10 years straight. It’s something that many churches have tried to do, and some people say you can’t do it or be successful at it. And Amy was and is. She led a multi-church, like interdenominational gathering, like a whole series, and she’s going to tell us about it. In their community, it led to so much goodness, unity among churches, and building relationships. So, I specifically wanted to talk to Amy about that on the podcast today. So Amy, welcome!

Amy Satterfield 0:28
Hey, Laurie!

Laurie Graham 0:28
So where are you coming in from? Do you want to tell people a little bit about you and your family or what you do inside or outside of ministry?

Amy Satterfield 1:17
Sure! I live in Fayetteville, Tennessee, just at the state line between Tennessee and Alabama, and I grew up in this area. So, I’m from here. I was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, and then crossed the state line, and I moved into Tennessee, when I was a teenager. My dad is a preacher. So I grew up a preacher’s kid, and have been a part of church in some form or fashion my whole life. Let’s see, I’m married. My husband, Troy. I’ve been married to him for 26 years, and we have 4 children together. They’re all teenagers. They’re all in high school. So we’re crazy busy. Yeah, doing all kinds of things like that. My day job, I’m a speech-language pathologist for public schools. So that’s what I do during the day, during the year, and all that kind of stuff. But at church, I’ve done lots and lots of things throughout the years. You know, led classes, but the biggest part of my life, I was, I did music ministry and worship leading. And so, I love that. In the past couple of years, though, my ministry at church has changed a whole lot to where I am the director of discipleship and do some administrative assistant stuff with my church. And that’s been like, a wonderful new challenge. It has stretched me and grown me in lots of different ways. So I really love that. And I do that at Grace Family Worship Center in Hazel Green, Alabama.

Laurie Graham 2:36
Wow. Like, I just want to take a deep breath. Like, wow! And I wasn’t going to talk to you about this, Amy, but it’s so interesting to hear you talk because I don’t know if everybody caught it, but you have a full-time day job, and it’s a pretty stressful one, working in the speech, kind of field in the schools. You have 4 teenagers. You grew up a pastor’s kid, which I always, just makes me smile, because I just love that part of you. And your dad was a pastor in small churches too, smaller churches?

Amy Satterfield 3:06
Absolutely, yes.

Laurie Graham 3:07
So you get it! And you know, one of the things that’s so different in small churches is that most of us have day jobs. Most of us do multiple things. Most of us wear a lot of hats. But Amy, I know you are careful about your time. And so, before we dive into this other whole piece that you did, how do you like, I don’t know, keep your sanity and balance? Because we’re not about burning out people, like in small churches, like I’m so anti that. Do you have any good tips on that? Like, how you just keep priorities in line?

Amy Satterfield 3:40
Sure! Well, the first thing I would say is I’ve really had to learn at getting better at balancing and prioritizing. I’m always been a go getter, like let’s do it all. Let’s figure out how to do it all. So I’ve had to learn how to manage my time, learn how to say no, learn how to, I’m really still not very good at saying no though, learn how to prioritize things and seasons of life. Probably the biggest tips I would say is remembering that things are in seasons. So, what I was able to do when my kids were little versus when they were school age versus now that they’re teenagers, it’s been different. And I’ve had to learn how to adjust accordingly to that, which hasn’t always been easy, but I feel like I’m getting better at it. And probably the other biggest thing I would say about prioritizing my life is learning how to rest and, and try to Sabbath, you know, in my relationship with God. And to put those things, my relationship with God first. I have found that when I’ve done those things, the other parts of my life fall into place easier and better and I handle them better.

Laurie Graham 4:47
You know Amy, that’s one of the things I love about you. I don’t even know if I’ve ever shared this with you, but one of the things I love about you is I have never seen you doing ministry crabby or burnt out. And I’m not saying you never have, but since I’ve known you for the past couple years, I have not seen that in you. And it pains me when I see people serving crabby and burnt out because I just don’t think we’re serving ourselves well, we are not representing Christ well. We are just, you know, for people in small churches if you’re listening now and you are, I guess I don’t mean crabby. Like, yeah, I guess I do mean crabby. I do mean crabby. There’s way too many crabby people serving in small churches saying, I have to do it all. It’s all up to me. If I don’t do it, nobody will. And I really think that is a poor way to represent Jesus.

Amy Satterfield 5:35
It’s not how He wants us to live. It’s really not, and we don’t have to live that way. Yeah. So it’s, it’s definitely a journey to learn how to live with Jesus taking the lead and the Holy Spirit filling us up and empowering us and all the kinds of things. But I’m thankful for all those opportunities in those ways that He’s been leading me and teaching me.

Laurie Graham 5:55
Yeah, well, you are a huge, important part of Small Church Ministry, and of my life, and our conferences, and you hold so many pieces together. So, I’m grateful. But let’s jump into what I said I was going to talk to you about. I already went on a tangent. I already went on a tangent, but you and I could talk about anything.

Amy Satterfield 6:12
I know!

Laurie Graham 6:12
Okay, so let’s talk about this, this thing that you did, and I’ll let you explain it, but it’s pretty amazing. I think you called it a series right? A spring series?

Amy Satterfield 6:22
Yes, I called it the Women Of The Way Series. And how it came about was probably way back in 2010, somewhere around that area, I was invited to go to an International Day of Prayer Session at this church in my community. And I didn’t know anyone there, my best friend went with me. We said, hey, let’s go. And we walked into this church building. It was a beautiful, like wooden panel, but the altars were wooden and the walls were wood with stained glass windows and a pipe organ. It was a beautiful, beautiful sanctuary. We walked in there. But what drew me to the people, there were these women that were kneeled around the altar. There were some women there from that church. And we all just prayed, and it was a beautiful time where it’s like, I thought I want to be a part of these women’s lives. Like, they’re, they’re touching the heart of Jesus, and I want to be a part of that. And I was just drawn to them. So the idea just got planted into my brain. What if we had a Bible study, or women from different churches came together, and we just studied and we talked about what we have in common. And so that was the idea that kind of spurred on everything else.

Laurie Graham 7:31
So, I have a question. You said, you walked into this beautiful building with, you know, wood panel and stained glass, was that different than the church you were from?

Amy Satterfield 7:39
Absolutely. I have been a part of many different churches throughout my life. That’s probably one of the reasons why this kind of thing of building unity between different churches, I was drawn to this idea, because I had been a part of many different types of churches. But yes, the church that I walked into was not the kind of church that I attended, or have attended. And so, it was very different. And, and that’s why I was surprised. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, that these women that were kneeling around this beautiful altar, were, they were pouring out their heart to Jesus, and they love, loved Jesus just as much as I did. And so that’s what drew me to them.

Laurie Graham 8:17
Wow. And from a totally different denomination type of church, different church, I guess, traditions you could even say, and you found something in common. So you know, we share this heart about looking for what we have in common and not what’s different, but is that where this, this value of unity kind of popped up for you? Was it actually at that moment or had it been before?

Amy Satterfield 8:39
I think just getting together with other women was the original idea. And then the idea of building unity, it began as we kind of got started on this journey. The more that, I could see it more and more like, yeah, we, I want to build unity. I want to try to spur on unity in my community, and probably, one of the things that probably contributed to developing this idea is you would hear these whispers, maybe or hear other people say, well, I’m not going to go attend that event at that church because they do this, or we’re not going to go be a part of this, we’re not going to take our teenagers to this church, because maybe they do this. And I thought, oh, that’s just not the heart of Jesus. It’s just not the heart of God. And so, maybe I never really spoke this out loud, but maybe that was one of my challenges was to try to bring us together to see what we had in common. And to learn more from each other and to focus on what we have in common, rather than what we don’t have in common. So that was one of the driving forces behind the unity.

Laurie Graham 9:43
Yeah, you know, one of my deep beliefs is that as much as I have some, some pretty core beliefs and values, and I’m very intentional, and I’m thoughtful, and I’m prayerful, and, you know, I think of all these deep beliefs I have, I really don’t know that I’ve got it 100%. And I really love learning from other people who love Jesus too, and even thinking about what it’s gonna be like in heaven when, you know, probably half the things we were like, you know, diehard like, this is the way it is, you know, Jesus is gonna be like, yeah, that doesn’t really matter. Like that doesn’t even matter.

Amy Satterfield 10:17
Yeah, that’s true.

Laurie Graham 10:18
So tell us about your program, what did it look like? How’d you put it together and all that kind of stuff?

Amy Satterfield 10:22
Okay, so what we did, I contacted a few women from a few different churches, like I didn’t even know who they were. I got contact information just from, I don’t know, looking off their websites or whatever. And I sent this email and just said, “Hey, this is who I am. This is where I go to church. Would you be interested in trying this women’s gathering?” And what surprised the socks off of me was that they all said yes! I thought they would blow me off. I thought they’d be like, no thanks, but they all said yes! So I gathered together with these three or four other women, and we planned out this event. And we decided to make it a four-week Bible study. And we had a theme that we were going through, and one of the ideas that I wanted to pursue in all of these series is that we would study women from the Bible, and we could learn from them about how their relationship with God was, and what can we learn from them and their relationship with God.

Amy Satterfield 11:13
So the very first theme that we had that year were Women In The Life Of Christ. So, I started with Mary, the mother of Jesus. And at the end of that four-week series, we ended with Mary Magdalene who saw Jesus resurrected. And so we just focused on the women in the life of Christ. And one of the reasons why I called it Women Of The Way was because in the New Testament, I believe it’s in Acts, they they called, the new believers there, they call them followers of the way. And so that’s where I wanted it to be like, we’re women of the Way. We’re following Jesus. We’re following the Way. So that’s why I called it that. And so, that was one of the reasons why I think we were able to gather women because we weren’t focusing on doctrine, theology. We weren’t focusing on specific beliefs. We were focusing on studying women of the Bible and finding out how we can be like them, or how their lives can inspire us. So we developed, you know, the series. We came up with lots of different ideas of how to go about doing it. I wanted it to be easy. I want it to be where people from work could drop off at work, and that it wouldn’t take a long time. And so we developed this routine, and we tried to set it, set it in motion.

Laurie Graham 12:21
Yeah, so I have to go back. You sent a cold email?

Amy Satterfield 12:25
Yes.

Laurie Graham 12:25
To women at different churches, that you had never met. Like, were you scared to do that? Like, how did you, like that’s, that’s a bold move!

Amy Satterfield 12:33
I absolutely did that. I don’t know. I’ve never, I’ve always been scared to do stuff, but then I’m just like, if I feel really, God’s really just, you know, inspiring me or leading me, it’s like, okay, I’ll just plunge in. And I remember sitting at my computer, I wrote that email, and I just like pushed send, like, I was like, I just scrunched up, and I pushed it. And within a couple of days, they responded back, yeah.

Laurie Graham 12:56
You said, you were surprised they all responded back and said yes, and I would be too! Like, I would be very surprised. And to me, it kind of speaks to the fact that people do want connection. And we have so many walls between denominations. And you know, we’re all following Jesus. So I don’t really think that was like the whole plan of His you know, but we’ve got a lot of stumbling blocks between us, between denominations and different beliefs and all those kind of things. And so, I love what you said about picking a study that was going to be more unifying, right? So we’re not going to talk about doctrines like speaking in tongues or baptism, or you know, I mean, even like, I don’t know, women submitting to their husbands, right? Like, you can pick topics that divide, but so you decided to pick a topic that wasn’t going to divide.

Laurie Graham 13:40
One question I have is when people have talked about, like, doing things with other churches in the past, because we’ve had a lot of these discussions in our community groups and the Network and stuff like that, there’s a fear and sometimes an experience where one church takes over or like some competition or some comparisons, or just not having a real good, relational dynamic. How did that work out with you all? Because I think you even rotated churches and tell us a little bit about that.

Amy Satterfield 14:11
Yes, I was very intentional about that. I wanted it to be like a multi-week series. So we chose four weeks, but we wanted to rotate it to the different churches involved. At that first year, it was logistic. There’s like four churches around the square in Fayetteville, Tennessee, so we kind of kept it to those four churches right there just for, you know, it being close and together. But I wanted different churches to host each Monday night of the series, so that no one church could own it.

Laurie Graham 14:40
Brilliant. Brilliant!

Amy Satterfield 14:41
You know, I didn’t really, I didn’t want it to be at one church, and then everybody would think, oh, it’s that church sponsoring this event. We rotated to different places so that not one place can lay claim to it. Also, I was just, you know, a kid, a woman, whatever. Asking people hey, can I come host an event at your church? You know, so having it at different places also kind of shared the load, you know, to where it just wasn’t one church having to set up and be responsible for it.

Laurie Graham 15:09
I think you said something so key there. You said, you didn’t want one church to sponsor it. You wanted it to be shared. And I think that is a mistake sometimes we make is, we try to host an interdenominational gathering at our church, right? And then it does kind of put, it just puts a different positioning in it than, hey, do you want to come together and do this together? So I love it. So what else can you share? Either something you learned that went great, or was maybe a struggle or?

Amy Satterfield 15:38
Well, one, another thing that I was very intentional about was a part of not just one church owning it, or hosting it, I tried to involve different churches in the different parts and pieces of, of the, of the session that we would have. So we had, you know, usually someone who’s sang some special songs. So I would, you know, try to get different people from different churches to do that. Sometimes we’d have a choir, like if a particular church had a women’s choir, or you know, a special singer, or a young woman coming up, and I wanted to give her an experience, or give her an opportunity to, you know, sing and share in that way. So I would try to do different churches from, you know, for the music, and then we would try to get different churches to help sponsor the food. So we would try to have a light meal. That got to be a little bit difficult, considering, you know, sometimes we had a lot of people show up, but we tried to keep the meal very simple. So I tried to have different churches contribute to the meal. And then whatever speaker I had, I tried to make sure that I made sure the speakers were from different areas. So okay, so this is a funny word, instead of cross-pollinate. I would try to cross-denominate. So if.

Laurie Graham 16:49
That’s a great word!

Amy Satterfield 16:50
Yeah, I know! So if we were at one church, one church was hosting it, the speaker, I would try to make from another church, so that everything was crossed over as much as possible and try to give different parts and pieces to different, you know, so that not one church, like you said, was hosting it, owning it, or, you know, not everything happening that evening was from one church denomination.

Laurie Graham 17:14
So that’s really beautiful, and that also goes into a lot of strategies we teach just in small churches. The more people you involve in doing it, you’re doing ministry with them instead of to them or for them, right? Because even like in women’s ministry, if you’re, if you and your friend are going to plan it, and do it, and do the food and everything, who knows who’s gonna show up. But once you have other people involved in doing ministry together, you’re having this church bring the food and this one do the singing, and this one do the speaking, and this one did the hosting, like so brilliant! How many churches were represented over this time?

Amy Satterfield 17:45
Okay, so the first year that we did this, we thought, okay, we’ll be happy if 10 or 12 people show up. And we had four churches that were originally involved. That first night, about 70 people showed up, from all the churches, and we probably had 12 churches involved. By the end of the 10 years, on a given night, we can have 40 different churches represented in that one gathering. And yeah, it was churches from all over our county, maybe one or two, one or two people from that church. But yeah, it was from churches from all over. So.

Laurie Graham 18:16
How big is Fayetteville because I’m in Tucson and we’re a city of a million, and I can’t imagine 40 churches showing up?

Amy Satterfield 18:21
Yes, Fayetteville, I think we probably have 30 to 50,000 people. So not very big at all. And then we have a, Fayetteville is the one main town, and then Lincoln County is, you know, the broader area. So we had churches from all over Lincoln County show up and a little bit from Hazel Green, Alabama, across the state lines. And it was, you know, going back to different churches sharing the load, of course, I tried to ask the larger churches to host because of the space, but I was like trying to get other churches involved, that were smaller. Trying to figure out ways for smaller churches to contribute was important to me as well. So that’s why I would ask people from smaller churches to do the food or to sing or, you know, the different aspects like that. So yeah, it was really intentional, trying to not just let the host churches do the main thing.

Laurie Graham 19:12
I just think this is such a beautiful, like, it’s just a beautiful image of God at work and you joining with Him and other people like, just being hungry to be involved. I also think one of the key things you did, which I love, and I think is genius, is that you did a four-week series. Like this wasn’t going to be every month we’re doing it forever or every week like a four-week series. And honestly, I don’t even know if I would have thought of that, like strategy of just doing four weeks and then doing it the next year, but clearly it worked! Like were women just looking forward to this each year, you said it grew and?

Amy Satterfield 19:47
Yes, after the first year or two word of mouth spread. So keep in mind I had no budget. I was, my church that I attended at the time supported me but I didn’t, wasn’t receiving any money from my church to do this. So I was just a gal with an idea with no money, you know? So everything that I did, yeah, I tried to do free or you know, scrape up enough money to do to come up with a flyer or something like this, but word of mouth spread. And so when word of mouth spread each year, people would be like, have you heard of women of the way? Oh, you’ve got to come with me, and that’s how it would grow. It just blessed me so much. It was so amazing.

Laurie Graham 20:26
Okay, so I just, let’s go back to this, you said I was just this gal, like I was this one person with no budget, and so, so many times, people in small churches, they even come into our Facebook community, you see them and they say, I have this idea, but nobody will support me. Or I have this idea, but the pastor doesn’t like it, or I have this idea and nobody will join me. Like, isn’t there so much power, just that, like, you had this idea, and you just figured it out? Like, I mean, there’s something about that, that I think we all just need to kind of get a hold of our own influence because if somebody’s listening right now, and you have a passion, like to do a tutoring program with a child, figure it out, go do it. If you have a passion, like for the homeless, you don’t have to have a big team around you or a budget. You can get involved in ministry to the homeless or ministry to, you know, this community or ministry, you know, overseas or whatever. And I just love that, Amy.

Amy Satterfield 21:22
Yeah, absolutely. Because I stepped out, and I took the risk, you know, and then people then joined me once I started, because then that’s where I would meet this woman and she really loved the vision, and she would kind of jump in there with me. And then, I had another friend who, you know, loved the idea and supported me. So it’s like, as I stepped out in faith, then I attracted the people who loved the idea and the vision and supported me and continued, you know, through the journey with me.

Laurie Graham 21:54
Amy, I have honestly, I’ve known this story for quite a long time, and I’ve never thought about the courage that you must have taken just to take the first step, because it’s not like you were an event planner, or you did this all the time, or you were like a women’s ministry leader at this big church, or like, you literally just went out, send out a couple emails and put this thing together, right?

Amy Satterfield 22:14
Yeah, I mean, it’s either courage or it’s crazy, but I guess, I guess, courage because, you know, we did it for 10 years.

Laurie Graham 22:24
So what were, what were some of the results? Or did you see any transformation or we’re all, we’re all about transformation here, so how did this play out?

Amy Satterfield 22:32
Through the years, one of the comments, I started, like, we did it the first year, and then we did it the second year, and then I was, we were at some community event, it was like some Easter event, you know, during Holy Week, and I heard this woman say, oh, we met at Women Of The Way. And that just blessed me and encouraged me that women who might not have ever had an opportunity to meet because, you know, we go to our own church, and, and I’m all for that, and we associate with people at our own church. And we may or may not have opportunities to get to know people from other churches. It’s just to the nature of what we do when we attend our own church. But through this community event, people met each other that they might not would have otherwise met, and then they became friends. So I started hearing about that, and that, that just encouraged me, blessed me so much, that women were saying, oh, we met at Women Of The Way, and maybe they might not see each other till the next Women Of The Way Series, but then they would be so excited to see each other at the next year’s events. So that was so wonderful.

Amy Satterfield 23:29
That was a huge benefit. And I think tied to that, is the idea that we would attend different churches, you know, rotating to the different churches in that series, and I just got the feeling that people would realize, you know, the people at that church, they’re not that much different than me. I think people will realize, people in other denominations and churches aren’t that different. It’s not that weird. You know, oh, look, they have a beautiful building. I never would have thought that they would have had such a beautiful building on the inside because we took that intention to share and to go around to the different churches. So that was another thing.

Amy Satterfield 24:06
And then I have to say, my most favorite thing that that happened, and this is just so beautiful. It makes me emotional every time I think of it. What we did at the end of each evening, we decided to say the Lord’s prayer together. The first few ladies, the first few ladies that were planning this with me, you know, we talked about different things like how could we end this? How could draw it all to a close? And we thought about communion. Well, there’s so many different ways that people take communion. We didn’t want to offend anyone or you know, cause any issues, you know, so we didn’t do communion. But then, the one lady that was so integral in helping me to plan this. She said, how about the Lord’s Prayer? It’s the one prayer that we pray that every denomination prays. We all know it. We all pray it. We don’t need, you know, it to be written down. We don’t need to see, everyone just knows it. So at the end of it each session, we would, everyone would hold hands and we would say the Lord’s prayer together. And I’m going to try not to get teared up, but what I would do after, I would just sneak a peek and look. I would watch as all of these women are gathered together, they’re holding hands. It is one body. It’s, it’s everyone together saying the Lord’s Prayer, and that was my hugest blessing. It was the most powerful, amazing thing that I experienced every single time that we got together, it was the best.

Laurie Graham 25:30
Wow. You know, Amy, you said a phrase, probably at least a year ago that I’ve used in our ministry, because we’re interdenominational too. Do you know which phrase I’m talking about?

Amy Satterfield 25:41
I believe it is who unites us rather than what divides us?

Laurie Graham 25:45
Yeah, focus on who unites us rather than what divides us. I love, that made such an impact on me when you said it. And I know I, I got permission from you to use it, but we use it a lot because I just think it’s so, it’s so like Jesus. So if another church wanted to do something like this, now, maybe it’s not women’s ministry, maybe it’s some kind of youth collective, or maybe it’s a, you know, intergenerational thing or a holiday thing. If another church, you know, or somebody in another church had this vision to, you know, do something on an interdenominational way in their community, what advice would you give them?

Amy Satterfield 26:21
I would say, first, you know, just reach out to a couple of different people from a couple of different churches, you know. Get that name and number or find somebody, you know, and just, just throw that, cast the net out. You know, just try contacting a few people, and it’s okay, if, you know, someone says no thanks or, you know, I believe we’ll pass like, it’s totally okay. But just try to get, start with a couple other people, one person from another church, and then another person. It doesn’t have to be a lot of people, just a couple of different people, and it’s okay to start out small. You know, we were very blessed that this grew and developed over the years, but, you know, there’s, that’s no guarantee. That starting out small and just having a gathering of three, or four or five, six people, that can still have a great impact, and it can still grow.

Amy Satterfield 27:10
So that would be my first bit of advice, and then just try to come up with something that is simple, that you know, meets people’s needs. You know, so we had some light refreshments, and we had a little bit of music, and we kept it at a time slot, like it was always from 6:00 in the evening to like 7:00 or 7:30. Like, we kept it very simple so that people could, you know, felt like they could still attend it after work, or, you know, and then still get home at a decent hour, stuff like that. So those would probably be the main, the main points that I would have to get started.

Laurie Graham 27:42
You know, I love when you talk about keeping it simple, because I think everything we plan should be simple. Like, and especially in small churches, like one of my foundational pieces that I teach on often is plan an event that will be okay if it’s just your team that shows up, or if just two people show up. Because you can have an event that will be successful with 2, or with 20, or with 50. And, but when we get ourselves all complicated, then it gets a little more stressful, and I don’t think we need more stress. I think we can do a lot of ministry with a lot less stress.

Amy Satterfield 28:14
It’s even thinking about the decorations. You know, I did not, you know, we, like I love pretty stuff. I love you know, when people pull out all the bells and whistles and it’s just gorgeous. That’s wonderful. But for this, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so that there wouldn’t be any added stress for the people setting it up or the people attending. So it was tables, and sometimes we had tablecloths and sometimes we didn’t, and sometimes it was just like a simple bud vase with, with a, with a flower in the middle of the vase. And, and sometimes there was nothing. Sometimes it was just the snacks on each individual table. So even the decorations, we wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

Laurie Graham 28:50
Love it. Love it. And you wrote a whole blog post on this for people who are looking for a step-by-step plan, right?

Amy Satterfield 28:55
Yeah, sure did!

Laurie Graham 28:57
The blog post she wrote is on the Small Church Ministry Website. It has like the longest URL ever. So this is before we were being really snazzy with our URLs. So if you want to check it out, it’s called An Easy Plan To Host An Interdenominational Women’s Event In Your Community. But, even if you’re not looking at a women’s event, honestly, there’s some great points for anybody in here. But you can check it out at smallchurchministry.com. Either, kind of search it in there, or we will put the link below in the show notes. Absolutely, for sure. So Amy, what is something that you wish I had asked or something that you’re like, oh, I really want to add that.

Amy Satterfield 29:32
I just think if it’s an idea that sparked in your heart and you feel passionate about it, just take the risk and do it. Just step out in faith and go do it. Yeah, that’s what I would say to anybody who is willing, you know, that this idea sparking an idea in their minds.

Laurie Graham 29:49
Wow, I love it. So before we close, what is something you’re excited about, like in your own church, in your own ministry area, and it could be something totally like on a tangent. But if you think of, you know, the upcoming months or 2023, what are you super excited about in your small church?

Amy Satterfield 30:06
Okay, I’ll have to step back to this past weekend. That, what just happened. So. And this has to do with my daughter. So I was asking my daughter, I was trying to see what she could be involved with it at our church. She didn’t want to be a part of the music. She’s getting ready to graduate high school, and like she’s starting to be in this transition of, you know, too old for youth are not quite old enough for youth, but not quite adult and things like that. And I was trying to see what she could be a part of in our church, and so I instead of saying, what do you want to do, I backed up and I asked her, what are you passionate about? And she said, I said, doesn’t have to be church related or not, what are you passionate about? And she said, baking. And my daughter loves to bake. And we paused for a second, and we kind of brainstormed. I said, how could you use that to, you know, serve people at church?

Amy Satterfield 30:55
So what we came up with is, she gathered together some young ladies from our church, that are about her age, and they made, they baked Valentine’s treats and then we delivered them to widows that were in our church for Valentine’s. And it was such a blessing because I tried to help her realize it’s not just about the baking, it’s about the people that you’re with while you’re baking, building relationships with them. But then it’s also blessing those women because they’ve lost their husbands, either recently, or you know, from, for many years, and then they may or may not get anything for Valentine’s Day. So it was blessing those women as well. So it was a beautiful time together. The smiles on their faces, the girls having fun baking together, and then the women who received the Valentine’s, it was just really a special time. So, that has really helped me, looping back around to what I do at church now, as part of developing our discipleship, is trying to ask the question, what are you passionate about? In order to help get them plugged into serving and to growing and as a disciple through ways that they’re passionate.

Laurie Graham 31:56
Okay, so now I’m going to like, another tangent is happening here, I promise we’re going to close in like a minute, but what you’re talking about, we’ve talked about this before! Like so many times, were looking for somebody to put into a spot. Like, we have these spots to serve. We have these things to serve instead of looking at what God put in their heart because if we look at what God put in our heart, what God put in your heart, what God put in his heart in her heart, like it really comes together. And there is so much ministry, I think, that we have, is latent the right word? Like it’s kind of stuck in there and not doing anything? We have so much ministry inside of us that if it doesn’t fit like this one size fits all, we feel like it’s not really a ministry, and that’s so not true!

Amy Satterfield 32:39
Yeah, I have to add another thought onto that. That Sunday, we announced, you know, she’s going to be baking this afternoon for whoever wants to join her. And we had this new family that had been coming for a couple of weeks. And the, the teenage daughter, during our fellowship time, she says I’m, I would love to bake. Can I join you today? So this young girl of this new family got plugged in because we were baking because she loves to bake. And then we got to know her, and we, you know, she went around with us as we delivered the goodies. And then she came to the youth on Wednesday night and it was just, made it easier for her to get plugged in to our community because she was also passionate about baking.

Laurie Graham 33:19
Wow. And you didn’t even know it. It’s not like we’re gonna do a baking thing because we want to attract this young family. It’s like somebody followed a passion. You encouraged your daughter. Announced it. Hey, come join us. Somebody joins, and all of a sudden, it’s a connection made that wouldn’t have been made before. Amy, you and I could geek out on ministry all day long.

Amy Satterfield 33:39
I’d love to geek out on ministry!

Laurie Graham 33:41
I don’t know if you remember, you probably do, Amy joined our, Amy joined the Small Church Academy when it first started and it was actually, had a different name. But she said I’m so excited to be with people where I can geek out on ministry and not feel weird that I’m geeking out about ministry. And so, if anybody listening, if you want to come join us and geek out on ministry and learn some great skills, get some support and accountability, really check out the Academy. The Small Church Academy. We have more amazing testimonies that come out of there of lives changed, churches changed, people being refreshed, pastors being restored, falling in love with ministry again, so many different things, but check out the Academy at smallchurchministry.com/academy. So I guess we’ll wrap up since there’s probably no clear ending to our conversation, and we’ll probably talk for another hour after this Amy, but just so we can let everybody else go. Let’s close off this, this episode. Amy, do you want to say our final words?

Amy Satterfield 34:36
Yes! Everybody, go be a light!