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In this episode, ministry veteran Becky Sargent calls out the truth that more events do not equal more ministry and that choosing an event’s purpose is the first step to more ministry impact.
Becky shares her thoughts on small churches, effective ministry, reaching your community, and more.
Listen in for:
- Tips to serve your community with no strings attached
- How developing a reputation of loving your community leads to deep ministry return
- Ideas for purpose-filled event evaluations with leaders, volunteers, and event attendees
Links Mentioned:
Connect with Becky:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry/
Read more about Becky’s community yard sale:
Host A Community Yard Sale To Serve Your Neighbors
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Listen On
Laurie Graham 00:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast.
Laurie Graham 00:15
Welcome to another episode of the Small Church Ministry podcast. We are already starting with a laugh because I have a special guest on the episode that I’m super excited to introduce you to. And I said, “Alright, let’s do it!” And instead of hitting record, I hit “leave session.” So if that ever happens to you, please know that we all have days like that.
And we are just so excited to really connect small churches all around the world together, to just join in with God and what he’s doing, by sharing where God is working and how we’re seeing him work. Because the hope that’s being ignited everywhere is just, it’s so exciting. It’s so great to be a part of it. And Becky Sargent is one of those people I have met along the way. We did get to meet in person not too long ago, which is just a delight. She’s in Florida. I’m in Tucson. But before we get into this, Becky, do you want to just introduce yourself a little bit, maybe how you found us and what your ministry experience has been?
Becky Sargent 01:06
Sure. I am Becky Sargent, I live in Cape Coral, Florida. And I found Small Church Ministry on Facebook. Actually, one day I happened to see a little blip on there about, “we’re looking for speakers for our women’s conference,” about small churches. I’m like, “Hey, I have been involved in small church since I was young, so why not? I would love to speak!” So I filled that out thinking they are never gonna contact me. The next day, I get an email back from this lady named Laurie Graham. And man, my life has changed ever since that day.
Laurie Graham 01:43
Oh, my God, and you’ve changed so many lives since that day! That is so funny. I forget that’s how we met. And I know you’ve even shared the story with me, and every time I’m like, “I forget that’s how we met.” And I remember, Becky, after you said you would speak with us, that Melissa McDonald, who is very known in the children’s ministry world—she does training and coaching; I’m sure we’ll have her on the podcast before too long; she speaks at our conference—she messaged me and said, “You got Becky Sargent to speak? I am so excited that you did!” And so it’s really cool just to be watching voices raised up in small churches and for you to think, “Oh my goodness, why would they have me speak?” And now you’re writing like half the blog, which is another story. But anyway, Becky, we are thrilled to have you in the community. Becky has done ministry alongside her husband for how many years, Becky? What would you say?
Becky Sargent 02:32
Over 30. We’ve stopped counting after a while.
Laurie Graham 02:36
I know that you’ve done women’s ministry, children’s ministry, you’ve definitely ministered in our community to pastor spouses as well. What else have you done?
Becky Sargent 02:47
Right now, I actually am a part-time paid employee at the local church that we attend. And my title is Ministry Support Coordinator. So that means I have my hands in a little bit of everything, whatever needs to be done. So I kind of do a lot of events and a lot of volunteers, so you name it.
Laurie Graham 03:13
And how many of your 30 plus years in ministry have you spent in smaller churches?
Kari Bartkus 03:17
All of them. Every one.
Laurie Graham 03:19
Okay, cool. And before we dive into our topic for today, what do you think your biggest strengths or gifts are that you bring into a church environment? Because we don’t talk about this a lot. We all have different specialized gifts. Like, you know, we can be working in children’s ministry and be gifted in administration or in, you know, people skills or in care or whatever. So for you, particularly, you’ve been in all these different ministry areas, what gifts do you kind of bring into those environments?
Becky Sargent 1 03:48
I think it’s encouragement. I really love to be supportive and encourage other people to just kind of inspire them and keep them going. Caring networks, I love to be involved in that, making sure people don’t fall through the cracks, that everyone is being cared for and feels the love of God in the church. And also ideas: I love to come up with new ideas, try new things. I’m telling you, you have gifted me by allowing me to write on the blog because I get to write down any idea I want.
Laurie Graham 04:24
If you all have been on the smallchurchministry.com website, you have probably read Becky’s stuff. Literally, she writes post after post after post, and I’m so glad you brought up your giftedness in ideas because I think creativity is one of those gifts that you have brought even into our environment at Small Church Ministry in your writing, yes, in your speaking, but even behind the scenes, you’re one of the people I go to to say, “Hey, what do you think about this idea? Give me a new idea.” And you know, not to expose our ages on the podcast, but so many people say the older people in my church aren’t open to new ideas, and you are like the opposite.
Becky Sargent 05:06
I try. And the older I get, however, I can have a lot more empathy and compassion for the older people. So I feel like, at this point, I can be a good bridge between the younger people and the older people, because I’ve seen both sides. And I know what they’re going through and why they’re struggling about change. But I also know their willingness to participate is great. So if you can get them on board, you’ve got a great team behind you.
Laurie Graham 05:40
I think we’ve got to stop pigeonholing people into, “if you’re this age, or this, you know, ministry area, or this, you know, experience level or whatever, that it’s automatic, that there’s like some package that comes with it,” because God has made us so unique in so many different ways. Now, the topic that we landed on today, we’re going to be talking about going from being event-focused to purpose-focused. And Becky, I know this is something that has even gotten stronger with you in the past couple years where you’re more aware, or really looking at the purpose of events. Do you want to talk about kind of your journey in ministry and where you were and where you are now? Or how that comes into play?
Becky Sargent 06:18
Sure. Well, when we were young, getting into our first churches, as pastor and wife, you know, we were super excited. We definitely wanted to get in there and change things and see how the church could grow and do all this stuff. And, um, we had read all the, you know, new books about it, and “how do you grow your church” and all this stuff? And everybody always said, “Oh, well, you know, you have these big events, and you’re exposing your church to so many people, and you’ll have all these people come in, and then the next Sunday, you’ll have all these new visitors.” And, you know, that really just never did happen. We really did a lot of very creative events, some unique ones, some other ones, and we just, every time, you know, you would see the time, the effort you put into it. You’d see a few people come, and then almost, you know, almost never see someone come back to church that next Sunday. And we just got so discouraged, so frustrated, thinking, you know, we must be doing something wrong in these events, you know, “we’re not doing it right.” And then, after a while, Small Church Ministry came into my life.
And I started to see a whole flip-flop of direction and ministry focus. And we started to see that in our church. One of the, in our small church in Maryland, one of the biggest events we did was an Easter egg hunt. And each year, it would grow. And we had, in fact, had to break it into two sessions, because we would have so many people come, so we would have over 250 kids and parents come to our Easter egg hunt. Not one of them would return to church. But we sat down and we said, “you know, what is our purpose in this?” Well, one was to share the gospel, which they did definitely get a good, clear presentation of the gospel, but also to connect.
That’s what Small Church Ministry pushes and encourages, and is all about making connections with people. And what a difference that makes! And so we started to connect with people that we saw could possibly come and be part of other things in our church, not coming in right away to be part of big church on Sunday morning. But we invited their children to participate. I ran an after-school girls’ craft club. So I personally invited all the girls that I would see to come be involved in that. And I had quite a few that were very interested in coming.
And so they started coming to that. And that was a real relaxed time, wasn’t pushing church on anybody. It was just building relationships, getting to know each other. A lot of times moms would come with them or dads would come pick them up. And so you get to know the parents too, and you got to build those relationships. And within a year, almost every single child and their family started to attend the church.
Laurie Graham 09:48
Oh my gosh, I have not heard that story of you!
Becky Sargent 09:50
Because they saw you cared about them. They saw how we were as people, and you know, they just, they felt comfortable. And it was like once you invited them after they had been there for a while, they were like, “Yeah, sure, we’ll come,” and it was just unbelievable. And it was just like, made so much more sense to us to do it that way. So we started thinking about events in a very different way.
Laurie Graham 10:20
Well, you know, as you’re talking, what is striking me, which is new and different, and I just love learning from people. And how often have we had conversations, this has not quite dawned on me. But it’s really talking about the pace at which we are inviting people in and including them.
Because sometimes when we talk about, you know, community outreach events, people push back and say, “Well, yeah, it is, the whole purpose of doing events is to let people know about Jesus, and it’s a blah, blah, blah,” and then we feel like failures because they’re not coming in the next week. But what you’re really talking about, and what I’ve always taught is, there should always be next-step invitations, next-step invites back.
But taking somebody from coming to VBS for free childcare and saying, “join our church and know Jesus,” that’s a big leap, right? That’s just a really, really big leap. And it’s not that we don’t want people to know Jesus or make disciples, but something you said really kind of triggered that for me. It’s really the pace. It’s the timing. It’s being less rushed. It’s those connections that lead to something more instead of “event plus event equals church member.” Right?
Becky Sargent 11:35
Exactly. And when you mentioned VBS, that reminded me that we kind of, again, rethought that, because again, we were thinking, “okay, VBS kids come and obviously, we’re gonna have people come because they came to VBS.” And that just wasn’t the case. We started to offer a moms’ craft class during VBS. So every night while the kids were there, the moms would come. And there were probably five or six of them, they would stay, and I would do a craft with them.
And it was a longer craft, so it took all week to do it. But again, that time together allowed us to get to know each other and to share with each other and to build relationships. And no, they did not come to church that next week. But because of the relationships, I was able to invite them later to some other things, some women’s events and some other things that they participated in. And again, eventually, yes, they did come and start being part of the church. But it is that process of showing you care and building that time and relationship into them.
Laurie Graham 12:52
Yeah, I love that. And I think Jesus taught us that. Sometimes I just think of his life. And I think he really could have modeled a different way to do church. He could have modeled building a physical church in a location; he could have taught that. And I do believe God uses the local church; I’m not against that, obviously, because of everything that I do. But I think Jesus taught the value of relationships. And yes, his ministry was three years, right? But he was never rushed in those three years. Like, he was not trying to build something.
So I want to go back to something you said a little bit ago: you said when you were young, you were doing events, and the thought was you do an event and people join your church. And you mentioned a little bit feeling like we’re failing or it’s not working. How has that transition for you? That’s very difficult to go from feeling like a failure. I don’t know what has changed for you in that? If now you can do an event and nobody comes back to church, like your garage sale, which I hope you have time to talk about. But how has that changed for you? What advice can you give to other people who are still struggling with, “I hear what you’re saying, but I still feel like a failure?”
Becky Sargent 13:59
Yeah. And it was very, very discouraging when you’re first starting out in ministry, especially because, you know, you go to it—we are in a denomination. So you would go to a district-wide event. And of course, the very first thing every pastor is talking about is, “Oh, our church grew by this many,” or, “you know, we’ve had this many baptisms,” or “this many people that were saved,” or “this many,” you know. And so, I really felt so bad for my husband because he just felt like he couldn’t say anything because, you know, that just wasn’t happening. Ministry was happening, yes. And people were growing in their faith in their relationship to the Lord.
But, you know, because you didn’t have those numbers behind you, you just felt like you were wrong. And so it did get really discouraging after a while, and then when I was able to see this other side of it, I was like, “No, where were you 20 years ago, Laurie?” I feel like things could have been so different. And so now there’s a freedom in it, to know that the numbers don’t have to match what you’re doing, you know. There doesn’t have to be that expectation there. You can do what Jesus is calling you to do. And so that really is exciting to me. And that really is freeing. And to me, that helps you to encourage others, as you’re working together, to know that, you know, there is no expectation on them as well. And that you can encourage your team, “Hey, it’s okay that no one came to church after this. Look at the great things that we did! You know, look at how God is working, look at where God is working. What are we going to do with this now? How can we use this to further the kingdom?” And so that just makes all the difference in the world.
Laurie Graham 16:06
Yeah, looking at the impact that did happen. I think a lot of times we look at what did not happen. And because we’re looking at what did not happen, we miss that God is at work right now with this person, with this individual, with, you know, whatever that is. And so, can we talk about the big yard sale? And what a difference that has made in your community, for your church, and your reputation?
Laurie Graham 16:28
So y’all, like we have a few different posts on the website about, like, yard sales and community yard sales. And we know that churches do them. And Becky doesn’t do them at her church, her church does this with completely different results and different goals in mind than any other church I’ve ever talked about. Because I’ve done yard sales too, as a fundraiser for youth mission trips, that’s kind of one of my gigs that I’ve done. And other churches have done this as fundraisers, but you have a completely different goal, purpose, and results from yours. And do you kind of want to share about even how that came about?
Becky Sargent 17:06
Now, everything—the food when people come, we do hot dogs and chips and sodas and water, and we do a breakfast thing in the morning—everything is free for the vendors, free for the people who attend. It’s just there because we’re loving on people who live here.
Becky Sargent 17:06
We have people assigned specifically to go to the vendors throughout the day to make sure, “Do you need a restroom break? Can somebody else stay with your booth? Do you need water? Do you need something to eat? Would you like something brought to you?” And we help them set up.
Becky Sargent 17:06
At the end of the day, we make sure we have a truck that comes and takes away anything no one wants to take home with them. You know, they don’t want to deal with it anymore. So we usually have some sort of charity come and pick up the leftovers and take them away for people. Our young people help them load their cars, put everything away, and clean up after. So it really is a totally focused time of just loving on our community.
Becky Sargent 17:06
The pastor puts out a free book table for people, you know, it goes through his library. So there are free books. Last year, we started to incorporate a prayer station where people could be prayed for or just leave a prayer request. So every year we’re, you know, we kind of fine-tune and tweak and see what we need. But it’s a joy to be involved. And really, the feedback that we get from the community is amazing.
Speaker 1 17:06
When it started out, it was a committee service, so to speak. We have a fairly large yard, both parking lot and grounds, at our church, and we’re fairly centrally located on a busy road. So we offered that people could come and set up a spot for a yard sale for free. With everybody being all together, it would attract more attention, more shoppers, and so they could come and do this. That would be our service to them.
Becky Sargent 17:40
When I originally started, it didn’t begin as a fundraiser. The youth would have a huge booth to raise money to go on a missions trip every summer. They would accept donations for the food, and the youth group would accept donations of items from people in the church. They would sell the items and then keep the money to go on their trip.
Becky Sargent 18:09
After a few years of this, we sat down to reevaluate and said, “Do we really want to do that part of it there because we want to be a service, completely loving on our community? And we don’t want that to distract. We don’t want people thinking, ‘Oh, well, you’re offering this nice service to everybody, but you’re really only doing it because you’re having your yard sale for your youth.'” So we wanted to make sure that people knew that this was just for them, totally for them, because we love our community and we wanted to help them.
Becky Sargent 18:47
So we took out the youth part of it. We thought, “You know, we can find other avenues by which to support the youth; we don’t need to do it there.” We encourage our youth to be involved in helping that day because literally almost the whole church helps in some way and volunteers. So we encourage them to be part of it.
Laurie Graham 20:52
So you don’t charge the people to set up the tables. You help them set up the table?
Speaker 1 20:59
We help them set up the tables, we help them clean up the tables.
Laurie Graham 21:04
You give them free food and you bring them water. You literally are doing this as a service. How do you evaluate the success of that event? One thing, Becky, that I love about you, and I think you have been a great influence in our community, you’re involved in the Small Church Network and Academy. You amaze me, because you’re learning even though you also are teaching. Like, you’re just a beautiful example of a constant learner and grower. But one thing that you bring up a lot is goals and evaluation. Like, “what’s the goal?” and “how do we evaluate?” So for an event like this, where you are literally just serving, you’re serving the community, you’re involving tons of people in your church and serving—you even mentioned you bring the youth in and teach them to serve and have them serving. How do you evaluate the success of this event?
Becky Sargent 21:55
After we give evaluations to all of our volunteers, we have a core team that leads the event. We make sure to meet with them and get all their input. If they had any problems or if we could do something better, their input is very valuable. I also send out surveys to all the vendors.
Laurie Graham 22:21
“What questions are on the surveys? Are the questions, ‘How much money did you make?'”
Becky Sargent 22:26
“It’s just, ‘Did you feel loved? Did you feel that you were served? Was there anything we could have done better? Do you have any ideas or suggestions for a future yard sale?'” So all of them say yes, and that they want to do it more.
Laurie Graham 22:47
One of your questions is actually, “Did you feel loved?” Like, I mean, who is evaluating on that these days? Like, “how many people came? Did we meet our budget?” You know, “did you feel loved?” Like, who even asks that? What are some of the questions on your surveys for the people who volunteer—the people in your church who are working as volunteers?
Becky Sargent 23:05
We ask them all, first of all, “Did you enjoy doing what you were doing?” “What were you doing?” Again, “your input as to how you thought the day went?” We’d like to hear that to make sure everybody’s seeing things in the same way. And if they’re not, you know, why aren’t they? What happened that they thought needed to be different? Ideas that they may have for doing something differently in the next year or whatever. And stories, we always ask for stories. “Did you have some kind of personal connection with somebody that you could share a story about or share a testimony of something that happened?” And there’s always a lot of those, and that’s great.
Laurie Graham 23:52
That’s so good. I don’t know if you heard the podcast a couple of weeks ago, when we talked about kind of moving from a numbers focus to a people focus, but that’s one of the things that we shared: if you want to start evaluating and changing the culture of your church from numbers to connection and deeper ministry, you need to ask for more stories. Because it even shifts our focus when we’re at an event. “Oh, they’re going to ask me who I connected with or what story I have,” and knowing that’s even coming up makes me think, “Oh, I gotta connect with somebody.” I think it really changes from the task of just completing what we’re doing to loving on people. I just have so much I could say about that, Becky.
Laurie Graham 24:36
You know, the other thing I just want to mention is you said at the start when you began this community yard sale, you looked at what you had. You said, “We have a big yard and a big parking lot.” I think this really speaks to so many churches copying from other churches. We have listeners right now thinking, “We could never have a yard sale because we are a church plant and we’re in a mobile thing.” How do we get out of that mindset and start thinking of what we do have? Because I know there are many things you don’t have in your church, in your family, in your own personal arsenal of gift mixes, right? There are so many things all of us could say we don’t have. How do you get to creative ideas? How would you tell other people to look at what they have? Or how do we come up with how to do ministry in our unique settings, versus just what others are doing?
Becky Sargent 25:24
I think a lot of it is just, first of all, asking God, “What can we do? And how can we do it well here?” Whether it’s the people you have, sometimes we forget the network of people we have within our churches. A lot of times, we have people with skills and talents that we don’t even realize because we haven’t taken the time to get to know them or get to know that they are willing to share those kind of things. So that’s a very valuable tool that I think we need to use.
Becky Sargent 25:59
Also, when we lived in Maryland, we didn’t have a big space that we could do a yard sale like that. But we had a long circular driveway that came in one entrance, went all the way around the church, and then came out the other way. So the whole Small Church Ministry blog article about drive-thrus—that’s where that came from.
One day we said, “I wonder if we did a free drive-thru coffee and donut day if people would come.” And, you know, we didn’t have a ton of people, but you started to do it more and more, and they started to come. We started to do drive-thru carwashes for free, you know, just again, just serve and love on our community. And it took a very long time to convince the community that truly we were not charging money for washing your car; we were doing it for the joy of serving them.
Becky Sargent 26:58
And so those kinds of things, you just look and you think, “Okay, God has put us here in this place for this time. So what can we do here? What are the needs here?” I tell people it’s very important to find out the needs in your community. A great place to go is to people that are involved in your community. If you’re in a small rural place, go to town hall and talk to the people there. If you’re in more of a city place, talk to the mayor, or the Chamber of Commerce. Go to the schools; talk to the school counselors. They will tell you needs in your community. And how can you partner with them? How can you be a part of that? And the Lord will just continue to direct you from there.
Laurie Graham 27:47
Wow. Oh, so much good stuff. When we’ve talked about your garage sale in the past, you’ve mentioned it really affecting the reputation of your church in the community. Can you share some of the wins for that? A lot of people say that’s “so much effort for no results.” And I know I really believe the reputation of your church is really important—it’s more important than most people realize. The other thing is, we sometimes think the community doesn’t really know us, but they do have a reputation of you. You do have a reputation. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Becky Sargent 28:28
Sure. Well, because of the yard sale—and not just the people who use our space, but also the folks who live in the surrounding neighborhood—they see the activity. The neighbors come, they get free food, and they participate in shopping and things like that. So they see it, they know it, and they count on it being there every year. In fact, they’re great advertisers for us because they’re always telling other people about it.
Becky Sargent 29:04
We’ve found that because they come and get to know us, and they see us interacting with people, all of a sudden, if they have a need, a prayer need, or something comes up in their life, they will call and ask. They’ll say, “I know your church cares about people, can you help us?” We’ve had several people whose loved ones have passed away, and even though they weren’t involved in a church, they consider us their church because we’re in their community and they’ve seen us interacting. So they will come and ask. Even though they’re not part of our church, our church ladies will come and do a reception for them after the funeral. They’re just blown away that you would do that for them, and they’re strangers. But that’s God’s people. That’s God’s love at work. And that’s how you build that reputation for being God’s hands and feet in your community.
Laurie Graham 30:11
We are almost out of time, Becky. I know I could talk to you forever, and I’ll probably call you even later today to get more. If people want to connect with you, I’m just going to tell them right now: get involved in our Facebook community! Come join us in the Small Church Network. Becky is everywhere to be found. This is Becky Sargent; you can see, I think, just tons and tons—dozens and dozens—of blog posts on smallchurchministry.com that have been written by Becky. Becky, your stuff has been read by over 20,000 people. Did you know you’d be famous?
Becky Sargent 30:44
It’s just mind-boggling to me. You know, I Googled something the other day, and my article came up. I just sat there and laughed. I was like, “This is ironic.”
Laurie Graham 30:56
Exactly. So you all, just get to know Becky, however that just fits in your life with where you’re able to connect with her, because she really is such a treasure. So Becky, I know I’m talking about how awesome you are and how famous you are, and how you’re so creative and have all these ideas. But it’s not just you. And I know that you have a big value on listening, not just to God, but also to other people. So before we end today, can you talk about listening and how that has become just a real part of your ministry?
Becky Sargent 31:27
I think a lot of us have preconceived ideas, when we’re in ministry, of what we need to do, what we have to do, we, quote unquote, “should do.” And God has shown me over the years that so many times, you know, we can try something different. It’s okay to think outside that box. It’s okay to get rid of the box sometimes.
And a lot of times, we have people right within our own church family that have wonderful ideas. And they may not ever say it, because they’re not encouraged to say it. And so if they feel like you will listen to their ideas, you’ll get a lot of feedback, and you will get some amazing things. Now, okay, not everything we can do.
That’s okay. Encourage them, keep thinking, keep wondering, keep asking the questions, because you know what, just because I come up with an idea doesn’t mean that we do it, because I come up with a ton of ideas. And not all of them get done. But I just saw today, from a friend of mine, they actually did one of the ideas that was on one of our blog posts, and I was so excited that they were really excited about what they did. So I was happy to see that. So just keep trying.
Laurie Graham 32:49
That’s so fun. And you know, I just love what you said about really the ideas that are in your congregation, because I do believe many of us who have been in ministry, or been serving in ministry, or are just brand new to ministry, we kind of feel like it’s our responsibility to do the ministry for people or to them, instead of with people. And the more we can gather others in—I really believe from the creative vision stages, “What are you seeing? What would you love to do?”—our teams just develop so much healthier, and with so much more support and buy-in, and commitment and loyalty, and so much more fun and joy in ministry. Don’t you think?
Becky Sargent 33:22
Definitely! And that’s what truly makes the church a family. You know, everybody has a valuable part. And when we’re working together, it’s so much better than if it’s just two people over here always doing the same thing over and over again. You know, that’s when you get burnout. That’s when you get, you know, stillness. And the joy really gets sucked out of ministry when that happens. But when you’re all working together for the Lord, great things happen.
Laurie Graham 33:53
So awesome, Becky. Thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your ideas and on the blog. Thank you for just being such a big part of our community and our Facebook community. If you’re listening and you are not yet part of Creative Solutions for Small Churches, we have a free Facebook community, which has just been a godsend and such a light and such an encouragement to so many people. We share ideas, we share what’s working, and we encourage one another with creative solutions specifically for small churches. And if you’re ready to just jump into the whole thing, come join us in the Small Church Network and Academy. We really take concepts that we talk about on the podcasts and blog posts, and we go deeper.
Laurie Graham 34:37
All right, you all, we’re gonna be off. We will catch you again next week. Becky, do you want to sign us off here?
Becky Sargent 34:43
Sure. Go out there small church people and be a light.
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast.
Laurie Graham 00:15
Welcome to another episode of the Small Church Ministry podcast. We are already starting with a laugh because I have a special guest on the episode that I’m super excited to introduce you to. And I said, “Alright, let’s do it!” And instead of hitting record, I hit “leave session.” So if that ever happens to you, please know that we all have days like that.
And we are just so excited to really connect small churches all around the world together, to just join in with God and what he’s doing, by sharing where God is working and how we’re seeing him work. Because the hope that’s being ignited everywhere is just, it’s so exciting. It’s so great to be a part of it. And Becky Sargent is one of those people I have met along the way. We did get to meet in person not too long ago, which is just a delight. She’s in Florida. I’m in Tucson. But before we get into this, Becky, do you want to just introduce yourself a little bit, maybe how you found us and what your ministry experience has been?
Becky Sargent 01:06
Sure. I am Becky Sargent, I live in Cape Coral, Florida. And I found Small Church Ministry on Facebook. Actually, one day I happened to see a little blip on there about, “we’re looking for speakers for our women’s conference,” about small churches. I’m like, “Hey, I have been involved in small church since I was young, so why not? I would love to speak!” So I filled that out thinking they are never gonna contact me. The next day, I get an email back from this lady named Laurie Graham. And man, my life has changed ever since that day.
Laurie Graham 01:43
Oh, my God, and you’ve changed so many lives since that day! That is so funny. I forget that’s how we met. And I know you’ve even shared the story with me, and every time I’m like, “I forget that’s how we met.” And I remember, Becky, after you said you would speak with us, that Melissa McDonald, who is very known in the children’s ministry world—she does training and coaching; I’m sure we’ll have her on the podcast before too long; she speaks at our conference—she messaged me and said, “You got Becky Sargent to speak? I am so excited that you did!” And so it’s really cool just to be watching voices raised up in small churches and for you to think, “Oh my goodness, why would they have me speak?” And now you’re writing like half the blog, which is another story. But anyway, Becky, we are thrilled to have you in the community. Becky has done ministry alongside her husband for how many years, Becky? What would you say?
Becky Sargent 02:32
Over 30. We’ve stopped counting after a while.
Laurie Graham 02:36
I know that you’ve done women’s ministry, children’s ministry, you’ve definitely ministered in our community to pastor spouses as well. What else have you done?
Becky Sargent 02:47
Right now, I actually am a part-time paid employee at the local church that we attend. And my title is Ministry Support Coordinator. So that means I have my hands in a little bit of everything, whatever needs to be done. So I kind of do a lot of events and a lot of volunteers, so you name it.
Laurie Graham 03:13
And how many of your 30 plus years in ministry have you spent in smaller churches?
Kari Bartkus 03:17
All of them. Every one.
Laurie Graham 03:19
Okay, cool. And before we dive into our topic for today, what do you think your biggest strengths or gifts are that you bring into a church environment? Because we don’t talk about this a lot. We all have different specialized gifts. Like, you know, we can be working in children’s ministry and be gifted in administration or in, you know, people skills or in care or whatever. So for you, particularly, you’ve been in all these different ministry areas, what gifts do you kind of bring into those environments?
Becky Sargent 1 03:48
I think it’s encouragement. I really love to be supportive and encourage other people to just kind of inspire them and keep them going. Caring networks, I love to be involved in that, making sure people don’t fall through the cracks, that everyone is being cared for and feels the love of God in the church. And also ideas: I love to come up with new ideas, try new things. I’m telling you, you have gifted me by allowing me to write on the blog because I get to write down any idea I want.
Laurie Graham 04:24
If you all have been on the smallchurchministry.com website, you have probably read Becky’s stuff. Literally, she writes post after post after post, and I’m so glad you brought up your giftedness in ideas because I think creativity is one of those gifts that you have brought even into our environment at Small Church Ministry in your writing, yes, in your speaking, but even behind the scenes, you’re one of the people I go to to say, “Hey, what do you think about this idea? Give me a new idea.” And you know, not to expose our ages on the podcast, but so many people say the older people in my church aren’t open to new ideas, and you are like the opposite.
Becky Sargent 05:06
I try. And the older I get, however, I can have a lot more empathy and compassion for the older people. So I feel like, at this point, I can be a good bridge between the younger people and the older people, because I’ve seen both sides. And I know what they’re going through and why they’re struggling about change. But I also know their willingness to participate is great. So if you can get them on board, you’ve got a great team behind you.
Laurie Graham 05:40
I think we’ve got to stop pigeonholing people into, “if you’re this age, or this, you know, ministry area, or this, you know, experience level or whatever, that it’s automatic, that there’s like some package that comes with it,” because God has made us so unique in so many different ways. Now, the topic that we landed on today, we’re going to be talking about going from being event-focused to purpose-focused. And Becky, I know this is something that has even gotten stronger with you in the past couple years where you’re more aware, or really looking at the purpose of events. Do you want to talk about kind of your journey in ministry and where you were and where you are now? Or how that comes into play?
Becky Sargent 06:18
Sure. Well, when we were young, getting into our first churches, as pastor and wife, you know, we were super excited. We definitely wanted to get in there and change things and see how the church could grow and do all this stuff. And, um, we had read all the, you know, new books about it, and “how do you grow your church” and all this stuff? And everybody always said, “Oh, well, you know, you have these big events, and you’re exposing your church to so many people, and you’ll have all these people come in, and then the next Sunday, you’ll have all these new visitors.” And, you know, that really just never did happen. We really did a lot of very creative events, some unique ones, some other ones, and we just, every time, you know, you would see the time, the effort you put into it. You’d see a few people come, and then almost, you know, almost never see someone come back to church that next Sunday. And we just got so discouraged, so frustrated, thinking, you know, we must be doing something wrong in these events, you know, “we’re not doing it right.” And then, after a while, Small Church Ministry came into my life.
And I started to see a whole flip-flop of direction and ministry focus. And we started to see that in our church. One of the, in our small church in Maryland, one of the biggest events we did was an Easter egg hunt. And each year, it would grow. And we had, in fact, had to break it into two sessions, because we would have so many people come, so we would have over 250 kids and parents come to our Easter egg hunt. Not one of them would return to church. But we sat down and we said, “you know, what is our purpose in this?” Well, one was to share the gospel, which they did definitely get a good, clear presentation of the gospel, but also to connect.
That’s what Small Church Ministry pushes and encourages, and is all about making connections with people. And what a difference that makes! And so we started to connect with people that we saw could possibly come and be part of other things in our church, not coming in right away to be part of big church on Sunday morning. But we invited their children to participate. I ran an after-school girls’ craft club. So I personally invited all the girls that I would see to come be involved in that. And I had quite a few that were very interested in coming.
And so they started coming to that. And that was a real relaxed time, wasn’t pushing church on anybody. It was just building relationships, getting to know each other. A lot of times moms would come with them or dads would come pick them up. And so you get to know the parents too, and you got to build those relationships. And within a year, almost every single child and their family started to attend the church.
Laurie Graham 09:48
Oh my gosh, I have not heard that story of you!
Becky Sargent 09:50
Because they saw you cared about them. They saw how we were as people, and you know, they just, they felt comfortable. And it was like once you invited them after they had been there for a while, they were like, “Yeah, sure, we’ll come,” and it was just unbelievable. And it was just like, made so much more sense to us to do it that way. So we started thinking about events in a very different way.
Laurie Graham 10:20
Well, you know, as you’re talking, what is striking me, which is new and different, and I just love learning from people. And how often have we had conversations, this has not quite dawned on me. But it’s really talking about the pace at which we are inviting people in and including them.
Because sometimes when we talk about, you know, community outreach events, people push back and say, “Well, yeah, it is, the whole purpose of doing events is to let people know about Jesus, and it’s a blah, blah, blah,” and then we feel like failures because they’re not coming in the next week. But what you’re really talking about, and what I’ve always taught is, there should always be next-step invitations, next-step invites back.
But taking somebody from coming to VBS for free childcare and saying, “join our church and know Jesus,” that’s a big leap, right? That’s just a really, really big leap. And it’s not that we don’t want people to know Jesus or make disciples, but something you said really kind of triggered that for me. It’s really the pace. It’s the timing. It’s being less rushed. It’s those connections that lead to something more instead of “event plus event equals church member.” Right?
Becky Sargent 11:35
Exactly. And when you mentioned VBS, that reminded me that we kind of, again, rethought that, because again, we were thinking, “okay, VBS kids come and obviously, we’re gonna have people come because they came to VBS.” And that just wasn’t the case. We started to offer a moms’ craft class during VBS. So every night while the kids were there, the moms would come. And there were probably five or six of them, they would stay, and I would do a craft with them.
And it was a longer craft, so it took all week to do it. But again, that time together allowed us to get to know each other and to share with each other and to build relationships. And no, they did not come to church that next week. But because of the relationships, I was able to invite them later to some other things, some women’s events and some other things that they participated in. And again, eventually, yes, they did come and start being part of the church. But it is that process of showing you care and building that time and relationship into them.
Laurie Graham 12:52
Yeah, I love that. And I think Jesus taught us that. Sometimes I just think of his life. And I think he really could have modeled a different way to do church. He could have modeled building a physical church in a location; he could have taught that. And I do believe God uses the local church; I’m not against that, obviously, because of everything that I do. But I think Jesus taught the value of relationships. And yes, his ministry was three years, right? But he was never rushed in those three years. Like, he was not trying to build something.
So I want to go back to something you said a little bit ago: you said when you were young, you were doing events, and the thought was you do an event and people join your church. And you mentioned a little bit feeling like we’re failing or it’s not working. How has that transition for you? That’s very difficult to go from feeling like a failure. I don’t know what has changed for you in that? If now you can do an event and nobody comes back to church, like your garage sale, which I hope you have time to talk about. But how has that changed for you? What advice can you give to other people who are still struggling with, “I hear what you’re saying, but I still feel like a failure?”
Becky Sargent 13:59
Yeah. And it was very, very discouraging when you’re first starting out in ministry, especially because, you know, you go to it—we are in a denomination. So you would go to a district-wide event. And of course, the very first thing every pastor is talking about is, “Oh, our church grew by this many,” or, “you know, we’ve had this many baptisms,” or “this many people that were saved,” or “this many,” you know. And so, I really felt so bad for my husband because he just felt like he couldn’t say anything because, you know, that just wasn’t happening. Ministry was happening, yes. And people were growing in their faith in their relationship to the Lord.
But, you know, because you didn’t have those numbers behind you, you just felt like you were wrong. And so it did get really discouraging after a while, and then when I was able to see this other side of it, I was like, “No, where were you 20 years ago, Laurie?” I feel like things could have been so different. And so now there’s a freedom in it, to know that the numbers don’t have to match what you’re doing, you know. There doesn’t have to be that expectation there. You can do what Jesus is calling you to do. And so that really is exciting to me. And that really is freeing. And to me, that helps you to encourage others, as you’re working together, to know that, you know, there is no expectation on them as well. And that you can encourage your team, “Hey, it’s okay that no one came to church after this. Look at the great things that we did! You know, look at how God is working, look at where God is working. What are we going to do with this now? How can we use this to further the kingdom?” And so that just makes all the difference in the world.
Laurie Graham 16:06
Yeah, looking at the impact that did happen. I think a lot of times we look at what did not happen. And because we’re looking at what did not happen, we miss that God is at work right now with this person, with this individual, with, you know, whatever that is. And so, can we talk about the big yard sale? And what a difference that has made in your community, for your church, and your reputation?
Laurie Graham 16:28
So y’all, like we have a few different posts on the website about, like, yard sales and community yard sales. And we know that churches do them. And Becky doesn’t do them at her church, her church does this with completely different results and different goals in mind than any other church I’ve ever talked about. Because I’ve done yard sales too, as a fundraiser for youth mission trips, that’s kind of one of my gigs that I’ve done. And other churches have done this as fundraisers, but you have a completely different goal, purpose, and results from yours. And do you kind of want to share about even how that came about?
Becky Sargent 17:06
Now, everything—the food when people come, we do hot dogs and chips and sodas and water, and we do a breakfast thing in the morning—everything is free for the vendors, free for the people who attend. It’s just there because we’re loving on people who live here.
Becky Sargent 17:06
We have people assigned specifically to go to the vendors throughout the day to make sure, “Do you need a restroom break? Can somebody else stay with your booth? Do you need water? Do you need something to eat? Would you like something brought to you?” And we help them set up.
Becky Sargent 17:06
At the end of the day, we make sure we have a truck that comes and takes away anything no one wants to take home with them. You know, they don’t want to deal with it anymore. So we usually have some sort of charity come and pick up the leftovers and take them away for people. Our young people help them load their cars, put everything away, and clean up after. So it really is a totally focused time of just loving on our community.
Becky Sargent 17:06
The pastor puts out a free book table for people, you know, it goes through his library. So there are free books. Last year, we started to incorporate a prayer station where people could be prayed for or just leave a prayer request. So every year we’re, you know, we kind of fine-tune and tweak and see what we need. But it’s a joy to be involved. And really, the feedback that we get from the community is amazing.
Speaker 1 17:06
When it started out, it was a committee service, so to speak. We have a fairly large yard, both parking lot and grounds, at our church, and we’re fairly centrally located on a busy road. So we offered that people could come and set up a spot for a yard sale for free. With everybody being all together, it would attract more attention, more shoppers, and so they could come and do this. That would be our service to them.
Becky Sargent 17:40
When I originally started, it didn’t begin as a fundraiser. The youth would have a huge booth to raise money to go on a missions trip every summer. They would accept donations for the food, and the youth group would accept donations of items from people in the church. They would sell the items and then keep the money to go on their trip.
Becky Sargent 18:09
After a few years of this, we sat down to reevaluate and said, “Do we really want to do that part of it there because we want to be a service, completely loving on our community? And we don’t want that to distract. We don’t want people thinking, ‘Oh, well, you’re offering this nice service to everybody, but you’re really only doing it because you’re having your yard sale for your youth.'” So we wanted to make sure that people knew that this was just for them, totally for them, because we love our community and we wanted to help them.
Becky Sargent 18:47
So we took out the youth part of it. We thought, “You know, we can find other avenues by which to support the youth; we don’t need to do it there.” We encourage our youth to be involved in helping that day because literally almost the whole church helps in some way and volunteers. So we encourage them to be part of it.
Laurie Graham 20:52
So you don’t charge the people to set up the tables. You help them set up the table?
Speaker 1 20:59
We help them set up the tables, we help them clean up the tables.
Laurie Graham 21:04
You give them free food and you bring them water. You literally are doing this as a service. How do you evaluate the success of that event? One thing, Becky, that I love about you, and I think you have been a great influence in our community, you’re involved in the Small Church Network and Academy. You amaze me, because you’re learning even though you also are teaching. Like, you’re just a beautiful example of a constant learner and grower. But one thing that you bring up a lot is goals and evaluation. Like, “what’s the goal?” and “how do we evaluate?” So for an event like this, where you are literally just serving, you’re serving the community, you’re involving tons of people in your church and serving—you even mentioned you bring the youth in and teach them to serve and have them serving. How do you evaluate the success of this event?
Becky Sargent 21:55
After we give evaluations to all of our volunteers, we have a core team that leads the event. We make sure to meet with them and get all their input. If they had any problems or if we could do something better, their input is very valuable. I also send out surveys to all the vendors.
Laurie Graham 22:21
“What questions are on the surveys? Are the questions, ‘How much money did you make?'”
Becky Sargent 22:26
“It’s just, ‘Did you feel loved? Did you feel that you were served? Was there anything we could have done better? Do you have any ideas or suggestions for a future yard sale?'” So all of them say yes, and that they want to do it more.
Laurie Graham 22:47
One of your questions is actually, “Did you feel loved?” Like, I mean, who is evaluating on that these days? Like, “how many people came? Did we meet our budget?” You know, “did you feel loved?” Like, who even asks that? What are some of the questions on your surveys for the people who volunteer—the people in your church who are working as volunteers?
Becky Sargent 23:05
We ask them all, first of all, “Did you enjoy doing what you were doing?” “What were you doing?” Again, “your input as to how you thought the day went?” We’d like to hear that to make sure everybody’s seeing things in the same way. And if they’re not, you know, why aren’t they? What happened that they thought needed to be different? Ideas that they may have for doing something differently in the next year or whatever. And stories, we always ask for stories. “Did you have some kind of personal connection with somebody that you could share a story about or share a testimony of something that happened?” And there’s always a lot of those, and that’s great.
Laurie Graham 23:52
That’s so good. I don’t know if you heard the podcast a couple of weeks ago, when we talked about kind of moving from a numbers focus to a people focus, but that’s one of the things that we shared: if you want to start evaluating and changing the culture of your church from numbers to connection and deeper ministry, you need to ask for more stories. Because it even shifts our focus when we’re at an event. “Oh, they’re going to ask me who I connected with or what story I have,” and knowing that’s even coming up makes me think, “Oh, I gotta connect with somebody.” I think it really changes from the task of just completing what we’re doing to loving on people. I just have so much I could say about that, Becky.
Laurie Graham 24:36
You know, the other thing I just want to mention is you said at the start when you began this community yard sale, you looked at what you had. You said, “We have a big yard and a big parking lot.” I think this really speaks to so many churches copying from other churches. We have listeners right now thinking, “We could never have a yard sale because we are a church plant and we’re in a mobile thing.” How do we get out of that mindset and start thinking of what we do have? Because I know there are many things you don’t have in your church, in your family, in your own personal arsenal of gift mixes, right? There are so many things all of us could say we don’t have. How do you get to creative ideas? How would you tell other people to look at what they have? Or how do we come up with how to do ministry in our unique settings, versus just what others are doing?
Becky Sargent 25:24
I think a lot of it is just, first of all, asking God, “What can we do? And how can we do it well here?” Whether it’s the people you have, sometimes we forget the network of people we have within our churches. A lot of times, we have people with skills and talents that we don’t even realize because we haven’t taken the time to get to know them or get to know that they are willing to share those kind of things. So that’s a very valuable tool that I think we need to use.
Becky Sargent 25:59
Also, when we lived in Maryland, we didn’t have a big space that we could do a yard sale like that. But we had a long circular driveway that came in one entrance, went all the way around the church, and then came out the other way. So the whole Small Church Ministry blog article about drive-thrus—that’s where that came from.
One day we said, “I wonder if we did a free drive-thru coffee and donut day if people would come.” And, you know, we didn’t have a ton of people, but you started to do it more and more, and they started to come. We started to do drive-thru carwashes for free, you know, just again, just serve and love on our community. And it took a very long time to convince the community that truly we were not charging money for washing your car; we were doing it for the joy of serving them.
Becky Sargent 26:58
And so those kinds of things, you just look and you think, “Okay, God has put us here in this place for this time. So what can we do here? What are the needs here?” I tell people it’s very important to find out the needs in your community. A great place to go is to people that are involved in your community. If you’re in a small rural place, go to town hall and talk to the people there. If you’re in more of a city place, talk to the mayor, or the Chamber of Commerce. Go to the schools; talk to the school counselors. They will tell you needs in your community. And how can you partner with them? How can you be a part of that? And the Lord will just continue to direct you from there.
Laurie Graham 27:47
Wow. Oh, so much good stuff. When we’ve talked about your garage sale in the past, you’ve mentioned it really affecting the reputation of your church in the community. Can you share some of the wins for that? A lot of people say that’s “so much effort for no results.” And I know I really believe the reputation of your church is really important—it’s more important than most people realize. The other thing is, we sometimes think the community doesn’t really know us, but they do have a reputation of you. You do have a reputation. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Becky Sargent 28:28
Sure. Well, because of the yard sale—and not just the people who use our space, but also the folks who live in the surrounding neighborhood—they see the activity. The neighbors come, they get free food, and they participate in shopping and things like that. So they see it, they know it, and they count on it being there every year. In fact, they’re great advertisers for us because they’re always telling other people about it.
Becky Sargent 29:04
We’ve found that because they come and get to know us, and they see us interacting with people, all of a sudden, if they have a need, a prayer need, or something comes up in their life, they will call and ask. They’ll say, “I know your church cares about people, can you help us?” We’ve had several people whose loved ones have passed away, and even though they weren’t involved in a church, they consider us their church because we’re in their community and they’ve seen us interacting. So they will come and ask. Even though they’re not part of our church, our church ladies will come and do a reception for them after the funeral. They’re just blown away that you would do that for them, and they’re strangers. But that’s God’s people. That’s God’s love at work. And that’s how you build that reputation for being God’s hands and feet in your community.
Laurie Graham 30:11
We are almost out of time, Becky. I know I could talk to you forever, and I’ll probably call you even later today to get more. If people want to connect with you, I’m just going to tell them right now: get involved in our Facebook community! Come join us in the Small Church Network. Becky is everywhere to be found. This is Becky Sargent; you can see, I think, just tons and tons—dozens and dozens—of blog posts on smallchurchministry.com that have been written by Becky. Becky, your stuff has been read by over 20,000 people. Did you know you’d be famous?
Becky Sargent 30:44
It’s just mind-boggling to me. You know, I Googled something the other day, and my article came up. I just sat there and laughed. I was like, “This is ironic.”
Laurie Graham 30:56
Exactly. So you all, just get to know Becky, however that just fits in your life with where you’re able to connect with her, because she really is such a treasure. So Becky, I know I’m talking about how awesome you are and how famous you are, and how you’re so creative and have all these ideas. But it’s not just you. And I know that you have a big value on listening, not just to God, but also to other people. So before we end today, can you talk about listening and how that has become just a real part of your ministry?
Becky Sargent 31:27
I think a lot of us have preconceived ideas, when we’re in ministry, of what we need to do, what we have to do, we, quote unquote, “should do.” And God has shown me over the years that so many times, you know, we can try something different. It’s okay to think outside that box. It’s okay to get rid of the box sometimes.
And a lot of times, we have people right within our own church family that have wonderful ideas. And they may not ever say it, because they’re not encouraged to say it. And so if they feel like you will listen to their ideas, you’ll get a lot of feedback, and you will get some amazing things. Now, okay, not everything we can do.
That’s okay. Encourage them, keep thinking, keep wondering, keep asking the questions, because you know what, just because I come up with an idea doesn’t mean that we do it, because I come up with a ton of ideas. And not all of them get done. But I just saw today, from a friend of mine, they actually did one of the ideas that was on one of our blog posts, and I was so excited that they were really excited about what they did. So I was happy to see that. So just keep trying.
Laurie Graham 32:49
That’s so fun. And you know, I just love what you said about really the ideas that are in your congregation, because I do believe many of us who have been in ministry, or been serving in ministry, or are just brand new to ministry, we kind of feel like it’s our responsibility to do the ministry for people or to them, instead of with people. And the more we can gather others in—I really believe from the creative vision stages, “What are you seeing? What would you love to do?”—our teams just develop so much healthier, and with so much more support and buy-in, and commitment and loyalty, and so much more fun and joy in ministry. Don’t you think?
Becky Sargent 33:22
Definitely! And that’s what truly makes the church a family. You know, everybody has a valuable part. And when we’re working together, it’s so much better than if it’s just two people over here always doing the same thing over and over again. You know, that’s when you get burnout. That’s when you get, you know, stillness. And the joy really gets sucked out of ministry when that happens. But when you’re all working together for the Lord, great things happen.
Laurie Graham 33:53
So awesome, Becky. Thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your ideas and on the blog. Thank you for just being such a big part of our community and our Facebook community. If you’re listening and you are not yet part of Creative Solutions for Small Churches, we have a free Facebook community, which has just been a godsend and such a light and such an encouragement to so many people. We share ideas, we share what’s working, and we encourage one another with creative solutions specifically for small churches. And if you’re ready to just jump into the whole thing, come join us in the Small Church Network and Academy. We really take concepts that we talk about on the podcasts and blog posts, and we go deeper.
Laurie Graham 34:37
All right, you all, we’re gonna be off. We will catch you again next week. Becky, do you want to sign us off here?
Becky Sargent 34:43
Sure. Go out there small church people and be a light.