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Dear Small Church friends,
Whew! What a busy season it’s been – in life-giving ways. Since my last newsletter to you, we celebrated Christmas and Epiphany, came together at St. Philip’s San Antonio for a Small Church Gathering, met as a whole diocese at Council and – for many of us – again for Bishop Cortiñas’ consecration. How good it is to be a part of the Church in the Diocese of West Texas!
And, I hope the resources my office and my colleagues on diocesan staff continue to provide for you help to make your mission as small churches joyful and easier! In addition to the many resources provided in this newsletter, I hope you all found the plethora of ideas and tools we showcased during our Council Workshops beneficial to your ministries. If you need a review of those resources, you can find here both the slides I showed and the handout that was made available.
With Lent already half-way through, most of this newsletter is geared towards Holy Week, the Easter season and what lies beyond. You might notice that our “upcoming events” section is a little emptier than usual as we take some time to lie fallow after the busy-ness of these past few months, but I’m looking forward to scheduling more Sunday-morning visits to our diocesan small churches, so if you’d like me to come to your church, please let me know so I can get you on my calendar!
As always, if there’s any way I can support your ministry particularly, I’m just an email, phone call or text away.
Many blessings,
The Rev. Canon Leyla King
Leyla.King@dwtx.org
| | From the Small Church Steering Committee | | |
Try it On!
The Benefits of the
Small Church Fitting Room
By Chris Moseley, St. Paul’s, Brady
My husband, Mark, and I participated in something totally out of character for us recently; we celebrated New Year’s Eve in downtown San Antonio, braving the crowds, cold weather, carnival atmosphere, and LOTS of street food vendors. We were rewarded with watching the best fireworks display we have ever witnessed, bringing in the new year with good friends and fellow Episcopalians and eating some good German food, washed down with some mighty fine German beer, on the riverwalk. Little did we know that our New Year’s Eve experience would be connected to the Small Church Gathering in San Antonio a short month later!
“Try it on to see if it works, and if it doesn’t, let it go and move on.” So said Canon Leyla King at that gathering. To be honest, when she first brought it up to the Steering Committee, I had some doubts about her planned presentation. As a cradle Episcopalian, I am well versed in the importance of honoring traditions in the church. What did she mean about letting go? Trying something new or letting go of the old does not come easy for many Episcopalians. We like what we like about the Episcopal Church- its history, service, prayers, and yes, its traditions- and we want everyone else to like what we like, too.
But as Canon Leyla explained, “Try it on” can be a way of being, especially in small churches – a way of thinking about trying something new in the church. It is about recognizing that trying something new means just that, something to try and not something that will last forever. It is okay for churches to be open to adapting, revamping, or even letting go of programs that do not serve the purpose of fostering growth, physically or spiritually, in a congregation. It is a mindset about embracing the freedom to take risks, of seeing if something is a good ‘fit’ and if it is not, then taking it off and moving on to try something else.
While walking through La Villita on our New Year’s Eve experience, we stopped to read a historical marker in front of the Little Church of La Villita and learned that it was once owned by the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas.
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Small Church Sermon, Big Impact
The Rev. Stepheya George
Vicar, All Saints' Episcopal, San Benito
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The Rev. Stepheya George is the vicar of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in San Benito and our small-church sermon-writer for this edition of our newsletter. Mtr. Stepheya shares this sermon on the lectionary texts of the second Sunday of Easter for other churches in the diocese to use. If you don’t have regular clergy to preach on April 27 or you are the regular preacher at your church and could use a little break – especially on the Sunday after the marathon of Holy Week and Easter - please consider reading Mtr. Stepheya’s sermon out loud to the congregation as the sermon on the day, with proper attribution, of course.
The scriptural texts for the day can be found here.
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Celebrate Small Church
St. Andrew's, Corpus Christi Builds Beds!
by the Rev. Gerald Phelps
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St. Andrew’s has been building beds for foster children in our community since 2019. The beds are for foster children within our community. Working with “Care Portal,” an agency of Child Protective Services (CPS) through which case workers can request needed items, we quickly realized that beds are the number one request and so we got to building! The first time we built 10 beds, and then 15, and then 20. We began hosting regular Bed Builds for the whole community to participate in at St. Andrew’s twice a year, but as the project grew, we realized the benefits of having Builds in different locations around the Coastal Bend. So, in 2024, we hosted Builds in 4 different locations and built 76 beds.
This year, we’re adding a fifth site in Rockport and plans for even more beds!
Our additional partnership with Agape Ranch (an agency helping foster children and families) has helped to gather community volunteers, to fund the costs of materials, to provide PPE and tools, and to secure donations of mattresses for the beds. We typically have 50-60 volunteers from across the community and from different churches at any given Build on a Saturday morning and we usually finish before noon. During that time, we become the hands and feet of Christ in action! The beds are stored at each location, and then as calls come in from CPS caseworkers, we are ready to respond. This allows us to meet new families within our community and to pray with them as we deliver the beds.
If anyone is interested in coming to see and help in our next Bed Build, join us at St. Andrew’s on Saturday May 17 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
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What was That About a Diocesan
Bookkeeping Pilot Program?
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A number of small church leaders perked up our ears at Council when our diocesan Director of Finance, Anna Tarver, presented brief information about a bookkeeping program for DWTX small churches currently being piloted in the diocese. There have been a lot of questions about it already so here are a few answers to some of the first questions we’ve heard.
Q: What is the Diocesan Small Church Bookkeeping Partnership?
A: The partnership will offer support to small churches in the form of bookkeeping services free of charge! The details of what services will be available are still being worked out in the current pilot program.
Q: Why is it a pilot and not a full program yet?
A: Your diocesan staff want to make sure that the service provided takes into full consideration the needs of churches, while maintaining best practices in line with The Episcopal Church audit requirements. Before the program is launched, it is important to have processes and procedures in place to safeguard our churches. Once these processes are proved, the program will open to onboarding churches in an orderly way to ensure that the diocese can maintain a high level of service to participants.
Q: When will my church be able to sign up and how can we do that?
A: The pilot program is in the initial phase. The diocesan staff would love to begin onboarding new churches during the third and fourth quarters, but this is contingent on success of the pilot. Communications will go out later this year with the opportunity for churches to join the program. Talk with your Bishop’s Committee (BC) or Vestry if you might be interested in joining the program when it becomes more widely available. A representative from your BC or Vestry can reach out to Anna Tarver at anna.tarver@dwtx.org to register your interest and be contacted when the program is ready.
| | Our monthly Small Church Chat is a time for small church leaders in our diocese to come together for fellowship, mutual learning, resource-sharing and collegiality. The Chat takes place on Zoom, 10:00-11:00 a.m. on the first Tuesday of every month and is an informal drop-in-when-you-can meeting. Click here for the Zoom link – which will always stay the same. I hope you can join us for our next Chat this coming Tuesday, April 1 (no fooling!). Participants always guide the conversation but we could certainly talk about Holy Week and Easter plans. | |
Giving Opportunity
Support the ministry work of the Diocese of West Texas small churches through a gift.
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