When I met Mike and Jeannie Norris, they were the lay leader and finance chair, respectively, of a rural, small town church. It was a healthy, happy church with Sunday morning services with live music and preaching, board meetings, coffee and donuts after, a monthly community dinner, and a weekly bible study. They partnered up with other churches in town for special services, participated in community events, and even hosted a series of sold-out benefit concerts, raising thousands of dollars to be split between their church and Ukrainian refugees. 

I talked to Mike and Jeannie about ideas around more intentionally collecting people’s contact information at the concerts, establishing a basic web presence so people could look up events and service times, just small changes to help support their growth. They were a joy to talk to, always sharing the next thing they were excited about, pumping money from small grants towards new flooring and a fresh coat of paint, expanding their feeding program to allow them to offer free community meals to their neighbors. They were well-connected to their small town, and seemed to care for each other deeply. 

We were talking a few months ago, and they told me that they hadn’t really mentioned it at first because they thought it was just a blip, but over the past few months, they had consistently tripled their attendance over where it was this time last year (and at least double what it had been in any recent memory). I was shocked and excited and asked them about it;  how were they handling that kind of change? Did they have space? Were they able to keep up connecting with that kind of influx of people?

They told me that they felt like they were able to keep track of everyone and they were good on space, because their sanctuary sat about 75 and even with this growth they were at around 15-18 people. 

I was shocked a second time. When we first started working together they told me their church was very small. I grew up in the Bible belt and spent my early career in very large churches. When they said small, I had imagined less than 100, maybe less than 50. I had not imagined 5 or 6. 

Then the third wave of shock hit me, and this one took my breath away. All of that stuff I had been walking through for months with them – community dinners, setting up a database, building an online presence, applying for multiple rounds of grants, organizing painters, electricians, and flooring companies, planning and executing multiple sold-out benefit concerts – they had done all of it as a group of 6 on a good day. 

I have worked with so many churches that have such an entrenched narrative of decline, of the good ole days, of scarcity. There is fear about what we can’t afford, don’t have time for, what people will leave over. And that fear is valid and deserves recognition, it is desperately hard to lead an institution that you feel like is slipping through your fingers. 

The Norrises, when I met them, were at what any of these people would have considered the worst-case scenario, the end of the line. They had no pastor, not even included as part of multi-point charge, they had a single digit number of people, a building that was in desperate need of repairs, and no money to do them. 

But I quite literally didn’t notice, and seemingly, neither did they. All I ever experienced of them was joyful creativity around what they could try next. When I spoke to the Norrises earlier this week, I named all of this. I told them that I was shocked not that they had been successful, but that somehow they had sidestepped the narrative of decline that was so prevalent among their mainline denomination, and simply told a different story. I had logged so many hours of my work trying to convince congregations that God was still at work in their midst, that hope is worth chasing, and these people had grace, peace, joy, and the abundance of the spirit pouring out of every fingernail.

I don’t mean to minimize the very real challenges that the institutional church faces, or suggest that it’s just a matter of attitude and positive thinking, but I can’t help but be struck by what I’ve seen. 

I asked the Norrises how they did it, and here’s some of what they offered:

That everything turned around when they started celebrating. 

The Norrises named that their church had experienced the negativity that so many communities do, and had some of the same unsuccessful attempts at new ministries that would sound familiar to many of us, and had spent time wringing their hands over why nothing seemed to be working. 

When their church celebrated their 150th anniversary, they spent a lot of time celebrating the role their church had played in their community, and the history of all the congregation had weathered. Jeannie said that this was the turning point, helping them realize that their story was a beautiful one of growth and change and investment and connection, and that that story wasn’t anywhere close to being over. 

That they cared more about their community than the church down the street. 

As an entirely lay-lead church, there is no one in the Norrises congregation that has any preconceived notion of what their church should do. They don’t follow this blog, or any others. They don’t read books about pastoral leadership, or follow churches on social media. They don’t have a strategy, or a school of thought, and they only talk to me because someone else signed them up to. Obviously I think learning from other churches and church leaders matters, the sense of learning together is my whole job, but I do think it can lead organizations down paths of jealousy and comparison instead of truly following the Spirit. 

If you didn’t have anyone to report to, and any other church around to compare yourself to, would you lead differently? The Norrises aren’t doing anything revolutionary – community dinners, Sunday morning worship, and bible studies are pretty standard fare – but each one has emerged out of an authentic connection with the community, and not a pre-prescribed slew of offerings. Jeannie and Mike know their people, and perhaps more importantly, they are their people, and that grants them deep knowledge and immense freedom to just follow where the Spirit is leading them. 

That they just moved.

One of the few patterns in Ministry Incubators that the Norrises fit inside of is a bias towards action. As simple and reductive as it may seem, sometimes the most important thing a community can do is anything. The movement itself is more important than what it accomplishes. Communities can forget that they are capable not just of having meetings and maintaining the status quo. They can forget that, with God’s help, they can build communities out of nothing, create light in darkness, and change their whole neighborhood. But it starts with building the confidence that God is still at work, both in the church, and in the people who lead it. 

Every time I spoke to the Norrises they had accomplished more than most of the full-time leaders I worked with. They had repainted walls, booked events, expanded meal services, they were always up to something. Part of that is having less of the whirlwind to contend with, but it also seemed like a significant element of it was a simple, joyful belief that they could, so why wouldn’t they. The work looked fun when they did it. 

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This is an unusually long blog, and, if I thought I could get away with it, it would be longer, I have so much more I could say, but I’ll end with this story. 

The Norrises’ church had its first baptism in memory last month. A teenager had started coming to the community dinners with his mom, and then they had started attending Sunday morning services. When summer came around, one of the members approached the boy and his mom and told them that the church would love to provide a scholarship for the boy to go to their denominational summer camp. He looked at her and said “Why would you do that for me?” and she simply responded, “Well, because we love ya!” 

A few months after camp, the boy came to his mother and said he wanted to be baptized. By the time the Norrises had a chance to tell me about it, they had already arranged for a local retired pastor to come to town and do the baptism and had set up a big celebratory lunch afterwards. I’ve told this story so many times, and I still get a little teary every time. 

They plan to send him (and a few friends) to camp again next year. I told Jeannie that at this rate, they were going to need a dedicated youth ministry by this time next year. 

We laughed but, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised. 

God Bless the Norrises, Seguache United Methodist Church, and all the reminders of all the ways our good and gracious God is at work amongst us.