Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Best Practices in the Small Church

“I believe churches should come in all sizes,” writes author Marilyn Johns. “Just as God took great creative license in the formation of humankind, endowing each of us with different gifts, different life circumstances, and different likes and dislikes, so churches have become diverse in their size, their liturgies, their viewpoints, and their activities. There is room for everyone at the table.” In Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Johns goes beyond routine discussions of small church growth to explore how small churches can become more healthy, more intimate, more sustainable. Informed by years of interaction with small church pastors and their spouses, she offers insights into issues relevant to the success of parishes with congregations in the double digits. This book suggests how church leaders can use the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process to lead their congregation through a visioning or planning process. It makes practical suggestions about how a small church can set priorities for worship, Christian education, pastoral care, mission and outreach, stewardship, and the development of lay leadership. Johns also discusses alternatives to the traditional “one church, one full-time pastor” model of ministry; ways the small church pastor or priest can practice good self-care to avoid burnout and exhaustion; and the future of the small church.

Dr. Marilyn Johns is the Director of Program Development for the Leadership Institute at Union Presbyterian Seminary. Prior to that, she worked as the Project Manager of the Summer Collegium, a Lilly Endowment project of Virginia Theological Seminary that encouraged and built up pastors of small congregations and their families. Her responsibilities included visiting small churches (about 125 over five years) in cities and towns all over the United States and Canada to preach, teach, and encourage. A Certified Christian Educator in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she earned her Doctor of Ministry degree in Ministry Development at Virginia Theological Seminary and has served as an Adjunct Instructor there. She also served as Project Coordinator for For Such a Time as This, a project of the Presbyterian Church (USA) that seeks to pair small churches in remote areas with first-call pastors.