In churches with fewer than 30 members, keep your policies simple and practical.

A tiny church cannot have a dozen or so teams or committees that a bigger congregation has. Really, we can only do one thing at a time.

Recordings of workshops on Dream Team Ministry and Productivity to Possibility.

Recordings of workshops on Ministers Considering Part-Time Models and Ministerial Experiences with Part-Time Models.

Recordings of workshops on Employment Matters and Ministerial Search for Part-Time Ministries.

Both in-reach and outreach are important in our congregations, but we need to find the right balance between the two.

Help people live lives of purpose and meaning by providing worship experiences that grapple with the big questions.

Are you a small congregation looking for fresh ideas? Here are presentations and other resources from the UUA conference in March of 2022.

How to Bring the Culture of Youth and Emerging Adult Ministry to Multigenerational Communities.

Join UUA Youth Program staff Shannon Harper and Eric Bliss to talk about ways to enhance your youth programming by joining with other congregations.

Join Jan Gartner, the UUA’s Compensation and Staffing Practices Manager for the Office of Church Staff Finance, as she talks about the advantages of sharing staff and the new UUA platforms for finding and offering shared staff.

Come hear three real life examples of smaller congregations from around the country sharing worship with neighbors and collaborators. This is a recording of a webinar.

Being Beloved Community. Many people love smaller congregations because they like knowing everyone and being known. How can our congregations build on that strength?

Stewardship and Sustainability for the Long Haul. Our congregations are sustained by the money and time of their members -- both limited resources that are often a source of anxiety for leaders.

How can your small congregation keep your programs nimble and effective?

This is the first is a series of four webinars focused on small congregations. Learn how your congregation can be bold.

Moving from full-time to part-time ministry asks the minister and congregation to consider renegotiating things that don’t neatly divide. Here is a suggested process based on mutuality and consent.

There are times when a congregation needs to adjust their commitment to professional ministry in reducing hours. Here are some considerations from one of our small congregation program consultants.

According to the Pew Research Center, "Today around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves." For users of almost all ages, Facebook remains the most popular platform. Now more than ever, it’s important

This webinar is designed for small congregations that are new to using the Zoom meeting platform for virtual worship and other church activities. Together we go over the basics of Zoom and look through the contents of the "Guide to Streaming Sunday Services, Meetings, and Classes" webpage at...

Rev. Darcey Laine’ serves two of our small congregations. Because of her idea, congregations across upstate New York and northern Pennsylvannia have started “buddying up.”

A quality Sunday morning experience online does not need to be complicated or highly technical. Especially helpful for smaller congregations.

A big part of keeping a congregation going could be called “Back Office” tasks. These are important but hidden tasks, like emailing the newsletter and paying the bills. Doing these well can help a congregation stay healthy and vital.

How faith development leaders in smaller UU congregations and communities build a vision of covenant centered experiences and multigenerational opportunities for spiritual deepening.

The History of the Unitarian Fellowship Movement

Small congregations need a governance system that is "right sized" for the unique needs and challenges generated by their size. Boards Much of the decision-making in small congregations happens at the board level. Emerging Best Practices Create and live by a board covenant. Have a clear...

Small congregations with little or no professional ministry help can still have good worship services. This webinar gives you some tips.

Small congregations offer intimacy and inclusion, but can sometimes feel exclusive to newcomers. How might you bridge that divide?

Does your congregation have fewer than 100 members? Do your leaders burn out quickly? Do you get first time visitors but not many repeat visitors?  This training is for you!

In this webinar, we will explore the role of leaders in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We will offer some useful tools to help your leaders and your congregation to thrive.

How do you create a meaningful congregational experience when you've got a small number of kids in your congregation, few of whom are the same age?

How can small congregations become aware of and adopt successful stewardship concepts and practices as they grow?

Mother Teresa wrote, “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” More than two thirds of Unitarian Universalist Churches have fewer than 150 members. In many ways, the future of our faith rests in the continued strength and vitality of these “small”...

Satellites, multi-site, yolked ministries and partnerships can explored by all types of congregations - tiny, large, urban, rural, clustered, or isolated. Might multi-site be right for you?

Hear lay and professional leaders describe how they have grown in depth and in numbers (93 to 128) in the past five years.

Too often our leaders lead from unexamined fear and frustration. We need to lead from our hopes as embodied in the vision of the Beloved Community.

No person is perfect. How do we ask each other to return to covenant when someone makes a mistake?

Supporting one another is important, but if that is primarily what you do, then your congregation will decline. For a congregation to be alive, vital, and growing, it must have a sense that it exists to serve as well.

Emotions play a major role in the leadership of congregations, and if we do not take that into consideration as leaders, we will walk into situations that tear at the fabric of communal life and possibly thwart any growth that had been planned.

Small congregations are trying to do too much. They are struggling to put together a quality meaningful worship service and a Children’s Faith Development Program every Sunday. Let’s try something different.

Don’t try to do everything! Instead, figure out what your congregation does well, and do it, and do more of it!

In its 7th year and with about 40 adult members, a small congregation in the South realized it was stuck—its membership hadn’t increased in 3 years. True, a few new folks joined each year, but the new folks only replaced those who had moved or left for other reasons. ...

If you’re listening to this CD, chances are you think your congregation is small. But not all small congregations are alike. These differences are not just about numbers. They’re about attitude, and group behaviors, and organizational structure. It helps to know how your congregation does...

Change is always difficult, yet it happens every day in our lives in small and big ways. It is also is a regular component of congregational life. When a visitor shows up on a Sunday, the dynamics in a congregation have changed, particularly if the newcomer stays. We all need to be aware of the...

Before we decide whether we want to be an institution, it might be helpful if we thought about what an institution is, and what it is not. ...

Families with children no longer feel a sense of obligation to attend church. Participation in a religious community is often considered one option among many competing interests. How do you go about creating a multigenerational culture in your congregation?

We need to think beyond increasing the membership rolls and focus more on developing what the workshop leaders called an “outward orientation.”

How might the small church need to change to meet future needs of tomorrow's members?

All congregations must understand that the instruments of congregational polity will vary with the size of the congregation. The practices of governance must be suited to the characteristics of the individual congregation. ...

All congregations must understand that the instruments of congregational polity will vary with the size of the congregation. The practices of governance must be suited to the characteristics of the individual congregation.