Small Church USA

02/07/2025

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🌟SCUSA PARTNERSHIP KICKS OFF WITH FIRST REVITALIZATION COHORT OF THE YEAR

By Ryan Strother

🚀In 2024, the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana (SCBI) partnered with Small Church USA (SCUSA) to strengthen and revitalize churches across Indiana. Through SCUSA’s proven methods, Indiana churches receive specialized training, resources, and mentorship opportunities while maintaining their unique identities and missions. SCUSA offers pastors a year-long cohort engagement to develop skills and tools for their churches, and SCBI provides scholarships to make this program very affordable for all churches.

🤝SCUSA has planned three cohorts for 2025, and four SCBI pastors are part of the cohort beginning in January. Each cohort begins with a weekend retreat where pastors connect, enjoy fellowship, and engage with challenging new concepts. These four pastors joined about 20 others at the retreat from January 11-13 to begin their year-long journey. I was privileged to attend and encourage them!

👨‍🏫Each cohort features a Guide Pastor—for this group of SCBI pastors, it’s Bobby Pell, an SCBI pastor himself. What makes SCUSA’s revitalization process special is its comprehensive support system: pastors have their cohort for encouragement, SCUSA’s experienced practitioners for guidance, a dedicated Guide Pastor for wisdom, and a Barnabas Family from Rock Point Church, Crawfordsville, committed to prayer support throughout the year.

🎉The retreat proved both encouraging and enjoyable, providing pastors with valuable insights to begin their journey. Each pastor completes a leadership assessment before attending, helping identify potential areas for growth in their ministry. As an observer, I found my own assessment incredibly helpful and can see its value for pastors leading their churches toward greater strength.

📅Throughout the year, these pastors will meet monthly with SCUSA leaders and their Guide Pastor, receiving new tools as they develop plans to enhance their churches’ health.

💰SCBI churches provide support through the Cooperative Program, and our generous scholarship makes this valuable process accessible for churches. Every church should consider revitalization—or ministry vibrancy—and our SCUSA partnership helps strengthen churches to bring more people to faith in Jesus throughout Indiana.

🏆 Through our Platinum Challenge, we aim to have 50 pastors complete a SCUSA cohort by the end of 2028. From last year and so far this year, we’re excited to have six pastors participating already!

🤔 If you’re interested in joining a future cohort, please let me know. We’re connecting for Kingdom advancement through church and pastor health, multiplication, and mobilization. SCUSA is a great partner in this vision.
https://indianabaptist.org/2025/02/03/scusa-partnership-kicks-off-with-first-revitalization-cohort-of-the-year/

12/17/2024

Men, if you are around the Frankfort Indiana area grab your ticket for this event! It’s going to be great!

09/27/2024

A BIG shout out to pastor Matt Coyne for hosting our SCUSA
1-day conference today! A long time, seasoned, pastor sent this text at the end of the day, "One of the best church revitalization meeting I've been to." We were able to encourage and strengthen pastors. That is a good day! If you want to host a 1-day conference in your area, send me a note. We would love to come!

09/23/2024

Michigan pastors, jump into this one day conference this Thursday, September 26th! Register below!

08/15/2022

This event is next week - it's not too late to register!

We are excited to bring a new event to you this year! The Generational Pastor Connection event is a gathering for pastors of all ages to find value in each other and mentorship.

Dr. Ryan Strother will be sharing alongside of his mentor pastor, Lawrence Combs. You’ll hear Pastor Terry Thompson talk about pastoral succession and give an overview of leader cohorts through Small Church USA. And you’ll hear Dr. Al Mohler from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary speak as well as have some Q&A time with him.

This gathering will be held on August 24 at Oak Park Baptist Church in Jeffersonville. For more information and to register, visit https://scbi.org/events/generational-pastor-connection/.

*We are planning an identical event in the northern part of Indiana later this year.

07/15/2021

Hey Pastors and wives. Here is a new book ... hot off the press ... written to encourage pastor's wives. This is one of the few, if not the only book, written from a pastor and wife who live in small town America and can relate to ministry in a small town.
We are excited to have this as a ministry resource for Small Church USA. Its available on Amazon. Please check it out.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1948022230

05/26/2021

Here is a pod cast I had a chance to do with my friend Mike Hess. Thanks Mike, for the opportunity to talk about Small Church USA.

‎Show Baptist Bulletin Podcast, Ep It's Not About Size; It's About Health | Guest Terry Thompson - May 24, 2021

04/08/2021

Working with Pastors is so life giving to me. Who wouldn't want to be part of Healthy Church Cohort like these?
Cohort #1 - 7 pastors = 150 years of pastoral ministry experience Cohort #2 - 7 pastors = 175 years of pastoral ministry experience
So much wisdom! So much to be gleaned!
New Cohorts are starting in May! We have a few open spots. Details at smallchurchusa.com [email protected]