Small Church Article Feature: Rev. Catherine Neelly Burton

Catherine Neelly Burton is the Mission and Ministry Connector for the Presbytery of Southern Kansas. She works primarily with congregations where there is little to no paid PC(USA) leadership. She is not their pastor but seeks to empower their leaders and connect congregations. She lives in Wichita, KS, with her family.

 

On Sunday, September 29, members of five PC(USA) congregations gathered in Caldwell, Kansas, for worship, lunch, and fellowship. On the surface, this statement sounds “nice.” It’s much more than nice; it’s exceptional.

I live and work in the Presbytery of Southern Kansas. There are 47 churches in our presbytery. 15 of our 47 churches have fulltime installed pastors (or interims). Geographically our churches span over 400 miles across the state.

In the summer of 2023, I began a call as the Mission and Ministry Connector for the presbytery. It’s an experimental position born out of the reality that the 32 churches without fulltime installed pastors will never have them again, and the structure we have as a presbytery still assumes that all 47 churches have fulltime pastors and active volunteers to serve not only the local congregation but also at the presbytery level. This has not been true for decades, but the system remains in place.

Before this call, I served as the installed pastor at one of our 15 congregations that still has an installed pastor. As the pastor of a church with 300+ members, my focus was on my church. I felt the pressure of leading a congregation, which added new members regularly, and was still in numerical decline. I felt the pressure of how to fairly pay a staff and maintain a building with a budget that didn’t decline but didn’t increase. I served on, and even chaired a presbytery committee, but I never sought to connect with other PC(USA) churches in meaningful ways. While the church I served looked “successful,” I was often worried about decline. This kind of attitude did not inspire a connectional approach to the presbytery for me or the congregation.

From what I observe, I was not alone in this. I can’t speak for the other installed pastors in my presbytery, but it appears that many are as siloed as I was. I would not have been willing to have a joint worship service in a different location on a Sunday morning. What about the visitors we’d miss? What about the offering we’d miss? What about the exceptional programming we lined up months ago? These are all fair questions, but they aren’t the questions most of our churches ask.

The churches that gathered in Caldwell on September 29 ask different questions. Two of the churches are in unincorporated towns. Two of the churches have a very part-time Commissioned Ruling Elder (CRE). Three of the churches haven’t had installed pastors in decades. Some churches in these situations give up. We have churches in our presbytery that have given up. Some are closed, and some are headed in that direction.

The three churches where there hasn’t been installed leadership in decades all figured out how to be church and do church on their own. They did not give up on being a church. Each has had some paid leadership over the years: parttime CREs, seminarians, or pulpit supply, but the members are the most consistent leadership.

With a presbytery structure that does not fit, none of these churches are well connected at the presbytery level. This is where my job comes in and where my job gets fun. Given the lack of communication and support from the presbytery, it’s remarkable how open the churches are to my ideas. My biggest challenge is that they are rarely in a hurry. I might suggest something in July, thinking it will happen by September, only to see it come together in December. Still, they are excited to be trained and glad to try connectional events.

Most of these congregations have created connections with non-PC(USA) churches in their communities. They know how to build relationships, and even without consistent leadership, they are committed to the idea of being Presbyterian. I’ve entered their lives, not to tell them how to be churches, they know how to do that, but to equip and connect them. My hope is that relationships form and lead to shared ministry: mission, worship, Christian education, and pastoral care.

The number of installed pastors in our presbytery will only decline. These small churches have the potential to create a new way forward for our presbytery, one based on churches connecting. After decades of a structure that does not fit, I hope we are growing a new way of being a presbytery, starting in these small places.