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Center for Small Membership Churches

The Center for Small-Membership Churches is a partnership between Kansas Wesleyan University and the Kansas West Conference. The Center offers small congregations in rural and urban settings tools for discovering their identities, establishing vision for ministry and setting goals and strategies for reaching a new ministry vision.

Rev. Carl Ellis, center director, has focused his ministry on small-membership congregations throughout his career. Ellis started a training program for laity who were interested in serving local congregations as pastors but who were not interested in entering the professional ministry track. Then, he started offering workshops focusing on ministry in small-membership churches. Today, he’s the center director and oversees the Certified Lay Ministry program for the Kansas Area.

Through the Center for Small Membership Churches, Ellis offers consulting to small-membership congregations in a process that can take up to two years to complete. Ellis first meets with a pastor and a handful of leaders in a local congregation to get a feel for what kind of assistance the congregation is looking for. Then, he begins a series of workshops with church members where they work to identify the culture, not just within the community but within the congregation itself.

Then, he leads the congregation through a process of discovery – what would members like to see in their church, what kinds of ministries do they think are needed, what would they need to do in the next one or two years to become more effective in ministry.

Reach Carl Ellis at the Center for Small Membership Churches at cellis@kswestumc.org or 785-827-5541, extension 1315.