Supporting small congregations

The PNEV Small Church Network aims to resource and enable small congregations across the Presbytery of North East Victoria to share multiple ministry agents to support worship, pastoral care, fellowship discipleship and outreach.

Using face-to-face and online technologies, we seek to make the most of scarce ministry resources and link dispersed people of common mind into viable groups.

The Small Church Network seeks to encourage and connect Uniting Church communities, irrespective of size or location. This is part of the Presbytery strategy to enable us to embrace the reality of being Christian communities in the 21st century, and to support people across the region to both gather and be in mission together.

This initiative of the Presbytery of North East Victoria seeks to support worship, education and fellowship for all small congregations in the Presbytery.

The Small Church Network is working with congregations who are willing to co-operate with each other and embrace the opportunities presented by collaboration and new technologies to shape our worship, life and service. We believe that we are indeed stronger together, more than the sum of our parts, and capable of building greater  breadth and depth to our congregational life.

The Network Partner

For congregations formally part of the network and contributing financially. These congregations are the direct focus of the ministry agents.

Worship, pastoral care and missional programs is currently led from these congregations by the ministry agents, lay preachers and lay leaders.

Direct support is given to partner congregations to establish websites and social media channels.

Partner congregations have representation on the steering committee.

Open Access

There are a number of dimensions of the Small Church network which are open to non-partner congregations to access.

Zoom worship services, bible studies and other streamed activities can be accessed by other congregations.

Membership

The Small Church network has currently been operational since 2002 and the member congregations are :

Mooroopna, Nathalia, Picola, Violet Town, Strathbogie, Cobram, Katamatite and Yarrawonga.

Mission and Ministry

The aim is to provide a something that is more that any single congregation could aspire to provide alone.

The Small Church Network provides for a congregational life that includes worship, pastoral care, education, children’s and families ministry, special interest and outreach. It also provides a level of technical support to assist congregations effectively utilise the online tools and resources to create a vibrant online presence for each congregation (Website, Facebook, Google Maps, etc)

The Ministry Team

The Presbytery seeks to establish a diversly gifted ministry team to work across the network providing worship, leadership, pastoral care, missional resourcing and dynamic leadership to our small churches and benefits to the whole of Presbytery.

The minister for the Small Church Network is Rev. Cynthia Page. 

Governance

While far from perfect the Uniting Church has non-hierarchal   governance structures in place for working together.

Each congregation maintain their own church council to manage local affairs, with representation on a Small Church Network co-ordinating committee and relevant working teams.