It was Easter Sunday, 2016

I was scheduled to supply at ​St. Paul’s Episcopal Church​ in Salisbury, NC.

I knew from the minute I walked in that this was a special place: a small church with a big spirit. I loved the time I spent there.

Afterwards the senior warden called me. “We’re looking for a new vicar, and we want you to be that person.”

But I had just started a new ministry - I had just gone ‘Free Range’. Precisely because I knew the struggles that congregations - and clergy - were facing.

I said no.

But still … I felt something very holy about serving alongside them.

So I proposed another possibility to St. Paul’s:
what if we designed a new way to serve ministry together, that best supported everyone sharing the Gospel with minimal stress?

Over a decade has passed since then.

And along the way, we’ve worked out what I call ‘Cage Free’ ministry - a way to get to the most important parts of ministry - prayer, worship, formation, hospitality - with as little institutional ‘overhead’ as possible.

We’ve figured out 5 steps to Cage Free Ministry with a congregation (paid subscribers, see below)…

Join us for Q2 of . A place where innovative ministers - lay or ordained, serving in a traditional congregational setting or setting out on their own as entrepreneurial clergy and faith practitioners -

can find a community for ministry development, training, and support.

It’s where ‘Cage Free’ ministers of all kinds feel less alone.

You’re not weird - you’re early. And now you’re right on time.
Join Substack Seminary - a year-long development, networking, and training community for ministers.

Substack Seminary

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‘You’re working too hard.’

This from both my husband and dear friend within 15 minutes of each other.
Why? Because we were at a party and I could not stop talking about church!

I can’t help it! People come up to me everywhere and they just spill:

• My church is struggling

• I’m called to ministry and I don’t know how I’m going to serve in today’s church

• I want to start a church podcast

• I want to start a church Substack

• I want to learn more about Jesus but I don’t want to go to church
  

It’s not even that I want to help them (though I do), it’s that I’m bursting with vision about how we can do and be church better.

I’m completely excited - and literally see things appearing before me - about how we as the church (and ministers in the church) can get closer to our mission of sharing Good News and farther from the institutional structures that get in the way of this.

But my loved ones have a point.

I’m reaching a point of exhaustion. Right now, I’m:

• Running around, trying to help everyone all the time.

• Developing four separate ministries.

• Simultaneously building a system to create roadmaps towards ministry transformation.

• Working with those least able to pay large consulting fees (small congregations, ministers…)

• Risking becoming exactly what I counsel people not to become: stressed, underpaid, doing everything for everyone.

• Oh, and it’s Lent, so I’m fasting for 40 days with Trexo.

• And I’m training for a half marathon that’s conveniently the weekend after Easter (is it a good idea to fast and train at the same time? I’m going to find out…)

It was on a training run this weekend that I realized I need to remember the thing I tell everyone else. The thing that God tells me:

You are not alone.

Which is how I got the idea to invite you to come with me.

I realized that I’m not just ‘building the plane while flying’ with my ministry, I’m also making all my ministry do double-duty: I’m serving God and the church, and I’m figuring out how to serve God and the church at the same time.

So what if I made this a place to update what I’m doing while I do it?

During Lent, I’m inviting paid subscribers into my process (or in this case, into my creation of a process…) while I sort out how to:

• Develop Christian Practices to share with individuals and communities

• Build a network of innovative ministers

• Walk with the small congregation I serve as they face the challenges of today’s church landscape and get ‘unstuck’

• Create a series of ‘mini consultations’ I’m calling ‘re-imagination packages’

Each Wednesday, I’ll give you an update of where I am with each of these projects - the challenges and the joys.

Which will hopefully be an inspiration to you in your ministry.

My goal is to create the ‘re-imagination packages’ by Easter (or as close as possible). Paid Free Range Priest subscribers will also get 10% off of these.

It’s sort of like inviting you to watch while I rehab a house - there’s things that are messy and hard, but underneath, there’s good bones.

I’ll also keep you updated on the training and the fasting, in case you’re interested.

I’m building all this into what I’m calling the Stained Glass Project - all four of my separate ministries (the Four ‘Panes’) and how they work together…

Each ministry in the Stained Glass Project has its own Substack site:

Free Range Priest
Substack Seminary
Trexo: a gym for your soul
St. Paul’s, Salisbury, NC

You can subscribe - Free, Paid, or Founding - to each of these to be part of each community.

If you want to be part of everything - and get the discount, and support the Future of Church - you’re invited to become a Founding member of Free Range Priest.

This will give you access as a monthly paid member to all four communities (Subscriptions to St. Paul’s go directly to them. The others support Free Range Priest).

Subscribe now

I know - because people keep reaching out to me, even at parties! - that so many people want to rediscover ministry JOY, and figure out how to have more of the ‘Good Stuff’ (love, joy, peace, connection, community - JESUS), and less of the ‘stuff’ (meetings, budgets, stress, conflict…) of church.

Come join me on this journey to discover how to do this - as I discover it, and as you’re inspired to do the same.

Become a Paid member of Free Range Priest to get church transformation in real time (and discounts). Become a Founding Member of Free Range Priest to be a paid member of all four Panes of the Stained Glass Project and the benefits of all four communities.

Be part of Bringing Church to People.

Hearts up!

Fr. Cathie

How do we re-imagine ministry in the digital age?

• Do we think about what ministry means and how we’re sharing God’s love as individuals (clergy and lay)?

• Do we focus on what it means to be Christian and dedicate ourself to faith practices?

• Do we find practical steps to have fewer meetings and fundraisers and more worship and prayer in community?

• Do we make a plan to for our own congregation or denomination to get out from under the exhaustion of propping up an old church system and find more joy in following Jesus?

YES.

At Free Range Priest, we’re dedicated to all these things. And developing separate ministries to look deeply at each aspect of becoming the Future of Church.

We’re also pulling them together in a new system of church - one that is agile, networked, and technology-based, focused on Christian practice and small worshiping communities.

We call it the ‘Stained Glass Project’ - multiple ‘Panes’ of ministry, each dedicated to a different facet of ministry (individual and community, ‘Cage Free’ and ‘Unstuck Church’), all working together to create a new pattern of light and love.

One of these Panes will help you as you seek the light of Christ in your life, and how you share it with others in ministry.

Maybe more than one.

Maybe all of them.

Cage Free Ministry

For individuals - lay and ordained - who are called to share the Good News of the Gospel, but frustrated that there seems to be only one model to do it in. What if there were other ways?

We live in an amazingly creative world, full of tools and patterns we can follow to bring new life to our ministry. Let’s find it together.

These are the Cage Free Ministries we’re building at Free Range Priest:

Substack Seminary: Bring church to people. A community for ministry innovators. If you’re building (or dreaming of building) innovative ministry - something that doesn’t fit the traditional church job description - this is your support system. Encouragement, resources, networking. Let’s find new ways to be Faith Practitioners in a new church.

Learn more about Substack Seminary

Trexo: a gym for your soul: Ancient Christian Practice for modern life. Using the concept of the gym (itself an idea from the early church), at Trexo we’re learning to be Christians by practicing the faith (not just learning about it), in order to grow in relationship with God. Because it’s based on the first few hundred years of the church, it’s pre-denominational, so it introduces (or re-introduces) us to the basics of faith.

Learn more about Trexo

Trexo is ‘Cage Free’ because it’s not a traditional congregation. It exists mostly online. However, it’s also a way for congregations to engage in Christian formation as a community - by becoming gym members together, or by becoming a ‘chapter’ of Trexo and developing your own Practices.

In this way it’s also ‘Unstuck Church’….

Unstuck Church

For congregations, denominations, and other church communities. What are the practical steps we need to take to become Communities of Practice - not just another branch of the crumbling institution?

Free Range Priest: Reimagining ministry in the digital age. Theory and practice, FrP is where ministry is developed and experimented with. It started with the thought: ‘there has to be a better way’, and for over a decade, I’ve been helping clergy and congregations think outside the institutional church box.

FrP is not your typical church consulting business - the primary mission is developing new ways of doing and being church, and connecting ministries with each other and with those seeking a deeper relationship with God.

Learn more about Free Range Priest

St. Paul’s, Salisbury NC: ‘I should go to that church’.
A real congregation grappling with the changes to the institutional church system in real time. They’re transforming into a Community of Practice, based on Trexo guidelines (they’re the first Trexo chapter) and their own ‘special sauce’.

This is also where I practice my own Cage Free Ministry - together we have built a new way for clergy and congregations to serve together. Walk with them as they face the challenges all traditional congregations are facing in today’s church landscape - and become a digital member to support and learn from them.

Learn more about St. Paul's

Each ‘Pane’ of the Stained Glass Project is its own ministry - and its own Substack site and subscription.

If you want to become a monthly subscriber to all four Panes - and get a 10% discount on all Free Range Priest ‘reimagination packages’ - and support the Future of Church - become a founding subscriber to Free Range Priest…

‘Our church is not ok.’ A friend practically whispered it to me.

Her church is a big one - all the other congregations around wish they had their resources, their members.

‘But we’re still struggling’, she admitted.

Not enough people or money or energy to keep everything going. The exhaustion of it all.

‘No church is ok right now,’ I told her. But you will be. You can be.

First step: let go of everything that is not directly about practicing the Christian faith.