Jeff Keady and Jonny Craig are funny, bright, hardworking, creative Small Church pastors who love encouraging other Small Church leaders through their blog at 200Churches.com.
The highlight of 200Churches.com is their weekly podcast. Very few people can do a podcast well. Most are just talking heads. But Jeff and Jonny have a natural sense of timing, humor and fun that is contagious. They genuinely like each other and love what they do, and that comes across as they tackle some serious Small Church leadership issues together.
Jeff is a native New Yorker with over 27 years of pastoral ministry experience. He now pastors Dover Church in Orange City, Iowa. (The town obviously got that name because of all the orange groves in … Iowa?) Jonny is an Iowa-born preacher’s kid who’s been working as Jeff’s associate pastor since 2012, with a wide-ranging portfolio “including youth, college, preaching, and of course, some janitorial responsibilities.”
The dynamic of their different ages and life experiences is natural fodder for their give-and-take, and it allows for more than one approach to ministry to be expressed. They question and challenge each other as they encourage Small Church leaders.
Some of the podcasts are just the two of them. Some are interviews with others, including one they just recorded with me that they’ll put up on Wednesday, August 14.
What Do They Mean By a 200Church?
No, Jeff and Jonny are not in charge of 200 congregations.
I’ll let them tell you what a 200Church is with this quote from their About page. If you go there, you can also view their introductory video.
200churches.com is a site focused on providing resources and encouragement to pastors of smaller churches. Simply put, a 200church is a church of around 200 people, give or take a hundred or two!
As pastors of a 200church, they realized that over 70% of churches in America have fewer than 200 members, and how ironic it was that as pastors of smaller churches, we receive most of our resources and encouragement from pastors of huge churches, and never get to hear the stories and experiences of pastors from churches like ours.
Jeff and Jonny are pastors who want to encourage and support other pastors of “smaller” churches. They know that there are tens of thousands of churches, actually hundreds of thousands, that have 200 or less in attendance. The work of these pastors and ministries can get lost in the shuffle, and they want to encourage, equip, support, inspire, and cheer on the pastors of 200churches – those churches with around 200 people, give or take a hundred or two!
With humor, passion, conviction, and care Jeff and Jonny share methods and inspiration for the small church pastor through their podcasts and blog posts. If you are a lay, bi-vocational, or solo pastor, the 200churches Podcast is for YOU because your leadership, no matter the size of your church, matters HUGE in the Kingdom of God!
Check out 200Churches.com for yourself. Then subscribe to their podcast, like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. That way you won’t miss anything.
Oh, and tell a friend.
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So what do you think? Have you been following 200Churches.com? Do you know of any other ministries for Small Churches that we can include in our Stuff We Like series?
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