Nearly 25 years ago, in the Ministry Inquiry Program at Goshen College, I met with a pastor as a potential intern. The first thing he said was: “The way we do church in North America doesn’t work.”

His words hit me like a gut punch. I could feel their audacity and truth. For the next decade I worked with him to recreate our local congregation into a thriving ecosystem — a flexible, informal, authentic church. I’m not sure if we succeeded, but I know it left a hole in my life when God called us to a new place.

Today, I am a part of an eight-person small group that is a ministry of Waynesboro Mennonite Church in Virginia. We’re close, and we’ve been challenging each other to follow Jesus. We pray for each other and connect during the week. This group has become church to me.

While each of us may attend a different congregation on a Sunday morning, we’ve become an ecosystem of informal, fluid, authentic faith. I love these people fiercely.

This is the beauty of small congregations and small groups: You can form long-lasting connections that fuel your faith.

But this is also the challenge of small congregations and small groups: You lack the resources to do all the ministries you feel called to do.

I have a vision for a network of small Anabaptist congregations to share resources and build on their strengths.

I’m starting a network — Riverside Anabaptist Collective — to create a way for small congregations to share the work of service-making (teaching and worship) remotely while they minister locally in service-doing (connecting, caring and formation).

I envision small congregations coming together online and sharing the work and costs of worship and teaching. I’d love to see a small congregation in rural Iowa that can’t afford a teaching pastor still enjoy a great sermon on Sunday morning, even if that pastor happens to be at a church in Virginia that also can’t afford a teaching pastor.

Small congregations could share their gifts far beyond their walls. They could share centralized services without having to foot the entire bill.

This is a time to get creative, because disillusionment with church is at an all-time high. However, thanks to new technology, the potential to spread creative ideas and share resources has never been greater.

Consider how ElevationChurch.org worships: with centralized service-making (worship and teaching) ex­tend­ed by video to 20 locations and online to YouTube, where they have 3.25 million subscribers. They have “e-fam” small groups all over the world.

I like author Peter Ward’s idea of a liquid church. Rather than scrambling to keep afloat, a liquid church embraces the fluid nature of our culture. In his book Liquid Church, Ward urges moving away from “the traditional understanding of church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time to a dynamic notion of church as a series of relationships and communications.”

A church like a flowing river can go into the world God loves and reach places structures can’t reach. We need a vision that isn’t centered on buildings and institutional structures but on helping people belong and believe.

A small congregation’s superpower is creating belonging. When we belong, we are more open to believing.

Riverside Anabaptist Collective is a liquid church concept named for the river metaphors in Psalm 1:3, Isaiah 58:11 and Revelation 22:2. We want to support congregations in full autonomy as they facilitate belonging and spiritual formation.

So far, we have a website and a vision — and a dream and a prayer to become a reality. If you are interested in connecting, please contact me at CarmenShenk@gmail.com or visit RiversideAnabaptist.com and subscribe to get details on the next gathering.

Carmen Shenk of Staunton, Va., is the founder of Riverside Anabaptist Collective. The author of Kitchen Simplicity and The Simplicity Mindset, she is a breast cancer survivor and a student at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.