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The Myth of the Slow Season
by Ashley Graham-Wilcox
My son's last day of school is coming up, and within a few hours, we'll be on the road.
By the next morning, if all goes according to plan, he'll be floating in a lazy river somewhere outside of Las Vegas while I spend four hours in Zoom meetings. Then we'll point the car toward Zion. There will be a stop in Chicago that somehow manages to be both a client meeting and a family visit. There will be long stretches of interstate and roadside diners and audiobooks and the conversations that can only happen when you're (lovingly) trapped in a car for hours.
At some point, I will almost certainly be livestreaming a church service from the parking lot of a Kansas City Royals game. And eventually, we'll again arrive at Camp Chickagami in northern Michigan, where we'll spend a month beside Lake Esau, settle in, and learn some new lessons.
When people hear all of that, they assume I've found a way to escape work for the summer.
| | Tomorrow! Administrators Virtual Cafe Tomorrow! | | |
How I Use AI: Real Weekly Workflows
Thursday, May 28 | 10:00 AM PT / 11:00 AM MT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
AI can write a decent email. You’ve probably heard that. What’s more interesting, and actually helpful? Using tools like ChatGPT to save real time each week without sounding robotic, cutting corners, or losing your own voice in ministry.
In this practical Admin Roundtable, Ashley Graham-Wilcox will pull back the curtain on how she actually uses AI in her week-to-week work as a one-person communications and administration team supporting churches, nonprofits, and ministry projects. You’ll see real prompts of how AI helps streamline repetitive tasks while creating more space for strategy and creativity.
We’ll walk through a typical week and explore how AI can help with things like:
- Turning sermons, meetings, and notes into usable content
- Writing social media captions and newsletters faster
- Brainstorming event messaging and workshop ideas
- Summarizing long documents and reports
- Using AI as a thought partner when you’re staring at a blank page at 4:45pm on a Thursday
We’ll also talk honestly about what AI can’t do well: replace your judgment, understand your congregation’s nuance, or magically fix unclear strategy. This session is designed for people who are curious, skeptical, overwhelmed, or already experimenting and wondering how others are using these tools in practical ways.
Facilitated by Ashley Graham-Wilcox, Independent Church Consultant
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Small Changes, Big Impact: Refreshing Your Church Website
Tuesday, June 9 | 10:00 AM PT / 11:00 AM MT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Learn practical, high‑impact ways to make your church website more welcoming in hours—not months. Designed for clergy, vestries, communicators, and volunteers, this session walks you through quick wins: clarifying your homepage message, surfacing service times and a strong call-to-action, writing plainly for newcomers, cleaning out clutter, and applying simple design and accessibility tweaks. You’ll leave with a clear 1‑hour refresh plan, examples you can copy, and immediate steps you can implement this week to help visitors find their way in.
Led by Kendall Martin, Strategic Communications Consultant
| Church Collaboration Cafe | |
Summer Slowdown, Fall Ramp-up
Wednesday, June 10 | 10:00 AM PT / 11:00 AM MT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
June can be one of the best times to pause, evaluate, and prepare before the busy fall season arrives. How are you using the quieter rhythms of summer to clean up systems, refresh your website, organize calendars, update forms, plan major events, or rethink communications workflows? Join us for a collaborative conversation about working smarter now so that September doesn’t arrive in full chaos mode.
Facilitated by Mike Orr, Canon for Communications and Evangelism, the Episcopal Church in Colorado.
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Realm User Group
June 17 (Third Thursday of the Month, excluding July and December): 9:00 AM PT / 10:00 AM MT / 11:00 AM CT / 12:00 PM ET
Join us for a time of sharing, troubleshooting, and honing our Realm skills in support of our missions and ministries.
Hosted by Janey Griggs Salazar, Administrative Assistant and Benefits Coordinator for the Episcopal Church in Colorado
| | Administrators Virtual Cafe | | |
Borrowing Brilliance
Thursday, June 25 10:00 AM PT / 11:00 AM MT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Sometimes the best ideas are already sitting in someone else's church office.
Join us for a collaborative show-and-tell where church administrators, communicators, and ministry leaders share one practical tool, process, resource, or workflow that has made their work easier, more effective, or more sustainable. Bring a communications calendar, volunteer system, meeting template, event checklist, AI prompt, spreadsheet, signage idea, or anything else that's working well in your context.
This isn't about having all the answers—it's about learning from one another. Come ready to share, steal a few good ideas, and leave with at least one thing you can put to use before the busy fall season begins.
Facilitated by Ashley Graham-Wilcox, Independent Church Consultant.
| | Espresso Yourself: A Creative Prompt | | |
This month’s challenge: Imagine it's September and you're writing a postcard back to yourself from the future. What are you glad you made time for this summer?
What project are you thankful you started early? What memory are you grateful you didn't rush through? What unexpected lesson did you learn along the way?
Write a short postcard—just 3–5 sentences—from Future You to Present You.
| | Refill & Rest: Self-Care Corner | | |
Before you start planning for September, take five minutes and look backward: What's one thing from the first half of this year that went better than expected?
Not the thing that still needs fixing. Not the project that's unfinished. Not the goal you haven't reached yet.
What's one thing you're genuinely proud of?
Maybe it's a relationship you strengthened, a difficult conversation you navigated well, a new skill you learned, or simply the fact that you kept showing up through a demanding season.
Write it down. Share it with a trusted colleague. Or keep it tucked into your notebook for a day when you need the reminder.
Sometimes rest begins by noticing that you've already come farther than you think.
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