It was 2015 and Pastor Rob Dyer was working on the sermon he would deliver that Sunday to his congregation at First United Presbyterian Church in Belleville, a suburb of St. Louis on the Illinois side of the state line.

The message was about taking care of one another — a seed Dyer has worked hard to plant and grow since leaving his electrical engineering career more than a decade ago to become a Presbyterian minister.

But on this particular week, Dyer wasn’t feeling it.

“It was just lame,” he said. “It just felt like a lot of words and not a lot of action. It needed something real.”

So that Sunday, standing in front of his flock, Dyer made a request: Write down any needs you have on the corner of your worship bulletin, rip off the corner and place it in the offering plate.

“I gave a pretty exhaustive list, ‘Maybe you have a bill you need help with, maybe something in your house needs to be fixed, maybe you need someone to talk to,’” he recalled. “It felt a little raw and a little exciting and, oh my gosh, people really responded to it.”

The following Sunday, Dyer presented a PowerPoint listing all the needs and asked the congregation to write down........

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