Visual Marketing Tools
Forming Your Local Group of Clergy
We suggest aiming for a group of 4-6 clergy. This group should plan on meeting four times (one time for each text) and may need additional time to plan congregational recruitment and the first congregational session (future congregational sessions will benefit from experience in the first one; there is no need to plan it all in advance).
Click here for sample text for an email to recruit clergy colleagues.
Forming Your Local Congregational Gatherings
When advertising the project in your community, emphasize the larger moral priority of healthy democracy. Consider sermons prior to promoting the project to highlight communal anxieties around the sustainability of the American experiment. Individuals in our communities are struggling with friend and family relationships that have become frayed by political differences. Work and volunteer team meetings show signs of bad habits learned through our country’s broken political discourse. This project is a positive response to those concerns. Ensuring that congregants see the bigger picture can transcend just learning about texts. In addition, make sure the promotional material indicates that this is not a history course or a policy debate but rather an opportunity to:
Share fellowship with our local area houses of worship.
Explore the big ideas that define what America means to each of us.
Discuss the values that underlie our democracy.
Plan for hosting a community-wide ritual to honor 7/4/2026, America’s 250th.