A handful of people scattered in the sanctuary sang along, including a church elder in the front row next to a pair of young kids tapping on tambourines.
Five years ago, when the church was at its height, as many as 100 people would show up for Sunday service.
On this Sunday, Miller led the singing, preached the sermon and even handled the video for the livestream of the service, moving the camera closer to the pulpit and greeting people online before preaching.
Cornerstone is part of the fastest-growing group of congregations in America: the minichurch.
“Shrinking attendance figures coupled with an increase in the number and percent of small congregations obviously indicates that a good many congregations are not growing,” the study’s authors found.
While most congregations are small, however, most worshippers attend a larger congregation.
Among the worshippers at Cornerstone that Sunday was Lisa McDougal, a longtime friend of Miller and his wife, Deb.
Ryan Burge, assistant professor of sociology at Eastern Illinois University, knows about the challenges of small churches firsthand.
Small-church pastors can often be under tremendous pressure, said Burge.
At Real Hope Community Church in Oswego, Illinois, a Free Methodist congregation about 50 miles west of Chicago, the Rev.
The church recently bought its first building, a three-bedroom house near downtown Oswego, which it hopes to rehab into a meeting space for worship and community events.
They moved about an hour west to Spring Green, a small town that’s home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin estate, after feeling God’s call to plant a new congregation.
After a friend died of a heart attack during a friendly game of racquetball, Derek Miller decided to become trained as an emergency medical technician and join the town’s volunteer fire department.
“I really think more pastors, especially those in small communities, ought to do this,” he said.
Little was saved from the building but some stained glass and the church bell, which is now displayed outside the new building that stands on the same site.
The new building, which can seat about 200 people, features a large fellowship hall where the congregation hosted community meals pre-COVID, and a modern sanctuary equipped with a pair of projectors mounted on the ceiling.
Things began to fray during the Trump era.
Things got worse in 2020 after Deb Miller, who serves on the Spring Green village board, recorded a short home video detailing why she would not vote for Trump, despite being a lifelong Republican.
Derek and Deb Miller at Cornerstone Church of Spring Green, Nov.
One saving grace for the Millers has been that they don’t rely on the church for most of their income.
Balancing all three roles can be a challenge and the life of a small-church pastor is never easy, even in the best of times.
Still, he believes in the importance of small congregations.