Dozens of cultural clubs, congregations, business groups and political organizations are based here, as is a branch of the politically influential Cuban American National Foundation.
The church clusters are seen as one way to combine dwindling and growing congregations into groups, making more efficient use of priests' time.
By the 1920's, there were nearly 100 of them, their sponsors a mix of trade unions, congregations and groups named for a town in the old country, known in Yiddish as landsmanshaftn.
The idea behind godless congregations, as groups like the Sunday Assembly are known, is pretty simple: churches are about building communities based on shared values as much as they're about worship.
The Boy Scouts of America partners with community organizations, such as religious congregations, fraternal groups, service clubs, and other community associations, to provide the Scouting program for the particular neighborhood or community in which the particular organization wishes to outreach to youth and families.
Local congregations are grouped for administrative purposes into two forms of area organizations, districts and stakes.
As co-president of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, a 27-congregation interfaith group, Rivers said he's never seen an officer charged so quickly with the murder of a black man.
Ann Romney, however, saw how he had "served as a pastor for a congregation and for groups of congregations," a reference to his work as a lay bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
So they have begun to adopt techniques that allow churches to be both big and small at once.One ruse is to break the congregation into small groups.
A large congregation of jihadi groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, met six months ago in Rawalpindi, the city where the army headquarters was attacked last Saturday, said Mr. Sherpao, the former interior minister.
