Karl Vaters, Author at KarlVaters.com

5 Bad Reasons To Go To a Big Church

May 15, 2015 / 6 minutes of reading

I love big churches.

Any time massive numbers of people get together to worship Jesus, that’s a great thing.

But every church of every size has its advantages and its challenges.

So there are both good and bad reasons to attend big churches just like there are good and bad reasons to attend Small Churches.

Today, I’m continuing my four-part series looking at those reasons.

If this post is the first one of the series you’re reading, please understand that it is not a criticism of big churches. It’s a challenge to people who choose to attend big churches for the wrong reasons.

To see the other side of this, check out my previous post, 5 Bad Reasons To Go To a Small Church and come back later for my upcoming post, 5 Good Reasons To Go To a Big Church.

Even if your church is great, it matters that we attend for the right reasons. So if you’re attending a big church for any of the following reasons, you don’t need to stop attending a big church. But you may want to take another look at your motivations.

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5 Good Reasons To Go To a Small Church

May 13, 2015 / 5 minutes of reading

In my last post I gave you 5 Bad Reasons To Go To a Small Church.

But there are some great reasons to go to a Small Church, too.

Some people wonder if there’s ever a reason to go to a Small Church. After all, if they’re small, they must be doing something wrong, right?

Wrong.

There are a lot of great Small Churches in the world, and a lot of great reasons to worship, minister and fellowship in one. Here are 5 of them.

This is the second in a series of four posts on both bad and good reasons to want to go to a small or big church. (Scroll down to see the previous and upcoming post titles.)

1. Because It’s Where My Gifts Can Flourish

Some people’s ministry gifts aren’t suited to a big church.

It’s not because they’re gifts are lesser, they’re just more usable in a smaller setting. If God can use your gifts better in a Small Church than a big church, go to a Small Church. Which leads us to…

2. Because They Can Really Use You

Big churches usually have little problem finding help – both paid and unpaid.

But there are many Small Churches all over the world that are desperate for people who are willing to help wherever they can. I hear this cry from Small Church pastors all the time. People visit, maybe even a few times. They say they like the church, the people, the preaching, but they leave because “you don’t have such-and-such a ministry”. To which we want to scream “then stick around and help us start such-and-such a ministry!”

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5 Bad Reasons To Go To a Small Church

May 11, 2015 / 6 minutes of reading

People are really picky about the kind of church they like.

But you knew that, didn’t you?

Most people choose their church home based on a combination of several factors, including theology (hopefully that’s first on the list), worship style, location, where their friends go, etc.

For many, one of those factors is size.

I’ve met plenty of people who say they could never feel at home worshipping in a big church. I’ve met just as many people who feel the same discomfort about worshipping in a Small Church.

And that’s fine. To each their own.

But, along with the valid reasons I’ve heard for wanting or not wanting to worship in a certain size of church, I’ve heard some really bad reasons, too.

This is the first in a series of four posts on both bad and good reasons to want to go to a small or big church. (Scroll down to see the upcoming post titles.)

Why am I doing these lists? Because we should all be free to worship in any type of church we want without anyone telling us it’s wrong based on its size. But we should also take a moment to assess the reasons for our preferences, too.

If you’re a pastor, these lists aren’t as likely to apply to you. But they might help you in one of two ways.

First, they can be a starting point for conversations with people in your church about why they’re there. Knowing their motivations for attending your church or not attending another church might even help you spot potential problems before they rear their ugly heads.

Second, you might want to give one of these lists to someone you know who is considering attending or not attending a church based on size. They might help someone make a better choice.

I’m a huge fan of promoting and encouraging healthy Small Churches. But people don’t always go to Small Churches for good reasons. Here are five bad reasons to go to a Small Church.

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When You Assume… (Church Growth Edition)

May 1, 2015 / 3 minutes of reading

We all make assumptions.

I do. You do.

And they’re almost always wrong.

Especially on complex subjects, like those that involve God and people. Subjects like church health and growth.

But over the years I’ve made many assumptions about church growth anyway. And I’ve heard others make them.

Then I lived a few decades as a pastor. Experience challenged, then changed my assumptions. It showed me that many of them were not valid.

So what should we do when our assumptions are challenged? Let go of them.

With that as a backdrop, here’s a partial list of assumptions many people make about church health, growth and size – many of which I made myself – that have proven to be wrong.

So we need to give them up.

(If you’re new to my blog, this might also help you clear up any assumptions you might have made about me and this ministry. Some have links to previous posts that explain them in more detail.)

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The Counter-Cultural Statement Of a Strategic Small Church

April 23, 2015 / 4 minutes of reading

The church I pastor will probably never be a really big church.

Not because we don’t want to grow. We do. And we are.

But, given the specific combination of gifts, location, property, demographics and God’s call on our church, small works better for us.

And we’re not alone in this.

Many churches are in situations like ours. Their smallness is not an indication of failure, it’s the best way for them to do the ministry God is calling them to do.

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Why Doing the Right Thing Isn’t Enough for a Healthy Church

April 20, 2015 / 6 minutes of reading

Have you been struggling to lead your church to health and strength, but can’t seem to get there?

You’re doing what you believe God is calling you to do and you’re taking wise counsel from others, but there’s very little, if any progress being made? Not just numerically. But in health, discipleship, worship and the other essentials.

This post might be for you.

There are four ways to lead:

1. Do the right thing in the right way
2. Do the right thing in the wrong way
3. Do the wrong thing in the right way
4. Do the wrong thing in the wrong way

Only one of those combinations will produce a healthy church. Let’s take a look at all four and see what happens with each one.

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The ABCS of Church Change (Always Be Changing Something)

April 15, 2015 / 4 minutes of reading

Change is healthy. Change is good. Change is normal.

All living things change. Or they die.

The church is no exception to that.

No, we don’t change the essential doctrines. They are our foundation. Messing around with the foundation doesn’t bring change, it causes collapse.

As I outlined recently in Kill Your Church Traditions Before They Kill Your Church, everything but our biblical essentials must be subject to change.

Just as churches that change the essentials will collapse, a church that isn’t willing to change on non-essentials will die.

But how do we implement change in a church that has always resisted it? That is one of the great challenges of pastoring.

One key element in that is what I call the ABCS of change – Always Be Changing Something.

Here’s an example.

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Do Ministry FROM the Church, Not Just IN the Church

April 13, 2015 / 5 minutes of reading

If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.

For example, last week I was at Starbucks with a church member when he introduced me to a friend. The friend asked me, “so what church do you pastor?”

Me: Cornerstone.

Him: Where is that?

Me: Just around the cor-

Random guy coming up behind him: The one with the skateboard ramps.

Yep, that happened.

If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.

Our Church Is Too Small

Why is our church known as the one with the skateboard ramps? Because ministering to the youth of our community is a high priority for us. There are a lot of skateboarders around us, but no other skateboard parks in town.

Your see, our church building is too small to hold all the ministry the Lord wants us to do.

Every church building is. But it’s especially true in churches with a small building. Or no building.

If you were to visit our church and sit in the last row, there would be no more than five rows ahead of you – with all the chairs set up. It’s a small room.

For years, I butted my head against a wall (sometimes literally – ouch!) trying to trying to get a bigger building for our church to worship in.

But we live in an expensive city. If we sold our current church property of less than one acre, we could get an easy $3 million for it. But it would cost us an extra $3 million to buy a property double this size, $6 million to triple our size. And we’d still have less than three acres. If we could find three acres – and that’s a big if.

So we started asking ourselves a few questions. If we could find such a facility and if our middle-class church of 200 could somehow raise the extra $6 million, would that be the best use of all that time, energy and money? We decided it would not be.

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Church Buildings Should Serve People, Not Vice Versa

April 10, 2015 / 6 minutes of reading

Our church building wasn’t designed for type of ministry God is currently calling our church to do.

If your church has that challenge, this post is for you. The answer our church found is something I call hauling rocks in a Volkswagen. (Keep reading. It’ll make sense, soon).

This year marks the 50th anniversary of our church facility. That’s not old as far as church buildings go, but it’s old enough to matter.

Back when it was built, most people came to church three or four to a car, wearing suits and ties or dresses. They sat politely in the choir loft or the pews, singing from hymnbooks led by an organ and piano.

Wednesday was family night. Mom and dad sat in the main room hearing a bible study, while the kids went to the back rooms for flannel-graph bible stories and the youth memorized verses for the upcoming Bible Quiz contest.

On Thursday morning, the women met for a quilting club to send blankets to missionaries. On Saturday morning the men met for a prayer breakfast.

Not anymore.

Today, people come one or two per car. Some arrive on bikes and skateboards. Everyone is dressed casually. They bring a coffee cup into church with them, sing worship songs led by a band with drums and guitars, reading the words off a screen. During the sermon, they follow along in the Bible from their phone or iPad, tweeting or Facebooking sermon points as they happen. Those who are sick or travelling check in to our live stream of each service.

Today is better.

Why? Because yesterday is gone and today is happening now.

But today has challenges my predecessors never dreamed of when they built our tiny, landlocked building.

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Don’t Let Your Church Building Kill Your Church

April 8, 2015 / 5 minutes of reading

The church in North America is getting smaller.

No, I don’t think we’re going to say goodbye to the megachurch any time soon – at least I hope not. By all indications, the biggest churches will become even bigger.

But, according to many church trend-watchers like Ed Stetzer, even megachurch leaders are understanding the need for multiple smaller venues instead of bigger and bigger megabuildings.

The era of the mega-church-building, even as megachurches keep growing, may be over.

This is just part of an overall societal trend towards more personalization. The one-size-fits-all era is gone.

For instance, in the last few decades we’ve gone from the big three TV networks, to hundreds of cable channels, to online TV and movie queues tailored to each person’s specific watching habits. The same has happened in radio, automobiles, musical genres, books… you name it.

I think this tendency towards smaller, bistro-style niche tastes leaves the church in North America with a choice.

Fight the tendency towards smaller and lose out, or do Small Church really well and lead the culture into a better way.

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