Karl Vaters, Author at KarlVaters.com

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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The Karl Vaters / Carey Nieuwhof Podcast: Bridging the Big/Small Church Divide

April 7, 2015 / 2 minutes of reading

Carey Nieuwhof is a name that is rising fast in the Christian blogosphere.

Seven years ago, Carey founded the fast-growing, multi-site Connexus Church (about 1,500 people) in the small city of Barrie, Ontario, Canada (population 128,000).

His primary blogging topic? Church growth.

I, on the other hand, have been pastoring Cornerstone Christian Fellowship (about 200 people) for 22 years in Orange County, California (population 3.1 million).

My primary blogging topic? Small Churches.

We were bound to butt heads, right?

If all you knew about us were the mini-bios I just gave you, it would be obvious where that butting of heads would take place. He should see me as a sad underachiever who needed his condescending help, while I would be looking at him with jealousy and/or ridicule for putting numbers first.

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The Best Welcome for Easter Guests? Ask Them To Serve With You

April 4, 2015 / 3 minutes of reading

(If you’re a NewSmallChurch.com subscriber and the title of this post feels like deja vu, here’s why. The original version of this post disappeared. Woosh, into the emptiness of the internet, never to be retrieved. Thankfully, I always save a copy, so here it is again.)

In a few weeks, my church is doing our twice-yearly Share Day. (Click here for a video of how we do that.)

On that Sunday, we will gather for church in the morning, then divide into groups to go throughout our community helping people. This Spring, the events include repairing & beautifying two rescue homes for abused women and children, and ministering to residents at a home for the mentally disabled.

This week, on Easter Sunday, we’ll encourage people to sign up for these events, and/or sponsor them financially.

Yes, that’s right. We’re going to spend several precious minutes of prime Easter service time asking everyone, including all the Easter-only people, to step up and serve with us.

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Want to Write Something Great? Write Something Lousy First

March 20, 2015 / 5 minutes of reading

Writing one sermon is hard. Writing two is easier. The same goes for blog posts, articles, books… you name it.

You just have to follow this simple rule: Write a bad one first, then write a good one after that.

This discovery has been one of my most helpful tools in becoming a better writer. Here’s why.

The bad one is easier to write. Then the good one becomes easier to write after you’ve written the bad one. After all, you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve started. And by the time the bad one is done, the good one is halfway written already.

I follow this rule for all my writing. I start by getting everything on the page in one big mess. Then I start writing the good one out of the mess because it’s easier to fix a bad sermon than it is to start with a blank page or screen.

Here’s how I do it.

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10 Reasons I Don’t Use Negative 10-Point Lists In Preaching or Blogging

March 13, 2015 / 2 minutes of reading

A lot of bloggers and ministers like using negative 10-point lists as the basis for blog posts and sermons.

Some that I’ve run across include:

10 Reasons Your Church Isn’t Growing
10 Practices Healthy Pastors Need to Avoid
10 Habits of Highly Ineffective People
10 Attitudes that Will Ruin Your Marriage
10 Ways to Raise a Boy You Wouldn’t Want Your Daughter to Date
There’s nothing inherently wrong with writing or speaking that way, but I’ve never been a fan of it.

Here are my 10 reasons why.

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Church Is Not Efficient – And 5 Other Other Messy Truths

February 20, 2015 / 7 minutes of reading

As a pastor, I was taught never to wrestle with difficult truths in front of the congregation. Give them simple three-point, alliterated answers to life’s problems.

That may have been the right thing to do years ago. Perhaps we really did live in a simpler era when answers were easier, God made sense and the church always did things well.

But not any more.

Today, people don’t trust answers that come too easily. At least not when we’re dealing with the big questions of life.

That has led some people to give up on the idea that we can find truth at all.

Not me. More than ever, I’m committed to the reality that there is a God. He does exist. That Jesus is the only way to heaven. And that the bible really does mean what it says.

But.

The details are messier than we’d often like to admit. So here are a few of those messy details that I’ve come to be OK with in recent years. I’m even OK with acknowledging them to my church, from the pulpit.

Just don’t stop until you get to the end of the story. The road may not be as smooth as it once was, but the destination is more than worth the trip.

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9 Essential Elements of a Healthy Small Church Experience

February 4, 2015 / 6 minutes of reading

When someone goes to a healthy Small Church for the first time, what should they expect?

That’s an easier question to answer for big churches, because they have a lot more in common with each other. Once any group – church or not – is serving 1,000 or more people at a time, certain systems have to be in place. So, while big churches each have their own personality, there is a level of quality control that we all expect to see. Age-appropriate Kid Ministries, high-end musicianship, professional-quality graphics and printed materials, etc. It’s like going to a brand-name restaurant when you’re travelling. There’s a comfort level in knowing what you’re going to get.

But the kinds of experience you’ll have in Small Churches vary widely. It’s more like visiting a new town and deciding to check out the local diner. You don’t know what you’re going to get, but you take the risk because you want local cuisine. And you’re hoping for an experience you can’t get anywhere else.

But, even in a Small Church, as varied as they are, first-time guests have the right to expect certain things that tell them the church is healthy. Like a local restaurant should observe standard requirements for cleanliness, service and food quality, Small Churches should have a baseline of quality that people can rely on.

In one of my most-read posts, 23 Non-Numerical Signs of a Healthy Church, I wrote about some of the ways we can tell if a church is healthy, even if we don’t have the numerical growth that many seem to believe is a requirement.

Here are a few things that I think are a baseline that every guest has a right to expect in any healthy Small Church. These are universal. The standards every church needs to observe if they want to create a great worship experience that people will want to come back for.

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A Healthy Church Should Always Look Something Like This

February 2, 2015 / 2 minutes of reading

Last Sunday, Skylar and Gene chatted in the hallway between services at our church. I took this picture of them without them knowing it. It was Gene’s 90th birthday. Skylar is in her early teens.

Three-quarters of a century separates their ages. Gene has great-grandchildren older than Skylar.

On Monday through Saturday their lives could not look more different. But on Sunday mornings, that distance gets reduced to no wider than the space between their chairs.

Gene can’t always make it to church any more. And when he does, he can’t sit in in the folding chairs we set up in the main room. So, while Skylar and the rest of us sit, stand, clap and raise our hands in worship in the sanctuary, Gene sits quietly in an armchair in the lobby and listens.

When the service is over, the second part of church begins for Gene. He can’t get up and walk around as people chat, laugh and hang out in the lobby, so he sits quietly in his chair. But he’s seldom sitting alone. People like Skylar stop and chat with Gene, soaking in his quiet friendliness and wisdom.

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Rick Warren’s Surprising Video On Church Size & Attendance

January 26, 2015 / 3 minutes of reading

“Nobody likes a big church – except pastors.”

If you hadn’t already read the title of this post, you probably wouldn’t think that quote was from Rick Warren.

But it’s just one of several similar quotes in a short video in which Rick Warren shares some very helpful thoughts on our misperceptions about church size and attendance.

The video originally appeared on Thom Schultz’s When God Left the Building YouTube page. You can scroll down a little to watch it right here.

Here’s another quote from Warren:

“I think one of the things we need to do is change what we reward in churches today, because for the last 50 years denominations and organizations have rewarded size, attendance.”

I have no idea what those “rewards” would look like – I’m guessing Rick my not either – but he’s absolutely right that we need to change our thinking in that regard.

As he says in the last quote of the video, “Big isn’t better. Small isn’t automatically better. Healthy is better.”

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10 Principles to Get the Best From Volunteer Church Leaders

January 21, 2015 / 8 minutes of reading

Volunteer leaders are the backbone of the Small Church.

In bigger churches, most or all of the first- and second-tier leaders are hired (Namely, the pastoral staff and department heads). That’s a great thing. When you hire someone, it’s much easier to require certain tasks and enforce your expectations. After all, they have a financial stake in how well they perform as a church leader.

But Small Churches are led by volunteers. Volunteers who can quit at any time. And when they do quit, it doesn’t hurt them financially, it actually frees up more of their spare time. So we need to give them good reasons to stick around.

It’s one of many aspects that make pastoring the Small Church a unique challenge.

I’ve been in Small Church ministry for almost three decades – over 22 at my current church. In that time, I’ve learned a handful of great principles that help our church attract and keep the best group of volunteer leaders I’ve ever worked with.

Here are 10 of them:

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