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How To Pivot Your Pastoral Leadership In Uncertain Times
When times are normal, leaders inspire change. When times are disruptive, leaders provide stability.

Congregations Don’t Want a Hero, They Want a Pastor
Church members aren’t looking for super-pastors, they want basic pastoral competence, honesty and leadership. That’s what they ought to expect.

Small Church Finances: 2 Security Lessons I Learned The Hard Way
Trusting each other doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put proper financial checks and balances in place.

Small Church Finances: 4 Budgeting Lessons I Learned The Hard Way
Money isn’t the goal of ministry. But it is a tool – and an important one. When we manage our money well, we can do better ministry with it.

Recruiting Volunteers In a Small Church
Intentional mentoring is a great way to expand your church’s capacity for effective ministry and fulfill our mandate to make disciples and equip God’s people.

Quit Trying To Fix Your Church’s Ministries – Until You Do This First
Church health is not about making our current ministries better, it’s about doing better ministry.

The Discipleship Mandate: Bring Mentoring Back
Small churches have a serious advantage when it comes to discipleship. If we’ll use the right tools.

Pastoring A Small Church Is Not A Penalty, It’s A Specialty
For years I bucked against the idea that I am a small church pastor. Instead of seeing it as my calling, my heart and my passion, I treated it like it was my penalty for not having the skills to be a big church pastor. So I consumed every church growth book and devoured all

Bigger Fixes Nothing (What Reality TV Taught Me About Healthy Churches)
When healthy small churches grow, they become healthy big churches. When unhealthy small churches grow, they become unhealthy big churches. So instead of telling struggling churches to get bigger, let’s help them become healthy.
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Author
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Karl Vaters produces resources for Helping Small Churches Thrive at KarlVaters.com.
He's the author of five books on church leadership, including his newest, De-Sizing the Church: How Church Growth Became a Science, Then an Obsession, and What's Next. His other books include The Grasshopper Myth and Small Church Essentials.
Karl also hosts a bi-weekly podcast, The Church Lobby: Conversations on Faith & Ministry, featuring in-depth interviews about topics that concern pastors, especially those who minister in a small church context. He has served in small-church ministry for over 40 years, so he speaks and writes from decades of hands-on pastoral experience.
You can follow Karl on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, or Contact Karl to inquire about speaking, writing, and consultation.
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