Pastors are not called to do ministry for people. Pastors are called to equip others to do ministry. Certainly, in most smaller churches, there’s some chaplaincy for the pastor to do, but that should never be our main function no matter how small the church may be.
This is the primary shift that most small church pastors (and quite frankly, some big church pastors) need to make. We need to move the from the chaplaincy model of doing ministry for people, to the biblical pastoral model of equipping God’s people to do ministry.
Author
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Karl 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.
Karl has served in small-church ministry for over 40 years, so he speaks and writes from decades of hands-on pastoral experience. He and his wife, Shelley have three children and two grandkids.