The Power of Small Churches

[00:00:01] Well, alright, welcome to the STOKE IT UP podcast everybody, a podcast encouraging you and your journey with God and we want to create conversations that will help you in your life, your ministry and so today, Kenneth and I are joined by Carl Vaters. Carl, welcome to the STOKE IT UP podcast brother.

[00:00:21] Thank you, it's going to be on with both of you.

[00:00:23] Well, I followed you on X or I still call it Twitter and I also, right?

[00:00:32] Yeah. I've become enamored by your approach to Small Church.

[00:00:39] So tell us some of your personal journey with the Lord where you've been in ministry and how you transition to the ministry you're in now with Small Church, let it out.

[00:00:51] Yeah, I'm actually a third generation pastor and I've been pastoring for over 40 years.

[00:00:58] And all, you know, side from a couple short positions as a sociopastorist slightly larger churches, all of my lead pastoring time has been in smaller churches.

[00:01:09] But I've been here at Orange County, California for the last 31 years. Our church building is less than two miles away from Calvary Chapel Costa, Mesa.

[00:01:18] Oh, wow. Yeah, so we're real close there and you know, we also know that here in Orange County is, you know, we've vineyard and saddle back and mariners and, you know, just over the border, you got Angelless Temple and you've got, you know, church on the way and all these, you know, very well known churches and not just churches, including Christian cathedral are left then out.

[00:01:40] Not just big churches, but places where big movements have begun. This is a, this is a place where a lot of big movements have become a fuller church growth institute, you know, just over the border from us. So people don't think of Southern California as a church hub, but it really has been for the last 50 years, especially for church growth. And so we, you know, we landed here 31 years ago and I thought well us next, you know, came to this tiny church that had been through five pastors in the previous 10 years.

[00:02:07] So they were in a season of crisis. So we knew we had to get out of that crisis season and it took that, that took a few years which I understood. But after getting out of the season of crisis, we still weren't growing numerically the way the church growth stuff seemed to tell us we should. The church was healthy. The mantra was all healthy things grow. We had grown somewhat but we were running it about 150 on a big Sunday 200. That was after 15 years of working it from, you know, to get from 20.

[00:02:38] And it wouldn't go past that. And so I tried everything I could, I bought church growth experts in and to a person they said, oh yeah, you're doing everything right. It won't be small for long but it states.

[00:02:50] And I got to the point where I almost left ministry and discouragement and frustration about 15 to 20 years ago. Because I was so frustrated, so discouraged by not seeing the numbers that seem to be promised.

[00:03:04] And it wasn't that I needed the numbers. It was that when they you keep hearing all healthy things grow and you reverse engineer that that means if you're not growing, you must not be healthy. I thought I must not be as healthy as I think our church must not be as healthy as I thought we were because we're not growing numerically anymore.

[00:03:20] And I had to reconfigure what health and strength look like and what effectiveness was like because when I looked around at the church, I realized we're not just a healthy church. We're actually really effective and a really influential church like people would come to our church.

[00:03:36] And I'd give them the tour of the place which doesn't take long because it's tiny and we'd be standing in our main sanctuary and on two separate occasions, the person standing in our main sanctuary with me said so where's your main sanctuary?

[00:03:51] And I said you're in it, you said I thought this was the prayer chapel. No, this is everything. This is all because like but I keep hearing about you got all these students and you're sending people around and you got internships and you got I go yeah we have impact we have big impact but we have a small footprint.

[00:04:08] And so I started realizing you can have big impact from a small footprint and so I started researching that and discovering some principles about the value of small churches.

[00:04:18] And then as I started promoting it through writing about it and speaking about it, it started catching on and other people have now been encouraged by that but you that's basically the message of our ministry is you can have a big impact from a small footprint.

[00:04:34] Let's go. Well, why don't you divide define for us Carl when you talk about the small church what are you talking about there there's different definitions that different group shoes whether you're the hard for it Institute or the different demographers.

[00:04:49] Yeah, so give us your definition of small church.

[00:04:52] Yeah, yeah, small is a relative term obviously and it's a moving target. So depending on who you talk to and in fact in my first book I defined it one way five six years ago in small church essentials I defined it a different way and today I've got a better definition which means five years from now I'll have a better definition than this but this is the one I'm got now and this is really the way we function for our ministry so the way I look at it is this there are two very distinct types of small churches.

[00:05:19] There's a church of 50 give or take 50 and there's a church of 150 give or take 50 and by those numbers I mean in typical Sunday morning attendance.

[00:05:30] Okay, so you've got church of 50 give or take 50 in Sunday morning attendance and 150 those are two very distinct types of small churches I know because that passed through both at length.

[00:05:40] But the reason I include both of them as small is because of pastoral capacity so since I'm talking to pastors I define everything I do based on the pastor.

[00:05:51] So in a church of 50 give or take 50 in general Sunday morning attendance the pastor can know everyone and is typically at every event, right.

[00:06:03] In a church of 150 give or take 50 the pastor knows all the regulars by name and is at all of the major events.

[00:06:12] So whether it's 50 give or take or 150 give or take the pastors role is defined by their constant presence.

[00:06:20] But once you get above 200 or so things change for one simple reason.

[00:06:26] God knows everything and is everywhere and we are not him.

[00:06:31] So we have limited capacity above 200 you can't know even all the regulars anymore and so above 200 and the bigger you get the more the pastors role is defined by their absence then by their presence.

[00:06:44] So when you hear about pastoring from big church viewpoints you'll often hear about having how to manage staff and how to manage the facility and your presence on the stage and so on but most of what they talk about is,

[00:07:01] how do you make sure that things are going well when you're not in the room for everything anymore.

[00:07:07] But for the small church pastor there's a constant pastoral presence so the way we lead and pastor and the principles we use are very different than those in our Bay church friends.

[00:07:17] That's good.

[00:07:20] So so Carl give us some of the biggest misconceptions about small churches and how we can address those things.

[00:07:28] Yeah, probably misconception number one is one I've already referred to and that is that you know all healthy things grow.

[00:07:36] We just say those things and we assume it's true but when you test it you find out not necessarily especially if you mean all healthy things grow by all healthy things get bigger which is what we usually mean when we say that that simply isn't true.

[00:07:52] I'm six foot six inches tall but I haven't grown in inch in the last 50 years.

[00:08:00] Right.

[00:08:02] Now because I'm growing emotionally and spiritually and mentally I'm hopefully I'm growing emotionally spiritually and mentally, but I stop growing physically.

[00:08:11] And I think we have to recognize that that's the case with the church as well.

[00:08:16] There are things that happen where churches grow numerically but I think most churches reach I call it a shoe size.

[00:08:23] Where you reach a shoe size and you go this is our best size for the ministry you want to do at least for now and for most churches for the long term.

[00:08:32] So the idea that if it's healthy it has to keep growing numerically I think is probably the biggest frustration.

[00:08:37] The second one is or the misconception about small churches.

[00:08:41] The second biggest misconception about small churches is that we can only learn from churches that are bigger than us.

[00:08:48] And if we just take the principles that made big churches big and apply them in small churches then they'll apply to us.

[00:08:54] And the misconception there is that most big church principles don't work in a small church context because small churches and big churches aren't just difference in scale but they're different in type.

[00:09:06] And we need to understand the type of differences that mean you're going to function differently as a pastor and a small church then you would function as a pastor and a big church.

[00:09:15] Those, those will be the two biggest misperceptions that I see.

[00:09:19] Okay so let me jump and ask you the question we were talking about before and I'm going to try to get it out or it's not too sloppy but probably not.

[00:09:28] How does a small church see itself as big without being a big church?

[00:09:35] Or the question is, is it possible for pastors to lead small churches and them not lead small or leave the church feeling small in its mission?

[00:09:48] I think you probably get what I'm asking and I'm not asking.

[00:09:51] Okay.

[00:09:51] No you're asking really well the way I phrase it is how can we be okay with being a small church without settling for less.

[00:09:59] Right.

[00:10:01] Whenever.

[00:10:02] Yeah I don't get push back on this ministry very much but when I do get push back that's always the push back.

[00:10:09] It's always okay it's fine if you want to say small but I'm not settling for less and I'm like I'm not settling for less either.

[00:10:14] That's not what this is about.

[00:10:16] I don't want churches to be small.

[00:10:18] I want small churches to be great.

[00:10:20] That's not settling for less so how do we get there is the question that you're asking and that is we have to see.

[00:10:27] Church growth through the kingdom growth lens and not just through the congregational growth lens.

[00:10:36] Americans are not exclusively this way but we are especially this way that we are consumed with individual numerical growth.

[00:10:48] We want the individual church to have more people sitting in it Sunday to Sunday that is our almost exclusive definition of growth.

[00:10:58] That is again not exclusively American but it's especially American we've got this obsession with numerical size.

[00:11:06] But if you step outside of the US church and even if you step outside of the Anglo white American church into minority churches you will find a less obsession with physical numerical growth.

[00:11:22] And what you will find especially internationally is okay we're not here to get more people sitting in front of me on a Sunday.

[00:11:29] We're here to see Christians grow as a percentage of the overall population in our community.

[00:11:36] So if the best way to help the Christians in this community increase that is actually bring more people into the kingdom of God.

[00:11:45] If the best way to do that is to build a really big church then let's do that.

[00:11:49] But if the best way to do that is for a whole bunch of small churches to pop up everywhere then let's do that.

[00:11:54] And usually where Christians are actually growing as a percentage of the population it's usually by small churches multiplying more than by churches getting bigger.

[00:12:03] Usually there's a combination of the two but like 90% of it is driven by small churches multiplying and increasing.

[00:12:11] And so if we are going to be okay with small without something for less we have to change from a congregational growth mindset to a kingdom growth mindset.

[00:12:22] Is my congregation contributing to the growth of the kingdom of God and now with online options it is very possible for a church to have very few sitting physically in your room.

[00:12:33] But but have it reach a whole lot of people online where in another town or in another country they hear the gospel through your church's website through your church's live stream through your church's podcast and they start going to another church because they're not physically near you.

[00:12:50] We have to be not just okay with that, but we need to champion that.

[00:12:56] That's a great outlook on this. Let me ask as you think through that or as you have thought through that.

[00:13:03] You have the the familiar church and we see this a lot of ethnicity groups.

[00:13:09] My naughty groups where it's a very family chapel oriented and we kind of lean that way out in these rural communities extreme rural communities.

[00:13:20] How can we avoid the.

[00:13:24] That in the focus of the small church that leads to that family chapel mindset so they're really only concerned about taking care of the spiritual needs of their individual families.

[00:13:39] So that we do have that outward impact that you're talking about.

[00:13:44] Yeah, that's that's a great question that that that installation is a very common problem with this small church is and I don't know that it's particularly for ethnic church unless you consider redneck and ethnicity.

[00:13:59] I can also do that.

[00:14:05] I see that among the people of color's ethnicities and races languages.

[00:14:13] And that's usually due to generational habit that has become institutionalized and habitualized so for generation,

[00:14:30] generation, generation, generation. This is the way we've always done it and the only way to break free from that is not by all of a sudden painting the sanctuary or by the pastor dressing down or you're not going to change that by changing the style of things.

[00:14:45] If all you do is change the style of things then the culture will chew the style up and spit it out like culture each strategy for breakfast right that's the old.

[00:14:58] So you've got to address the culture. You've got to address the culture so here's the way you address the culture in a small church.

[00:15:07] And again, this is one of the big ways where big churches and small churches have to approach it very, very differently.

[00:15:13] So if you hear about culture from the big church standpoint you usually hear something like pastor you're the one who has to go in and you have to set the culture you have to tell them what the culture is you ought to let them know the culture constantly.

[00:15:22] Culture comes from the top down but you know what if you're a young new pastor and you go into a small older rural church and you try to tell them what their culture is.

[00:15:32] You've got bless you with your next church because that's not going to fly right so let you have to do it to change that culture is three steps step number one is this you have to know the current culture.

[00:15:46] Churches pastors of existing small churches don't set a culture they inherit a culture.

[00:15:53] Right and if we don't recognize that we can't move the culture at all so step number one is you have to understand the current culture then step number two you have to show them what you appreciate about the current culture right they're not going to go with you until they understand that you get them.

[00:16:11] If all you do is come in and say this is wrong. This is wrong. We need to change this this and this although be offended because they like something in the church that's why they're there.

[00:16:20] Right now the stuff they like might not be worth liking but nevertheless you have to find some common ground.

[00:16:26] You know this is the apostle Paul's one and Rome thing right I've got to find some place to build a common bridge with them so one understand the culture is best you can too show them something that you appreciate about the culture and after you've that done that then you get to go to step number three which is this.

[00:16:41] Once you do that they will then hopefully give you limited permission to participate with them and moving the culture forward.

[00:16:50] Hey, the smaller churches the longer churches been around the newer you are as a pastor the younger you are as a pastor the less authority they will hand to you.

[00:17:00] So you've got to understand the culture show them what you're appreciated about it and then be okay with this dance of working with them in a limited way to move the culture forward. You have to invest in cultural change over a long long period of time.

[00:17:18] But as someone who had to do that where I am, I can tell you once you do it the payoff is worth it.

[00:17:25] It sounds like and you kind of are starting to answer that there and you know you hear the experts all the pundits out here that are saying, you know, oh in three years you'll be able to do this in five years you'll be able to do this in seven years but in reality what I hear you saying is that you can't put a timeline on this so don't even try.

[00:17:47] This is something that it will happen when it happens. Therefore you've just got to be willing to commit an invest to be here and see it through.

[00:17:59] Yeah, you can speed up the timeline a little bit because it time on its own won't change anything but time invested wisely will get you where you need to go.

[00:18:10] So again, this is one of those things where it's opposite big to small church. One of the things that often are big church pastors and big church leaders say is you know when you first arrive at a church for the first year or two make your big changes right away while you're in your honeymoon phase.

[00:18:26] Okay fine but if you're going to a small church in the first year or two you're not on your honeymoon you're on probation.

[00:18:33] So step lightly learn what's going on understand it it can happen but it is going to be slower.

[00:18:43] Carl, is there a version of what you just said I think what you just said would fall into a revitalization scenario is there a version of what you just said for a church planter planting and going up and through the first couple years with that kind of scenario have you dealt with that at all.

[00:19:03] Yeah, I had not a church planter but I've worked with a lot of church planters on this and now the church planter principle is much closer to the big church principle.

[00:19:12] Because you're the one who's planting it because you're coming out the gate because you're recruiting new people.

[00:19:17] It's going to really match your vision a lot more and so the idea of trying to help them understand your vision takes precedent.

[00:19:26] You still have to pay attention when it's smaller to the gifts and to the abilities and to the passions and to the skill sets of the people that are gathering around with you but you're going to lead it much more than you're going to have to cooperate with them because there is no culture yet until you establish it in a church plant so.

[00:19:44] The church plant people can learn more from our be church friends then people going into an existing small church can learn from our be church friends.

[00:19:51] Carl what would you think of the state of discipleship in shaping the small church kingdom mentality of it that you're describing.

[00:20:03] In my latest book, Desizing the Church was just came out a couple months ago.

[00:20:08] I have a chapter entitled discipleship fixes everything.

[00:20:14] So that's my answer.

[00:20:15] Let me let me I think it's the other one the small church essentials.

[00:20:22] The church essentials yeah that's what you mentioned something in there I actually underlined it and you mentioned about the.

[00:20:31] You don't say it like this but there is a real problem a death of discipleship in the church and it's not it's becoming obvious that we've got a major problem right now compared to truth.

[00:20:43] Yeah, oh absolutely yeah I'm the reason I put it as bluntly in the new book as discipleship fixes everything is because I I'm actually I know that it does and here's.

[00:20:56] Think think this through try to imagine a problem that a church might have that discipleship won't fix.

[00:21:02] I can't come up with one right finances discipleship who fix that volunteerism.

[00:21:08] Immorality disunity bad theology discipleship discipleship will fix all of those things and so the lack of discipleship has caused the crisis we're in the lack of discipleship and a lack of integrity that goes along with it.

[00:21:22] Have as cause the current crisis that we're in like the crisis that the American church is currently facing is not a crisis of lack of methods or lack of techniques our techniques on our methods are the best they have ever been in the history and the 2000 year history of the church.

[00:21:38] We've got the videos locked down with the music is excellent like the stage production is astonishingly good our architecture is amazing right we've got the training our methods are technique are.

[00:21:54] Disney level fantastic right we did we we've got that but they're leaving these highly technically advanced churches as fast as they're leaving the poorly technically advanced churches why.

[00:22:06] Because nobody's lead nobody's leaving the church because we we didn't have advanced technique they're leaving the church because we didn't have integrity and we weren't discipling them so discipleship with integrity is the way back.

[00:22:22] Wow what would you say it looks like in your mind and in your heart to effectively disciple in a small church if you had a blank slate and let's say you're planting that church or replanting.

[00:22:38] I guess you could say revitalizing but well how would you without inheriting structure but maybe with all of your experience up till now what would you tell small church pastors to do as far as hey here's some great ideas in my head and heart about disciple making.

[00:22:54] Yeah don't start with curriculum start with just start with relationship.

[00:23:00] We have this kind of a curriculum obsession in America and I think to I'm trying not to be too cynical about it but I think part of the reason we're obsessed with curriculum is because.

[00:23:14] People can make money selling as curriculum.

[00:23:21] Yeah, you know that doesn't mean curriculum is bad a curriculum can be very very helpful but it's taken the lead and it shouldn't take the lead it should come second so in and the smaller churches the more important anywhere relationship is.

[00:23:33] This paramount in any size of church the difference between relationship and the big church and relationship and the small church is.

[00:23:40] In a big church the relationships won't be happening with the lead pastor because there's just too many people for the pastor and I relationship that will be happening in small groups on ministry teams and and Sunday school those kinds of things that's where as long as relationships happening it doesn't matter if it's not with the lead pastor but in a small church a lot of those relationships will happen directly with the lead pastor and in fact.

[00:24:00] If you know our statistics are to be believed about half the Christians in the world go to small churches which means about half the Christians in the world have some expectation of being disabled by their pastor like they want to be pastor by their pastor bunch of weirdos right.

[00:24:18] So so in the small church it matters more that the pastor has a relationship with the people that the pastor knows the people by name and that the pastor is directly participating in their discipleship now the pastor should not be the only one doing discipleship because.

[00:24:34] built into discipleship is that they become disciple makers themselves.

[00:24:40] But it doesn't start with curriculum it starts with the relationship I sit down I get to know somebody that's where Jesus discipleship started when he said come follow me.

[00:24:50] He didn't get he didn't hand him a hand book he said come follow me paul's discipleship did not begin with curriculum he didn't write the letters first he write the letters he wrote the letters later to people he had relationships with.

[00:25:03] So he went on a trip and he grabbed the young Timothy and just said come along with me.

[00:25:09] And then I'm going to leave you here in Ephesus to pastor and I'll send you a couple letters to help you along the way.

[00:25:14] He didn't begin with the letters he began with relationship and so both Jesus and Paul and the entire study of the early church shows they began with relationship.

[00:25:23] And then when the theology was taught within a relationship with a more mature believer that's where real discipleship takes place in too many of our churches we think we're discipling people but all we're doing is having classes.

[00:25:37] Classes are good but classes are only teaching and teaching is only a part of discipleship.

[00:25:44] Absolutely I think you're really hidden we're Allen and I are where we've been spending a lot of time in our podcast in recent months.

[00:25:53] Doing the whole idea of spiritual formation and how it develops and what takes place and he and our proponents of the sermon based small group.

[00:26:03] So that you're moving disciple making into a relational group we believe that that's a more appropriate biblical model for doing that.

[00:26:12] And so everything you're saying is is spun on with where we are and so as you're thinking about I mean everything you said.

[00:26:22] It applies in the church plant but also applies for the established church pastor a pastor that's going into a small church.

[00:26:30] If he's not engaged in a disciple making methodology and like you said I mean I think the Hartford Institute gives us the stats churches at run less than 500 make up about 34 million people which represents 94% of the churches in North America.

[00:26:51] And so you can break those numbers down but you get into that the numbers related to you know 59% I think it is are less than 100 in attendance.

[00:27:06] And so it's that whole like you said they want this relationship with their pastor they want that time in small group in community.

[00:27:16] These are the churches that they're still doing the small prayer meeting with a with a Bible study connected to it on Tuesday night or Wednesday night we know whatever night during the week.

[00:27:28] It's all this relationship driven model that has pre existed in the church.

[00:27:36] And yet we have drifted away from using that model and what I hear you say is we get a return to some of the things that we used to do.

[00:27:48] Yeah, which is absolutely based on connecting with one the one and others of her people using nowadays.

[00:27:58] Yeah, yeah my my pod I have a podcast and it's called the church lobby and the reason I name my podcast the church lobby is because.

[00:28:05] I was trained to do ministry from the church platform but I wasn't trained how to do ministry in the church lobby.

[00:28:13] And in a big church 99% of the ministry the lead pastor is going to be from the platform.

[00:28:19] But the smaller the church is the more ministry is going to happen in the church lobby.

[00:28:25] And again in the in the particularly small church of 20 to 50 or so you're going to do far more discipleship you will do far more ministry you will bring far more value into people's lives.

[00:28:36] In the church lobby before and after the service then you will with your sermon in fact if you can be a great pastor in the church lobby you can even be a bad preacher and it'll be okay.

[00:28:48] In the small church.

[00:28:51] Yeah, I think I'm well I'm mulling that over.

[00:28:57] I don't I don't like bad preaching anyway.

[00:29:01] I I have a lot of gore's.

[00:29:03] And real quick by bad I don't see a logically bad.

[00:29:05] I mean you're just not quite the you know there is no speaker.

[00:29:09] Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:11] I look at it in three categories excellent preaching which only God can do good preaching which means you spent time in the word and you've got you haven't shamed out on it.

[00:29:21] And then there's just okay preaching where anyway that's a whole separate subject so yeah, how would you define reproduction that if if I'm a church and I'm at 70 people.

[00:29:34] And let's say you're going to lose some people and you're going to gain some people and they're going to move and come however that goes down but basically we're in between 70 and 100 people.

[00:29:45] How do I define reproduction then Carl and how do I keep people motivated in a small church so that they're not going man our church isn't the church down the street it's blowing and going.

[00:29:58] Yeah, yeah, that that's a real challenge because the the physical number of people who show up on a Sunday.

[00:30:04] Is the visible representation of everything that's right in front of us every single week and so that's the thing that's really we tend to concentrate on it is really hard not to concentrate on it but here's here's where I'll start.

[00:30:18] It is important to minister appropriately for the size your church currently is so if your church is currently running 70 people on average on a Sunday morning then pastor the way a church of 70 should be pastor but you need to put systems in place for a church of 140.

[00:30:40] So your systems should have the capacity of double your current size for a couple reasons for three reasons at least reason number one so that you're not operating at 100% all the time and you've got some margin in your life.

[00:30:56] So that if and when you do grown numerically you're ready to handle it so that's a huge part of it.

[00:31:03] And then thirdly right now the difference between people who consider your church their home church and the number of people you have on Sunday is wider than it's ever been maybe an American history.

[00:31:17] So when I was coming up as a young man if you had 70 on a Sunday morning the pastor would say and if everybody showed up we probably have about 100 and I'd always say stop saying that they're never all showing up.

[00:31:30] But I understand what that means right they do not all there every Sunday so if you were averaging 70 you're probably pastoring 100 today if you're averaging 70 you may be pastoring 140 to 170.

[00:31:41] Because of less frequency of attendance right people are no longer attending every Sunday or even three Sundays a week now they're attending one or two Sundays I'm a week a month I meant and so you have a smaller percentage of the people who consider your church their home church in front of you which means you're pastoring more people than you probably think you are.

[00:32:01] Which is another reason why we need to build our systems for at least double our Sunday morning attendance that gives us the margin that gives us the possibility of handling growth and that takes into account the number of people were actually responsible for.

[00:32:18] Yeah that makes up for those giver takes you are talking about at the beginning a church of 50 giver take yeah and so the recent numbers that I've seen and this isn't even just recent this is kind of where the stats have been for the past several years.

[00:32:32] The average believers attending two out of five Sundays.

[00:32:36] And so I think about the average person is attending that often you have those that are below average that they're hitting that one out of five Sunday or even more.

[00:32:46] And what's fascinating about that is it's the average of fully committed church members.

[00:32:53] So they're not talking about an average of the you know that doesn't include this Sunday that the Easter and Christmas only people.

[00:32:59] That only includes people who say this is my home church every time I go I'm here and they they are fully committed there attendance frequency has just dropped like crazy over the last 20 years.

[00:33:09] Absolutely and I'm glad you mentioned that this is not something that is a post COVID issue.

[00:33:17] Just between us here I'm really tired of everybody say well post COVID this is no this is like you just said this has been going on for more than 20 years now so this is a ongoing problem that we've had.

[00:33:32] That we didn't address before COVID hit and so we still haven't fixed it post COVID.

[00:33:39] Now COVID didn't change it COVID amplified and accelerated it and the the silver lining to COVID is that it's now made issues that might have been settled before very bold faced and if you're not paying if you're not seeing it now you're just not paying attention.

[00:33:55] So it was easy to miss it pre COVID you can't miss it now. Absolutely, it's a great way of saying that.

[00:34:04] Carl let me give you another kind of scenario and get you to respond to it because you are unexpert on this small church topic it's the you guys check them out at carolbaders.com.

[00:34:16] I'll put that in the show notes with long with the link for the lobby the church lobby podcast but I stumbled across something in the last 10 years.

[00:34:27] I became very friend a very good friends with the brother who recently went to be with the Lord John Burton he used to work for campus who saved for Christ long story short.

[00:34:37] I'm going to send you a book I'm going to get your address I just published a book through Amazon self did everything called new new believer how to follow up on new believers and here's what I stumbled across I just I would literally stumbled only one in 10 new believers gets disciple after they're saved and baptized.

[00:34:55] Now sometimes you can run that number and it'll be 30 or 40% maybe maybe maybe but oftentimes only one in 10 is is getting disciple.

[00:35:06] We had Ken Hempel on here a month ago and Ken was talking about spiritual gifts that's kind of one of his many expertise topics.

[00:35:18] He said this it really gripped me he said of spiritual gifts discovery.

[00:35:24] He said we need to be discipling people to discover their spiritual gifts not curriculum based and he's not against curriculum you wrote a book on it.

[00:35:34] But I was shocked when he said that and here's what I'm asking you if small churches are small and let's say they're at 70 to 100 and they're going to rotate like every other church in that little gray area you talked about.

[00:35:47] But they don't know we're not discipling new believers and I'm convinced I don't know what the number would be but most Christians don't know their spiritual gifts.

[00:35:59] Isn't isn't there room for work to be done even in a small church and I don't know why I say even in a in a small church to actually there's plenty of work to be done that will lead to reproduction that's not being done.

[00:36:13] What do you think about what I said?

[00:36:16] Yeah, the small church I think one of the advantages of the small church is that because we're small we actually need people to participate more than the big church needs people to participate.

[00:36:29] And a big church if you have a need you can hire somebody and then you have the occasional volunteers but you don't hire somebody in a big church to run their entire kids

[00:36:38] And then you hire somebody who's trained to run kids ministry department but in a small church the person running your kids ministry department if you have one is not someone who's trained how to do that it's someone who just said okay I'll do that I'll help out.

[00:36:51] And so there's a there's a necessity for understanding a spiritual gifts in the small church that is much more evident it's not more necessary but it's more evident in the small church because we need people to step up and run the youth department and run the worship team who weren't trained in those things.

[00:37:08] So helping them to understand their spiritual gifting and I think the first step is not to have them take a spiritual gift serve. Although if they do that's fine, it's not going to hurt them but I think the first step is to help them by getting involved we have a need here or you have a you feel like you want to help in this area and as they get involved then they begin to narrow the field and they try something and it doesn't work that's not a failure you've now crossed that off of the list of things.

[00:37:38] That's not wasting any more time over there let's get them over here. I was sharing this yesterday with two members of our church who are fairly new about a guy that came to our church 20 25 years ago and he came and to our church and he had great technical skill and he knew how to run our audio board really really really well.

[00:37:56] Every time he was there I was thrilled with the audio mix so we put him on the audio board. He was also an extravert who was always around people and always introducing people to everybody else and every time I put him on the audio board

[00:38:11] He would get distracted because he was an extravert and he wanted to talk to people and so we kept putting signs up don't talk to him while the service is on your disturbing him and then I realized I'm taking a guy who could be the social gloom for this place and I'm walking him in a box and putting a sign on and don't be the animals.

[00:38:30] I mean this is ridiculous so I said here's the deal you train somebody to run the let's find an introvert who wants to be locked in a box.

[00:38:41] Let's train them to do that and let's release you to be the social gloom the church needs more than somebody who's going to be pressing buttons in a box.

[00:38:51] We discovered it by having him active in ministry and we wouldn't have discovered it by having him taking a spiritual guest or at least not to the extent that we did.

[00:39:04] That's great yeah I'm laughing over here in part because you're saying what can't him pils it.

[00:39:11] It's kind of affirming that we need to get people discovering through just jumping in at some level discovering your spiritual gift and deploying yourself into ministry.

[00:39:24] Carl what encouragement as we end what encouragement would you give to small church pastors out there to help them take next steps to be encouraged in the ministry.

[00:39:35] Yeah step number one is a small trick faster you are probably doing a much better job than you think you are.

[00:39:41] You're probably a much better pastor than you believe you are I find that over and over and over again and it's because we've got this obsession with size.

[00:39:51] And we're constantly you know all the all the keynote speakers at all the conferences the first line in the bio is this guy took a church from 30 to 3000 and just three years right so you can't it's not just that you got big but you gotta get big fast and if you don't do either of those things you start feeling like a failure.

[00:40:09] But I walk I go around and I see so many small church pastors in all kinds of places big cities suburb small towns are you know farmland that are doing amazing work and they don't really appreciate how good a job they're doing.

[00:40:24] So that's number one is you're probably doing a much better job than you think you are and number two.

[00:40:31] Spend more time with Jesus and more time with the people if you're going to invest your most precious hours that's where to invest them.

[00:40:42] Excellent.

[00:40:44] Can it what would you say to a small church pastor doing courage right.

[00:40:48] Oh yeah well those are the the key elements I mean he really just delivered what the the top items are but I think the the other item I would just say.

[00:41:00] It's just remember you're not alone majority of the churches across North America are what John Mark Clifton wants to call the normative church small church pastors are it there are very few large church pastors.

[00:41:17] So you're you're not alone you are out there in the trenches with lots of guys and all you have to do is look down the street and you're going to find somebody else is going through exactly what you're going through.

[00:41:32] Yeah, and I would add what we ask in rock bridge.

[00:41:36] We got this question from a book on church growth I can't remember the author's name right now, but it's basically recreate the scorecard which one you guys know who said that who said that Reggie oh I came in my name.

[00:41:54] Recreate the scorecard.

[00:41:56] Reggie.

[00:41:57] Reggie.

[00:41:58] Yeah that sounds like magic.

[00:42:00] Recreate the scorecard quit evaluating according to what Carl said in the beginning of the podcast big church looking success that is.

[00:42:11] Can be a lack of kingdom mentality for sure.

[00:42:15] Well guys thank you for the conversation we could keep this going Carl your ministry is a fascinating ministry to us and we really appreciate.

[00:42:24] And the way you're encouraging small churches and small church pastors I'm not even sure we ought to call it that but.

[00:42:32] You're doing an incredible service to the kingdom to the body of Christ.

[00:42:36] Thank you for coming on the stoca out podcast we're a part of the C.G.N. Media team media that points to Christ.

[00:42:43] Brother thank you for coming on any final comments Carl.

[00:42:47] No thank you for what you're doing I any time we can point a spotlight and that you said at the end there you're not alone so the one thing I would say to pastors.

[00:42:55] Smolter pastors is you're not alone unless you make yourself alone you're you're you're there are a lot of pastors out there like you and now that we have the ability to do what we're doing right now which is the video conference.

[00:43:07] You don't even if you're in a rural place where there aren't people physically close to you do whatever you need to do to connect with other small church pastors to encourage each other to share resources to share ideas that is going to be a huge part of.

[00:43:21] Lifting you emotionally and spiritually to be able to have long term we want to be in this for the long run we want sustainable ministry and connecting with like minded people is one of the best ways to have sustainable ministry.

[00:43:37] Amen that's a good word well guys thanks for tuning into the stoca to podcast we hope this encourages you and you're joining with God and your public ministry in the Lord and his kingdom and the church.

[00:43:49] We will see you on the next episode next week God bless.