Karl Vaters: ‘The Small Thinking That Divides Churches’

Karl Vaters, lead pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Southern California and founder of NewSmallChurch.com, answers the question, “How can small churches remain agile in our ever-changing culture?”

Imagine if Starbucks executives got together and said, “We’ve sent our spies out and measured all the IKEAs in the area. The average IKEA has 250,000 square feet, but the average Starbucks only has an average of 1,000 square feet. We need to get our averages up. We’ve got to get bigger stores. You can drive by one of our stores and not even see it. Some of our stores don’t even have their own property; they’re stuck inside another store. So let’s consolidate some of the stores and make them bigger.”

You hear that and you think, “That’s ridiculous. Starbucks’ business plan is different than IKEA’s business plan, and no one can say either one of them hasn’t been successful. Starbucks is about smallness and intimacy, and it works for what they’re doing.”

Small churches are the same way. There are people who like the smaller setting and the smaller place. They discover God more deeply in a smaller setting. They’re more comfortable inviting their friends to a smaller setting. They like that they can ask questions. They like that when they’re in a store and they run into a pastor, the pastor sees them and knows their name. They’re not wrong or selfish for wanting those things.

So it was that premise I started from: The things that a small church can do better—and that’s not to put down big churches. I love big churches. I love megachurches; I want to see more of them. But I want to see more teaching that is applicable to small churches, because we’re taught almost exclusively from a megachurch standpoint using megachurch principles. And there are some principles that megachurch pastors can teach me, but I can actually use less than half of them in my church. The rest of it I have to adapt, and some of it can’t even be adapted.

When a church is shrinking, you have to take a look at whether a church has the leadership it needs to have. That’s always the first place to look. If you believe God is still calling you there, and the congregation agrees, then the second thing you’ve got to ask is if God is challenging you to change your approach, mission or vision. The third thing to look at is the community. Maybe the community and their needs are changing and you missed it. Maybe there’s been an ethnic shift in the community. Maybe there’s been a socioeconomic shift in the community. Maybe there’s been a shift in family relationships in the community.

We have to constantly be aware of changes happening and be ready to adapt. If we get too committed to a single method, to a single type of system or to a particular way of doing things, it will not be long before that system, method or way of doing things will no longer apply. Most dying churches aren’t dying because of lack of passion, lack of experience or even lack of people; they’re dying because things have changed and they haven’t caught the wind of the change. They haven’t been able to adapt quickly enough.

It begins and ends where the gospel begins and ends, which is relationships. When Jesus was asked the question of what matters to God, Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The trouble is, love is hard to measure. So we use numbers as a false proxy. How do I define success at love? That’s like trying to define art, like trying to define beauty. How do you measure art and beauty? How do you measure love? You really can’t. So what you do—and again, I think the small church allows for this to take place a little bit more—is you have to take it one person at a time.

You have to simply have developing relationships. You have to spend time with people to see that they are drawing closer to Jesus more this year than they were last year, that they’re developing stronger relationships with other believers from this year to last year, that they’re drawing nonbelievers into their circle of friends and influencing them for Christ as time goes on. Some of the greatest successes in our Christian lives simply don’t have numbers attached. We need to get more comfortable with the idea that the most important things in life can’t be measured.

Read more 10-minute church consultations to get your church moving again »

Karl Vaters
Karl Vatershttp://karlvaters.com

Karl Vaters is pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California, and the author of several books including 100 Days to a Healthier Church and The Church Recovery Guide (both published by Moody).

Truly Local: Church as the ‘Soul’ of the City

Belonging means different things to different people. My personal homecoming is bustling into a bar, keyboard under my arm, for a jazz gig with local musicians.

14 Revelatory Questions to Ask a Prospective Church Leader

Getting to the heart of the matter

Mark Glanville

Jazz by its nature as a traditioned, improvised, nuanced, intelligent, conversational art form, is an evocative metaphor for the church in post-Christendom.