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Karl Vaters: Your Small Church Has What People Need the Most Right Now

“All of a sudden, even the most stubborn churches have had to change this year, whether you wanted to or not.”

“Given the chance that we’ve had to make changes, it would be such a shame to go through all of this and not learn something of value about it.”

“If your ‘why’ in any way doesn’t connect to the Great Commandment or the Great Commission, then we really need to reconsider it.”

“I refuse to accept this past year as simply a loss.”

“[Because we are all under some level of trauma], people are right now in action and emotion mode, and their logic centers are not acting really strongly, which explains a whole lot of what we’ve seen over the last nine months or so.”

“What people need is familiarity and relationships. They need to be in places that they know with people that they know and love.”

“Preach a little shorter…and spend more time doing things that are familiar like worshiping together.”

“The relational and familial things that small churches do especially well are what people need more than ever right now.”

“The technology is there, and I’m grateful for it, and I use it like crazy, but the thing that’s really going to help us heal is not going to come through technology. It’s going to come through connecting with people again.”

“By the time this is over, when we think back to this, the average congregation member is not going to be thinking about how well you framed your shot on Sunday morning. They’re going to thinking about the time the pastor called and said, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ And when you said, ‘Fine,’ they paused and went, ‘You don’t sound fine. Talk to me a little more and let me pray for you.’”

“We need to shift the conversation from finances to generosity.”

“A generous church doesn’t just put a lot of money in the offering; a generous church gives a lot of that money away.” 

“When we shift to generosity, then we can also make the shift from looking for more donors to making more disciples.”

“We’ve really set up church systems that subconsciously say, ‘You know what, I as the pastor will do the ministry. You just put money in the offering.’”

“Current generations are just as generous as previous generations were. But they do it in a different way, and they’re going to do it more through causes that they care about and through people that they’ve made a connection with.”

“A lot of us as pastors and ministry leaders, we amped up our energy levels because we had to, we had to respond very quickly to an immediate crisis. The switch went off. Some of us have stayed in crisis and sprint mode since then, and we’re burning ourselves and our congregations out. Take a look around folks: This is no longer a sprint—it’s a marathon.” 

“When the pandemic is over and when health returns, I think we’re still in for two or three of the roughest years you’ve ever seen financially, emotionally, spiritually.”

“You need to slow down, you need to take nap, and I mean literally take a nap.”

“There is a reason why Sabbath is not just a suggestion—it’s in God’s Top 10.”

Mentioned in the Show by Karl Vaters:

Micah 6:8

The Church Recovery Guide: How Your Congregation Can Adapt and Thrive after a Crisis by Karl Vaters

Check out Karl’s website
Follow Karl on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube

Karl Vaters: Being Small Is Not a Problem, Virtue or an Excuse

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Jason serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at PastorServe, a ministry committed to strengthening the Church by serving pastors through personal coaching and church consulting. He also hosts FrontStage BackStage, a podcast and YouTube show, that helps pastors embrace healthy, well-balanced leadership as they develop a sustainable rhythm for life and ministry. Prior to joining the PastorServe team, Jason served as Vice President of Ministry Mobilization at Outreach, Inc., and as the Executive Director of the National Back to Church Sunday movement. Additionally, Jason served for nearly two decades in pastoral leadership, primarily as a lead pastor, in several contexts, including church plant re-launch, multisite church, multiethnic urban church, and an established suburban church. His experience as a lead pastor has provided numerous opportunities to coach and mentor pastors across the country. Jason and his beautiful wife, Monica, are the proud parents of six children and live on Anastasia Island, Florida. @jasondaye