Should numerical growth be the main focus of a church and how to know you are attending a healthy church?
Join the conversation with Karl Vaters, author of "Desizing the Church: How Church growth Became a Science, Then and Obsession, and What's Next?
In conversation with host Helen Todd, he challenges the colossal notion 'bigger is better' within church communities.
Discover an alternative perspective that values the depth of spiritual health over numerical growth. Karl's personal journey from pursuing larger congregations to appreciating and empowering smaller churches offers a refreshing lens through which to view the Christian faith.
Gain insight into how to evaluate the health of a church in one simple step.
Learn more about Karl and check out his book:
https://karlvaters.com/
To discover your greater purpose through short-term missions check out:
rfwma.org
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
Should numerical growth be the main focus of a church and how to know you are attending a healthy church?
Join the conversation with Karl Vaters, author of "Desizing the Church: How Church growth Became a Science, Then and Obsession, and What's Next?
In conversation with host Helen Todd, he challenges the colossal notion 'bigger is better' within church communities.
Discover an alternative perspective that values the depth of spiritual health over numerical growth. Karl's personal journey from pursuing larger congregations to appreciating and empowering smaller churches offers a refreshing lens through which to view the Christian faith.
Gain insight into how to evaluate the health of a church in one simple step.
Learn more about Karl and check out his book:
https://karlvaters.com/
To discover your greater purpose through short-term missions check out:
rfwma.org
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
Welcome to Limitless Spirit, a weekly podcast with host Helen Todd, where she interviews guests about pursuing spiritual growth, discovering life's purpose through serving others and developing a deeper faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of the Limitless Spirit. I'm your host, helen Todd. It is no secret that America is obsessed with size. It is no secret that America is obsessed with size. Bigger is better is a statement that applies to our cars, homes, food portions and even our churches. If you have ever asked yourself whether this trend of focusing on church growth is healthy for the future of Christianity, this episode will be very interesting to you. My guest today is Carl Vader, the author of the book Desizing the Church how Church Growth Became a Science, then an Obsession, and what's Next? If you expect this conversation, however, to be a typical bashing of megachurches, it is not. Carl points out that desizing does not necessarily mean downsizing. This conversation is about the science of a healthy church and a surprisingly easy way to evaluate the health of a church before you commit to it. Good morning, carl. Welcome to the Limitless Spirit podcast. How are you today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing very well, Helen. It's good to be with you.
Speaker 2:Well, I am very much looking forward to our conversation. When your book came to my attention, I was excited because I think that this is an important subject for the believers to at least look at and discuss, and also I think your book perhaps might be one of the very few resources on this subject, and so we will mention it to the listeners. You recently came out with a book called Desizing the Church how Church Growth Became a Science, Then an Obsession, and what's Next?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So you are considered actually the small church expert, Carl. I've done some Googling and that's your title, which is very cool, and one of the very few small church experts. So let's talk about you first. What made you become known as the church small church expert?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, I did not title myself that. So it's an honor to be considered an expert in something, and to be considered an expert in the small church area is an honor as well for me. I became really engaged in the idea of small churches and thinking about them and trying to resource them because, well, to be honest, for about 25 years I tried to build a big church and couldn't. I've been in pastoral ministry for over 40 years and for the first 25 years I really bought into the whole church growth paradigm. I read all the church growth stuff, went to all the conferences. I kept trying all of the ideas and all of these supposedly can't-miss ideas that if you just do these, if you just get rid of these obstacles, if you just try these principles, your church will get bigger. It's inevitable. All healthy things grow. I heard all of those things and our church had some moderate growth, but it never got above 200 on any consistent basis. It usually hovered at around 150.
Speaker 3:And I live in Orange County, california. I live in a highly populated area with a lot of big churches around me. So if you can't build big here, you can't build big anywhere. And I got to the point of frustration where I almost left ministry, thinking I must be doing something wrong. And then I started looking around and realizing wait a minute, there's a whole bunch of other churches in a similar situation than mine.
Speaker 3:In fact, as I discovered, about 90% of churches in the world are under 200 people and they serve half of the Christians in the world. And then I looked around and thought, well, there's got to be somebody writing about help for us. And I couldn't find any help for the typical church, which is a church of around 65 or so, and for the typical pastor, which is about 90% of us pastoring smaller churches. And so I started writing out of my own experience and, quite frankly, out of my own frustration, and then I started collecting all the resources I could find, and so for the last 11 years or so, I've been really working in that space to try to encourage small church pastors and try to provide small church-specific resources whenever I can find them, or create them.
Speaker 2:This is an important conversation, I feel like.
Speaker 2:So just to give you a background on me while I am a ministry leader, I'm not a pastor, and so I come to this particular issue from the perspective of a church goer, rather than, you know, the pastoral team, which most of my listeners will be, team which most of my listeners will be, so I hope to voice the questions that my listeners would have to you if they were present here in the studio.
Speaker 2:So we definitely have this trend in the last well, I would say more than a day last two decades towards this occurrence. You know, if we look at 20 years ago, there were definitely megachurches in the United States and across the world, but there were a few, and so in the last 20 years there has been a growth in the number of megachurches, Although, as you mentioned, still the statistics show that 90% of the churches across the world are smaller churches. But there's been this trend and while there's some positive aspects to it, there are also some negative aspects to it. So, judging by the title of the book, I'm sure a potential reader would ask is Carl Bader's against megachurches? The quick answer to that is no. I Vader's against megachurches.
Speaker 3:The quick answer to that is no. I am not against megachurches. I am for all churches of all sizes, as long as it is a church that is biblically preaching and discipling its people and doing what God called the church to do. It really doesn't matter the size to me. So I specialize in the small church because that's the area where God placed me and that's the area where I have done my best ministry. But I'm absolutely for the mega church.
Speaker 3:So, as you mentioned, the title of the new book is Desizing the Church. But desizing is not downsizing. I am not asking the church to get smaller. Desizing is the idea that we stop using numerical increase as the main or sometimes the exclusive way that we judge the value of a church, and this has been happening for years now, especially among pastors, but it's made its way into the average church attender as well, that somehow a church of 3,000, or the pastor of a church, people who are attending a church of 3,000, is given more value than a church of 300 and is definitely given more value than a church of 30. Somehow we think that the church of 30 must be failing in their mission when that just isn't the case. So, removing numerical increase. Removing size as a marker of value is what desizing the church is all about.
Speaker 2:So before we dive into some of the issues that you talk about in the book, can we outline in a concise way for our listeners the issues with small churches and the issues with large churches side by side?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot that we can take a look at that. The primary difference between big and small churches is the principles that I mostly speak to pastors. So when we're talking with pastors, small churches and big churches are led very, very differently. And the delineation line is at about 200. Average attendance on Sunday is where the big shift happens.
Speaker 3:If you have fewer than 200 people attending on a Sunday and you work really hard at it, you can get to know pretty much all of the regulars and the pastor is present for most of the events. And if it's a church around 50, the pastor knows everybody and the pastor is at all the events. So in a small church there's a consistent pastoral presence and there's a consistent presence of pretty much everybody knows everybody. But above 150, certainly above 200, you don't have a constant pastoral presence anymore. They can't. They have to delegate a lot of the pastoral duties to others and you end up knowing a segment of people in the congregation rather than knowing everybody in the congregation.
Speaker 3:And because of that there's just a different dynamic in the way the church is run, in the way the church is perceived, in the kind of programs that it needs, in the kinds of ideas— not ideas, because the gospel doesn't change for any of them, but in the kind of methods that are used. There's a real shift there. So larger churches tend to be a little more program-driven and tend to be pastored Well. The pastoring takes place in small groups and in ministry teams. Small churches tend to be more relationally driven and the pastor is much more hands-on with the congregation. That's probably the two main, most obvious and visible differences between big and small.
Speaker 2:So that was actually excellent. It's something that was kind of in the back of my mind, but you brought it to the forefront and formulated it, and so when a person considers you know, or is looking for a church to attend, I think that this is something that would be very helpful for them to determine what type of church they're looking for. So then your book what does it address? Does it address the problem of the big churches or does it address all these problems?
Speaker 3:It specifically addresses the problem of using size as a marker of value. So what I do first of all is I talk about where did we become obsessed with size from? In fact, I do a full dive into the church growth history, the history of the church growth movement, which turns into a very deep dive into American history and where we became obsessed with bigness. And then, in the middle of the book, I talk about why has this obsession with bigness become a problem, for instance, creating a Christian celebrity culture where people who are famous are given more credibility than people who have actually pastored and who have actually spent time discipling others, and that kind of a thing.
Speaker 3:And then the last third of the book we talk about what are some steps that we should be taking instead, instead of looking at bigger numbers, what are the things that the church should be concentrating on so that we can have a better future than what we currently have right now, which, for the American church, is in a place of real crisis and real difficulty. We're seeing people leave the church at record pace right now, within the last seven to 10 years especially, and by all indicators, it's going to happen for the next 20 to 30 years. So how do we reverse course and get back to the basic mission that Jesus gave us, rather than being obsessed with getting bigger all the time? So if something gets bigger naturally because the Lord is blessing it and that's where the Lord wants it, great. If something stays small because that's the best way to do ministry in that context, then that's great as well. It's about removing size as a marker of value.
Speaker 2:So even your subtitle of your book. It refers to church growth becoming a science and then an obsession. Let's take a look at both of these aspects. What do you mean by church growth being a science?
Speaker 3:Well, this is the first third of the book and it's really kind of what makes this book unique. There's a lot of church growth books and there's a lot of books that have some history of the church growth movement in it, but I noticed some things a while ago that I wanted to put together so for your listeners, this will take a little longer than usual, but come along for it. It's a really interesting history. So the church growth movement began because of a man named Donald McGovern. Donald McGovern was a missionary in India for his entire life and near the end of his time in India in the 1950s and 1960s, he started hearing about entire Indian villages where everybody had come to Christ, everyone in the village all at once, and he thought that can't be real. But he went to these villages to discover for himself and found out. Yes, every person I've talked to has a legitimate faith in Christ, is being discipled, they know who Jesus is. This is phenomenal. So he started doing interviews and asking questions and doing research and went to village after village and he thought there's something going on here, and I want to learn what's going on, because maybe, if we can discover the underlying principles, we can use these principles to help other people movements come to Christ. And then, as he retired, he spent several months in Africa several nations in Africa, going to different villages where he'd heard that the same things were happening. And then he came home in the early 1960s and he wrote a book called the Bridges of God, which released in 1965. This book, the Bridges of God, is the first book ever to use the phrase church growth. He asked questions and proposed ideas that are now common conversation among church leaders that we just think everybody's always asked, that nobody ever asked before Donald McGavern printed them. That happened in 1962.
Speaker 3:In 1965 then he started the Church Growth Institute at Fuller University, right near where I live in California, and for the first seven years he wouldn't allow American pastors in the class. So he's got this church growth institute no American pastors allowed. Now you can't just say no American pastors allowed. So what he did was he set up restrictions. He said you have to have a mastery of a second language, you have to have worked in a foreign missions area for some of your time and you have to actually write a paper that shows that you have a deep understanding of an indigenous people group outside of your own people group in order to be admitted to the classes, and those requirements excluded 99% of American pastors. But the American pastors were reading his book and they kept coming going we want in this class. And so in 1972, when he was 77, 78 years old, I think. So he was getting along in years he had the first ever church growth class at Fuller. He and C Peter Wagner, one of his students, taught this first class. There were only about 20 or 25 students in the class, but that class in 1972 is the spark point for the entire American church growth movement.
Speaker 3:So I read all of that and then I go well, why was McGavern wanting to exclude American pastors? What was it about American pastors? He was an American, after all. He was a missionary in India, but he was an American. Why did he not want American pastors to have the class?
Speaker 3:And what I discovered by talking with Donald McGavern's biographer, gary McIntosh, was this Donald McGavern wanted to see people movements come to Christ. He wanted to see Christians increasing as a percentage of a population. But he looked at the American landscape and he thought if Americans get a hold of my ideas, they're not going to use it to help increase Christians as a percentage of the population. They're going to use these ideas to make bigger churches. And my point isn't bigger churches, my point is more people coming to Christ.
Speaker 3:And lo and behold, that's exactly what we did. So now almost every conference you go to is not hey, here are the basic church growth principles that work everywhere, but it's. Here are the basic church growth principles that work everywhere, but it's. The pastor of the biggest church in the area gets up and says here's how our church got big. Now you go and do what our church did and your church will become big. So that's where the science came from, donald McGavern. The obsession with size came from the American zeitgeist, to use a complicated term, from the American attitude that we just like stuff to be bigger.
Speaker 2:So he was quite prophetic when he foresaw the problem that actually took place. And so then the obsession, would you say the Christian celebrity culture is the root of the obsession, or the obsession created the Christian celebrity culture.
Speaker 3:Ah, yeah, the chicken or the egg. No, I believe that primarily the Christian celebrity culture is the result of this size obsession. But now each feeds the other. And what happened was that the reason that bigness is such an American thing primarily not exclusively but now each feeds the other. And what happened was that the reason that bigness is such an American thing primarily not exclusively, but primarily actually goes back to the First Amendment. So the First Amendment is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. These are some of America's greatest ideas.
Speaker 3:But what I discovered in my research of American history was the people who wrote the First Amendment had come from Europe, and in Europe, where there were churches that were run by the state, they wanted to escape that, and appropriately so. But if the church is run by the state, in those countries, when they collected taxes, the government also collected tithes and then distributed the tithes to the churches. So if you were a pastor of a church that was approved by the state in Europe, you simply got a check once a month from the government for your salary and you got a check from the government once a month to take care of your building. You didn't have to have a big tithing base to be able to do well, and so everybody kind of relaxed. But you come to America.
Speaker 3:There's no state church, but that also means that you don't get any money from the state for it. The state says, okay, we're not going to prohibit what you believe, but we ain't paying for it. So in America if you wanted to build a building you had to get more people. So the pastors who were able to draw a crowd and were able to get money out of that crowd had the bigger churches and they were seen as the biggest successes. And out of that came this idea of the entrepreneurial pastor and of the celebrity pastor.
Speaker 2:So in one of the chapters in your book, you mentioned that this Christian celebrity culture guarantees moral failure. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3:I was very careful in the titling of that chapter. It isn't that becoming a Christian celebrity does not guarantee moral failure. There are some very famous Christians who are morally upstanding, God-fearing people and they are worth following as examples. But the Christian celebrity culture, this idea of creating Christian celebrities or of someone who gets saved and immediately we put them on a stage, Like right now probably the one most people are talking about is Russell Brand, this crass comedian for years and he just got baptized a few weeks ago, and I'm really concerned that some big conferences are going to call him and put him on stage right away to start talking to us like somehow he's an expert in the faith, even though he's a baby Christian.
Speaker 3:There's a reason why the Bible says don't put Christian novices in leadership positions, but we do that when they're famous or we create famous Christians. And this Christian celebrity culture puts a burden and a weight on people's shoulders and it puts a glory upon them that we are not built to hold. That is not good for us, that is very unhealthy for us and for those who are looking up to us. Celebrity, the culture surrounding Christian celebrity, is absolutely guaranteed to create moral failure and we see it on an almost weekly basis, where yet another famous Christian has had a moral collapse and has had hidden sins that are just appalling to us. But we shouldn't be surprised by that, because that kind of fame, that kind of glory and that bright of the clever use of social media.
Speaker 2:We have the examples of. I mean, jesus was a celebrity, let's face it. He was quite famous in his day and time and he models the example of precautions a leader is to take, because there are people that become well-known and recognized and respected because they are doing great things, because they truly are leaders. They truly are, you know, driven by pure and noble goals and motives. I mean, let's think of Billy Graham. He was a celebrity before the age of social media. Everybody knew who he was and he was able to, you know, maintain the integrity through the years of his ministry. So I think that sometimes there is this artificial celebrity culture and then there is one that was earned by the person and in both cases it can become a trap very easily because, I mean, such is the human nature. But okay, so what are?
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually let me piggyback on it because I absolutely fully agree with you on that. For sure, there are those who become famous simply because they're doing very good work and it gets out to a whole lot of people. In my book I mentioned Dan Darling, who's a columnist and has done a bunch of great work in the church circle, and he wrote a little piece about that. He was grateful for the fame of Tim Keller, because Tim Keller, who was a great pastor in New York who passed away not long ago, tim Keller, if he hadn't become famous, then Dan Darling would not have read his books and would not have grown with the knowledge that Tim Keller was able to impart to him.
Speaker 3:So yeah, when fame happens organically, there's nothing wrong with it. It's the culture of things. Being celebrity driven is where the problem is. And yes, jesus became famous, but if you take a look at it, he tried to push it away as much as he possibly could Several times. For instance, he'd perform a miracle and he'd tell the person he performed the miracle on don't tell anybody about this. Jesus was not chasing crowds, the crowds chased Jesus, and that's a big difference.
Speaker 2:And he had some methods that he used to avoid the temptation of fame by, you know, withdrawing and spending time in prayer.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we can go on and on about this.
Speaker 2:So there are chapters in your book that talk about the positives of the church growth movement. So what are some of the positives?
Speaker 3:I really have some great admiration for a lot of what happened in the church growth movement, and this is not like the compliment sandwich where, because I'm insulting them, I need to say a couple of nice things about them. I truly am grateful for them. A couple of them are because of the church growth movement there's not nearly as big a wall between denominations as there used to be. When I was growing up. If I went to a denominational conference you only had speakers who were in your denomination, and now I am constantly being invited by people outside my denomination to come in, and our denomination is constantly inviting the best speakers in from multiple denominations. That's part of the result of the church growth movement, where we're saying who's doing the best work, whether it's in our denomination or not. As long as there's a basic agreement on biblical orthodoxy, let's not worry so much about these denominational lines. Secondly, people in the church growth movement are extraordinarily generous. Nobody is trademarking their church growth methods or ideas. If a big church pastor comes up with a new way to do something better, they immediately put it for free on a podcast or in an article or write it in a book or say it at a conference, and they don't say you can't use this. This is my trademark. No, they are really generous with everything that they discover. So there's a great sharing of information that's happening right now.
Speaker 3:And here's a really interesting thing and it's kind of counterintuitive One of the fears of kind of the modernization of the church that the church growth movement brought along.
Speaker 3:So church growth movement, for instance, got us to take off our ties and we have worship teams instead of choirs, and there's both good and bad in that and things becoming more informal.
Speaker 3:But here's what's interesting when things were becoming more informal about a generation ago and people were dressing more casually and so on, the big concern was well, if you start dressing casually, the next thing you know you're going to be casual about scripture and you're not going to take scripture seriously anymore. And what studies have shown is exactly the opposite. The churches that are quickest to adapt their methods and their styles typically are much closer to biblical orthodoxy, whereas the churches that stand on more, the churches that are more liberal and more likely to reject biblical principles, are often the ones that have the old traditional dress and music and so on that goes along with them. None of that is for sure. I'm not saying if you find a traditional looking church it's likely to be liberal. That's not the case. But what is the case is that the churches that have changed their styles the most and are quickest to update their methods tend to be very, very strong with sticking to the core principles of scripture. So that's something that's really been a great positive of the church growth movement.
Speaker 2:You know, carl, we're just scratching the surface of the wealth of information that I can already tell is in your book, and because my listeners are very passionate about missions maybe not many of them are pastors or church leaders, but 90% of them are passionate about world. Maybe not many of them are pastors or church leaders, but 90% of them are passionate about world missions I can tell that this book is an absolute must. So I want to say thank you for writing this book, and I am definitely going to post a link in my show notes to your website, carlvaderscom, but also, hopefully, to the link on Amazon where they can purchase your book. So, before we wrap up our conversation, I want to ask you this question Whether a person is attending a small church or a megachurch, what are the main signs that they should look for to know that they're attending a healthy church?
Speaker 3:That's a wonderful question. I have a podcast called the Church Lobby and I'm not doing this to promote the podcast, but the reason.
Speaker 2:I title my podcast— that's what we do the Church Lobby. So we work with one.
Speaker 3:Listen to it Everybody anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can find it. It's called the Church Lobby and the reason I call it the Church Lobby is because you can tell more about the health of a church by walking through the Church Lobby than by what comes from the platform. Because what comes from the platform is like the first date it's your best foot forward. It doesn't get on the platform unless it's the best that they've got. So you can watch a church on live stream and you can see, wow, they've got a great band and they got great preaching and everything's great and it's all wonderful. But then you walk through the church lobby and that's where you discover whether it's really healthy or not.
Speaker 3:I've been doing church consultation now for over a decade and I spend my time watching what happens in the church lobby. So if you walk in the church lobby and everything's cluttered or nothing's put where it ought to be, or if all the announcements on the board are three weeks or three months old, or if people are just clumping in groups and not saying hi to new people, then you've got a problem. But if you're going to a church of any size and people are friendly and they're open and they're sharing with each other and they're praying with each other and the place is clean and well kept and ordered and maybe it's a little bit not exactly tidy, but it's because there's a busyness and there's ministry going on. You can tell the difference in walking through a church building of the lack of tidiness because it's not cared for or a lack of tidiness because we're really busy and active right now and we've got kids running around and kids spill things right. There's a difference between those two.
Speaker 3:So when you're looking for a church, don't just make up your mind by watching the church online, because most healthy small churches don't do a great job of what they put online because they don't have the technical expertise, they don't have the money and even things like the musical mix. Maybe they got a guitar player and a singer and a piano player and in the room it sounds nice, but the mix that you get on their live stream is very different and it can sound awful. So don't prejudge a church just by watching their live stream. If the live stream means hey, they've got good biblical preaching, then go in person to check it out.
Speaker 3:Talk to people in the church lobby, sit in the actual room with actual people, because most small churches look bad online but can be great in person, and sometimes the alternative is true. Sometimes some really big churches can look great online but can be great in person, and sometimes the alternative is true. Sometimes some really big churches can look great online, but you go in person you may find out it's not as friendly, it's not the kind of thing that you were hoping for, and some of them are as well. But go in person. That's the only way you're really going to find whether or not a church is healthy.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a very wonderful and helpful tip and I agree with you. Well, I wouldn't even call watching church online attending church. I mean, there's room for that if you're sick or you're out of town, but you will never find out if you're attending a healthy church or not unless you walk into the lobby. And that's a very helpful tip. Well, thank you so much, Carl, for this conversation and for the very important book. Best of luck to you in continuing to keep our churches healthy.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Helen.
Speaker 2:I highly recommend picking up Carl's book, either on his website, carlvadercom, or on Amazon, and check out his podcast, Church Lobby. It sounds very interesting. Whether you are attending a megachurch or a house gathering of three or more, there is nothing more important than being connected to a healthy body of believers. If you are, it won't be long before you should feel compelled to become a disciple maker yourself. Great Commission is a privilege extended to us by Christ to be his partners in expanding the kingdom, and World Missions Alliance exists to help you fulfill this divine calling. Check out our website, rfwmaorg, and find an opportunity for yourself to travel across the world sharing the good news, helping the hurting and the needy people and connecting to your greater purpose. Again, the website is rfwmaorg. Until next time, I'm Helen Todd.
Speaker 1:Limitless Spirit Podcast is produced by World Missions Alliance. We believe that changed lives change lives. If your life was transformed by Christ, you are equipped to help others experience this transformation. Christ called His followers to make disciples across the world. World Missions Alliance gives you an opportunity to do this through short-term missions in over 32 countries across the globe. If you want to help those who are hurting and hopeless and discover your greater purpose in serving, check out our website, rfwmaorg, and find out how to get involved.