The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP030 – Small Church, Mid-sized Church or Megachurch, Which is Better? An interview with Karl Vaters
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before. In your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 30 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff, and I really hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. And here's what we're gonna do. This is like super ambitious, but Carl Vaders and I are gonna settle the eternal question, which is better, big churches or small churches? And I met Carl a couple of years ago, I guess. We both write blogs. He writes newsmallchurch.com. Many of you will be familiar with that. And I write just at my name, CarrieNewhoff.com. And I often talk about larger churches. He is dedicated to talking about smaller churches. And we got into a discussion online. It was super healthy actually. But some of the people who have left comments on his blog and my blog take positions about that. So I thought, hey, wouldn't it be amazing just to have Carl on the podcast? And we would just talk about it. And I think you'll agree, this is a fascinating conversation. I hope a helpful conversation. And in some ways, a healing conversation for a lot of us in the church. Because, you know, debate and discussion can sometimes get pretty polarized. So it was a lot of fun sitting down with Carl. And even though we're separated by, oh, a long distance. He's in Southern California. I'm North of Toronto and Canada. I feel like Carl's one of those guys that if we actually met, we would just be friends. So anyway, I hope this is a great episode for you. I hope this will be helpful for you and the leadership team that you serve with. And Carl's just incredibly transparent. You're gonna love, love, love. I think this interview. And that's a little bit longer. Like I've said in previous episodes, I'm experimenting with slightly longer podcasts. You might have to divide this one into or something like that. Drive to work, drive home or a couple of days or whatever. But the vision for this is just to have great conversations that sometimes you have and it's just like, well, I wish everybody could have heard that. And I think conversations have a natural length. And when you get into a really good discussion, sometimes it takes like pushing an hour. So anyway, that's where we land on this one. But I think you're gonna find it really helpful. We got some exciting episodes coming up too. As we push past the 30 mark and just a word to say thank you to everybody who has given such incredible feedback. I've been on the road a lot over the last few months in places like Nebraska and Portland, Oregon and Dallas, Texas and most recently in Moncton, New Brunswick, speaking to church leaders in Eastern Canada. And so many of you have given so much encouraging feedback about like particular episodes that for example, Josh Gagnon, episode 17, man, the episode about leading a church in New England and how do you grow a church where churches don't grow really resonated in places where it's hard to grow a church like the East coast of Canada. And so I love getting feedback like that. And then so many of you are being so awesome and leaving really helpful, super encouraging reviews on iTunes. And you can just do that by going to iTunes and hit rate and review and be honest. But I mean, I just love to hear from more of you. So we got over 150 reviews so far in the iTunes store in the US. I'd love to hear more. That also helps us get the podcast out to other leaders. It magically interfaces with the algorithm that iTunes uses. And you know, when you leave ratings and reviews and you share episodes, it just helps get it in front of other leaders. So thanks for that. So super excited for all of you too who are coming to the Orange Conference tickets by the time you hear this may be gone. It's just the orangeconference.com/seniorleader. We're gonna be hanging out on that track. So if you're heading to Atlanta, we'll get a chance to interact as well. And then there's all kinds of dialogue on the blog as well. Just go to karaenuhoff.com where you will find the show notes to this episode. Anything you hear Carl and I talk about that you want further information on, just go to karaenuhoff.com/episode30. And so with all that, so glad you're here. Here's Carl. Well, I'm so excited today to have Carl Vaders with me who you might know from newsmallchurch.com. He is a self-proclaimed small church pastor and Carl, welcome to the podcast. - Great to be here with you, Kerry. - Hey Carl, give us just a little catch up on sort of your time in ministry, you're the pastor of a local church. And a couple of years ago you wrote a book called "The Grasshopper Myth" and you started a blog called "New Swell." It's really a website, newsmallchurch.com, to really speak to small church pastors. And today we're gonna talk about sort of the tension that sometimes exists between large church and small church and where that comes from and what to do about it. So give us a little bit about your story, just the thumbnail version. - Sure, yeah. I was actually born into a pastor's family. I'm a third generation pastor. My grandfather, pastor to Newfoundland, all of his life. I was born in Newfoundland. - Canada, there you go. - So we were talking about New Feed a Day for all our Canadian friends. - There you go, I didn't know you were Canadian. - Yeah. - Now in California. - Yeah, raised in Toronto, that's where my dad passed her there, then we moved to California and been here for about the last 40 years. And started pastoring just about 30 years ago, well, almost 35 years ago now. And went to a couple, the associate pastor and then a couple smaller churches. And then landed where I am now, which is in Fountain Valley, just seven miles south of Disneyland. And I've been here now for 22 years. And when I came, there were 35 very discouraged people in the church who were just about ready to close the church. They'd been through five pastors in 10 years. - Sure. - And over the first couple of years, we just kind of got the place healthy and strong again, grew to about 75. Over the next six or seven years, grew to close to 200. So I'd been there about 10 to 12 years when we were running close to 200. And we have a very tiny facility, less than an acre of land. The building, if you've got 120 chairs in there, it's a full building. - And land is cheap where you are, I'm sure, right? (laughing) - Yeah, that's part of the challenge, a part of the story. - Yeah, no kidding. - So, you know, we got to, actually, we're not far from Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. And in the early 90s, I'd been here a few years and the purpose-driven church came out. So I picked it up, I read it through, and then I went out and immediately bought a copy for every single staff member and board member and required them to read it. We had a leadership retreat. - Did that, by the way? - Yeah, yeah, you're not the only one at the time. - I was just out of seminary when that came out and same deal. - Yeah, exactly. And they walked in looking like they'd been hit with the same train that ran me down after reading that book. And we sat down and said, "Okay, we can't do the church the way we've done it before. "We gotta change some things." And we did. And we implemented a lot of the church growth strategies, particularly as outlined by Rick, and they worked. And that was, we did that when we were about 100 and next few years, again, got close to 200. We got to the point where even with two services, we were hitting that 80% threshold. - Sure. - And the rule is, you really won't grow past 80% of the size of your building until you, it's the fish and the tank. You gotta get a bigger tank for the fish to grow. So we did a lot of searching around, we live in a very tightly populated area with not a lot of available space. But we found a school, and we met in that school for just about two years. It was about double the size of our building. And we grew to almost double the size in about a year and a half. We went from just over 200, almost 400. And then we started to shrink faster than we were growing. Like it started dropping like a stone. I know how big we got, but I don't know how small we got, because it's fun counting when you're growing. (laughing) - It's so depressing to see the numbers when it's not moving in that direction. - Yeah, and it wasn't just static. It was dropping so fast. I just couldn't bear to look at the numbers anymore. And then we lost the school and couldn't find somewhere else to meet. We ended up back in this tiny little church. And with so many people going, oh, it's so nice to be back in our little church or the worst phrase in a real church. And I wanted to punch people in the nose every time. They said, we're finally back in a real church. Like the building has anything to do with the reality. - We're moving into a real church this year after being portable for seven years. And yeah, I understand that dynamic. It's like, oh, we'll finally come and see you now that you're in a real church. It's like, far as I know, we've been a real church for seven years. Where were you? - I know, we really do connect ourselves to those buildings. So anyway, I went through a real time of soul search and struggle for the next couple of years. You know, got mad at the people, got mad at the building, got mad at myself, and I got admitted. I got mad at God. It felt like, hey, I followed the rules here. I did what everybody said to do for church growth. We got to this point, the thing all collapsed. And we were barely 100 people at one point. Again, I don't know the exact numbers 'cause we really did stop counting. But when you've only got 100 people in the room, you know how many people were in the room. - Yeah, yeah, you're not thinking there's a thousand by mistake, right? - Yeah, you can guess that one within 10 pretty easily. - And then so Carl, if I can just ask you a question in midstream, do you know to this day because I mean, sometimes growth is mysterious and sometimes plateauing is mysterious and there wasn't a scandal. There wasn't like, when you look back on that, is the diagnosis clear even these years later? - Yeah, it took a while. It's only been the last three or four years and this happened almost 10 years ago, and there are two primary factors. One was the people were, we had to tear down our sanctuary on Sunday, set it up in the school and get all the audio going, get all the chairs set up, get everything going, services over, tear it all down, bring it back to our church and reset it back up in our church 'cause in our church building, which we still owned, we were doing our youth, we were doing our kids, we were running our preschool, we were doing all the midweek events. So we had, and we only had one audio system, it was a small church and that was all we could afford. And what we discovered that what happened was with everybody so helpful in volunteering and pitching in, the people who were the regulars who should have been our social glue for the new people, as soon as the services over there packing stuff up. - Yes, yep, that's true. - So the new people were standing around with nothing to do and just left. And you'd only do that for so long before you just go, I'm just not connecting here. And that's my mistake. You know, administratively, I should have seen that, I should have anticipated it, I should have seen it when it was happening, but I missed it, there was so much else going on administratively. The growth was happening at such a pace that I just missed that. My mistake, my bad, I missed it. But the biggest thing I think that I've come to discover is the best time of my week when we were growing, the best two times of my week, one were the services themselves, and two were getting the numbers on Monday morning. The rest of my time I was miserable and didn't know it because the numbers were up. The fun of the numbers disguised the misery of my soul. And I was miserable in my soul and spirit because I'm not a numbers guy, I'm not an administration guy, and I was spending 95% of my ministry hours doing things I hate, doing fundraising, trying to find a new building, arguing with City Hall, putting committees together to try to figure out how we're gonna do this and how we're gonna do that. I did everything I was supposed to do. I moved from Shepherd to Rancher. - Sure. - I'm familiar with that term, that comes from How to Break Church Growth Barriers by Carl George and Warren Berg. - Exactly. - Yep. - Very important book. - Very, and if you're gonna be over 200, you absolutely have to make that shift. - You do. - Has to happen. I did it willingly, and I did it correctly. But I was miserable in it because I'm not gifted in that. My ministry is more hands-on with congregation members. That's just where I find my fulfillment. That's what I do best. So when I told my congregation the other day, every time I have to put a number in a box, a piece of my soul dies. And I was putting numbers in boxes all the time. That's just my shorthand for administrative work. - Sure. - And so I was miserable doing all of that, and a miserable pastor is not appealing to people, right? - New or existing. - Exactly. And they couldn't quite put their finger on it either. 'Cause again, on Sunday morning, I was having a great time, there's people everywhere. But it was, I was trying to feed people out of an emptying well of my own soul. - I really appreciate your transparency on that, Karl. Thank you. It takes a lot of humility to be able to say, "Hey, you know what, this is where I dropped the ball." - Yeah, and reality is reality. I just kinda like acknowledging. You can't move ahead if you don't acknowledge the reality of things. So anyway, that I think is what happened. And so we ended up back in the little church again, and I went through a real crisis of identity and so on. Actually, at one point, walked away from the church for 48 days, just said, "I'm leaving, I can't do this anymore." Told my leadership how I was feeling and where I was. My denomination has an 800 number on the back of our clergy card to call for emergencies. And I called them and I said, "I got some Republican, I need some counseling." And first thing you did was ask me a series of 15 questions that included everything from are you sleeping with other women? Are you sleeping with other men? Are you gambling? Are you watching pornography? Are you drinking too much? Are you doing drugs? Have you stolen from the church? This whole list of horrible things. And I answered no to all of them. And then at the end, he said, "Have you lied to me? "Have you told me the truth?" I said, "I told you the truth." And there's this pause and he goes, "Why are you calling me?" (laughing) - Seriously. - And I said quite frankly, I'm calling you 'cause I haven't done any of those things, but right now, I'm in such bad shape. A couple of them sound kinda cool and they shouldn't. But he said, "If you really are telling me the truth, "this won't take long, you just need to find somebody "who can really walk you through some things "and sort up what's going on." So I did, and I walked away from the church for 40 days. I said, "I can't do this, I can't keep pastoring like this, "I've gotta get away." And the reason I did 40 days was because I couldn't find an 80 in the Bible. (laughing) - 'Cause that looked more appealing, didn't it? - Yeah, I needed more time than that, but I couldn't find a bigger number than 40 anywhere. I knew that'd give me 40 'cause it sounds holy, you know? - Yeah. (laughing) - So I walked away for 40 days, did some really intensive counseling with a guy who's a professional licensed counselor, but also used to be a pastor. And he really helped me with a lot of things. And at the about third or fourth session, after I'd just been griping and griping at him, he finally said, "Carl, it sounds to me "like you need to redefine success." And I wanted to punch him in the nose 'cause I thought what he meant was, "Okay, you've been trying to reach 100, "but you can only reach 80, "so let's lower the bar to 80 "and jump over that and call that success." And there's not a strand of my DNA that will allow me to settle for less. - Because there's an achiever in you, there's a more thing inside you. - There's this type of first child drive, driven whatever in me that I can't do that. And he said, "No, I'm not talking about lowering the bar." He said, "What I'm saying is success, "you've been looking at success in numbers, "and success has to be found somewhere else. "Success in the Kingdom of God is not about numbers." And I said, "Well, then what is it about?" He says, "I just told you, you have to figure that out "for yourself." - A lot. - Right? - That's a good council. - Yeah, hard talk, and I needed it. And by the end of the 40 days, after a few more sessions, it was like, "Okay, I'm in the same place, "but I'm now turned in a different direction." And over the next two to three years, I really was able to regain health. About a year later, I found myself in the staff meeting and we had regained some of the numbers, we were getting stronger again, and I started talking, "Okay, we gotta get the numbers up. "We gotta figure out how to do this, how to do this." And I stopped myself mid-sentence and went, "Ah, I can't go back to that mindset again. "It's gonna kill me again." And I just, out of nowhere, this phrase blurted out of my face. We've gotta stop thinking like a big church. 'Cause at the time, the phrase was, "You gotta think like a big church." And it still isn't a lot of places today. And my thinking behind the phrase that we gotta stop thinking like a big church, I then said, "We're not a big church. "We're a small church. "We are now at least." So let's try to figure out, what does a healthy small church look like? And let's do small, awesome. And if that leads to growth, it leads to growth. If we end up busting through the 200 barrier again, the next time we'll be busting through 200 with a healthy church and a healthy pastor. The last time we busted through 200, we weren't, I wasn't a healthy pastor, and so we weren't a healthy church. So it was right to not keep going. 'Cause if I had succeeded in growth at that point, I'd be pastoring an unhealthy church of 800 or 1,000 today, maybe who knows what the numbers might be. But I'd still be unhealthy, the church would be unhealthy, and I'd probably be the next name in the newspaper for some scandal, for some sin, for some meltdown that I had. - You would have done something on that list. - I would have done something on that list. And I wouldn't have gone to counseling until I was caught. - Right, right. And thank God, and I'm sure you're extremely thankful that you had the ability to call the number before any of that stuff happened. - Yeah, it is the best call I ever made in my life. And so anyway, out of that came, we've got to stop trying to figure out how to do ministry in this church because our church isn't big enough to do all the ministry gods called us to do. We've got to figure out how to do ministry from this church. - Oh, wow, that's good. That's really good. Stop doing ministry in this church and try to figure out how to do ministry from this church. - Yeah, and that's been our mindset ever since. And so our inside the church Sunday morning numbers are back up now to about 200, that's our average Sunday morning. And again, if I was in my old mindset, I'd be desperately searching for something else. But now what we do is we try to look for, again, how to go outside the church. So we've got internship programs, we've got training administrators that we send out, we've got subsidiary ministries, we're a minister to kids on three nights of the week where we have 80 to 100 kids on most of those nights. - Wow. - And some of them come to Sunday morning, some don't, but basically here's the other thing that I think a lot of what's happening in smaller churches today, particularly if they're healthy and innovative and strong and forward reaching is, I think Ed Stetszer and a couple others have done research on this. The average church attender doesn't attend as often anymore. - Very true, we're having that conversation right now at our church and in several other churches I'm connecting with. - And in Southern Cal, we've been dealing with that for a decade. - That's right, you're like, oh, you guys are waking up now? Come on, what? - Yeah, stuff just happens here first. And I'm not saying that in any way to be cool or whatever, that's not the point at all. It just does, stuff happens in California earlier than it happens elsewhere. We know that we have this reputation being fruits and nuts out here. We hear the talk, we get it. But it's not like churches in California are doing new different weird things because we're trying to be weird. It's because we're dealing with problems earlier than most other places deal with them. And there's nobody out ahead of us to show us how to do it right. - Well, and being an ex-patriot Canadian and growing up in Toronto, I mean, I often say that when I speak particularly in the Bible Belt, I think we're the canary in the coal mine. And I think that's one of the reasons I identify with California culture so much. I've been there a number of times and love California. Is there, it kind of reminds me of home, just a lot warmer with a lot more sun. - Yeah, exactly. - You know, in terms of the culture, there's not a lot of difference between California, which tends to lean a little and put labels on it. And I know labels can be dangerous, but a little more post-modern, more post-Christian, and very much ahead of the curve culturally from the rest of America, a little bit like Europe, and certainly like Canada. - And not necessarily ahead as in better, just ahead as in early. - Yes, exactly, exactly. That's not saying it's the way to go. There's a part of me that wishes it wasn't so. - Yeah, absolutely too. - And you and I have been in leadership long enough, and I'm sure a lot of listeners have been in leadership long enough to see that shift before our eyes, where now if you run into somebody in the grocery store who hasn't attended church for six months, they haven't necessarily left. They're telling you how awesome your church is and how much they love it. And yeah, we haven't been there since like Christmas, but we love the church, man. It's fantastic. - Yeah, absolutely, okay. - And in some of the reasons aren't necessarily even that they've gotten lazy or don't want church anymore, you've now got both parents working. And in California now, not only are both parents working, but at least one of them probably has two jobs. - Right. - And they're working on the weekends and they got his hers and ours kids. So there are different places in different weekends. So life has just changed. So the average person has gone from nine out of 10 Sundays to two out of three Sundays, and that's your very, very consistent attender. So we've got 200 in the seats, but we've probably got 400 maybe or more who consider us our home church for Sunday mornings. And if you throw the youth and kids events in and other things yesterday, where we're at Fellowship of Christian Athletes at our high school, a half of their leadership team are youth from our church and there were 150 kids probably in the room at the high school having pizza and hearing about Jesus during their lunch hour at a public American school. So that's all happening. - So you got influence, but you can't necessarily measure that on a Sunday. - Yeah, exactly. - I would say right now. - I can't and I wouldn't and it would be, it would be unfair and incorrect, for instance, for me to put the 150 kids from Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the school in our church numbers 'cause they weren't in our church, but they were being ministered to by our church. Our church sponsors every pizza that's been bought for Fellowship of Christian Athletes since it started two years ago. Our church stepped up and said, "We'll buy all your pizza." - See, that's great. And that's an interesting paradigm shift from in your church to from your church, which I think is gonna help a lot more church leaders than just leaders in California or Canada. That's for sure. You know, and I would say too, as we've been crunching the math, we grew last year in our attendance by 2% and I hate admitting that. I'm like, you know, in eight times, it's like 20. Put a zero behind it or you feel better about yourself, sleep better at night. But actually our database and we keep a pretty lean database grew by 10%. - Yeah, yep. - You know, we went from roughly, I will do numbers 'cause, I mean, this is what our podcast is about today. But we went from about 2,000 people who call our church home to 2,200 and our attendance needle barely nudged. And we keep a really clean list and we are, you know, you're off if you're not there for a while, not giving, not contributing, because we don't wanna spam you and we just keep a clean list. But it's just the weirdest thing. And so everybody is coming to grips with that. And I think everyone's gonna have to deal with that paradigm shift. So why Carl do you think that there tends to be attention? And you and I talked about this before we started recording, but you write a blog, I write a blog and, you know, we're trying to have a civil dialogue today and I think doing a great job about, you know, big church, small church. But gosh, in the comments, sometimes it gets downright nasty. And there's a lot of polarized opinion about, you know, small church is the only way or we hate all mega churches or hey, you have to be a big church and if small churches are unfaithful, where do you think that comes from? - Yeah, well, the subtitle of the Grasshopper myth is big church is small churches and the small thinking that divides us because to address exactly that issue. Where it comes from, well, it actually, it comes from the actual title, the Grasshopper myth, I think is where the whole thing starts. The title comes from the story in Numbers 13 where the spies go into the land, they come back and 10 of them give a bad report about the promised land and they say there were giants in the land and then they say we seemed like Grasshoppers in our own eyes and we looked the same to them. So the reason I titled my book the Grasshopper myth is to write up front first words you will read are it's what I see in the mirror is the problem. It's not somebody else's fault. It's who I see in the mirror. And Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with saying I can't find the actual source but she's the only name attached to it. She's credited with saying no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - That's very true. And you do a great job of owning that. You say, you know, I felt like a failure but that was nobody else's fault other than mine. That was about me. That wasn't about Rick Warren down the road. That wasn't about Andy Stanley, Bill Hybells, Perry Noble. That's me looking in the mirror. Which I think is incredibly healthy from a character standpoint but also a leadership standpoint. - Well, if you don't own it, you can't change it. If it's somebody else's fault, what can I do about it? - Yeah, that's very true. - Right? So I had to recognize my role in it but I think also that feeling then gets reinforced when the language is so constant when the language and the attention is always towards bigger, bigger, bigger. As an example, once I kind of finally got myself to a point of health and said, okay, we're gonna be a healthy, strong, small church. I started looking for resources about how to do that and found Nada. - Yeah. - Everybody was telling me how to bust through 200 but nobody was telling me how to be healthy under 200. And the handful of books I did find on small churches, most of them were how to keep Grandma Gladys and the third row happy by turning the music down. - Yeah, and that's impossible, by the way. That's a short book. - Exactly. - She'll never be happy. - Exactly, exactly. And as I said earlier, there's not a strand of my DNA that will allow me to settle for. In fact, on my website, I've got a rule, no little white chapels allowed. - Okay, what do you mean by that? What is it? - Well, anytime you've ever seen an article about small church, the attached picture is always of a little white chapel. - It's true. - It's the go to image. Google small church, it'll be thousands of pictures of little white chapels. But the little white chapel has become shorthand for quaint and backwards and traditional and quiet. - And ineffective. - And ineffective, yeah. And if, now, if you're listening and your church is meeting in a little white chapel, I'm not, on Monday I was literally in a little white chapel talking to other small church bastards. So I got nothing against your building. But it's the shorthand that that often means, it's a symbol for something that I don't want to perpetuate. - Well, and in the same way, I mean a mega church, for the most part in many circles has all, or at least in some circles, has a lot of negative stereotypes about it. - Absolutely. - When you show the picture of the 12 campuses or the 600,000 square foot building, or I'm exaggerating, but people are kind of like, "Oh, yeah, I would never go to a mega church." - Well, back to the whole kind of back and forth between mega and small. One of the first posts that I wrote on new small church when I started was, "Hi, I'm Carl, "and I'm not a mega church basher." Because right off the top, I started getting comments on, "Yeah, finally somebody going after those nasty mega churches, "they're big because they're shallow, "because they're going after people with itching ears, "and this kind of a thing." And I'm just like, "No, no." When 3,000 to 30,000 people gather in one place to hear about Jesus, how is that not anything but great? Let me stop this. Most of it is just plain jealousy. - Yep, you know what? And thank you for calling out the character issue in that, 'cause we've all felt that. - Haven't we? - We've been jealous of the guy down the road, somebody in our seminary class, or someone who started at the same time we did, and we play the game where it's kind of like, "Well, they got bigger than I did faster, "I got bigger than they did faster." And I'm like, "What is that?" - Yeah, I don't know. It's hilarious. 'Cause when you hear, you see a pastor and maybe on Facebook or whatever and go, "Oh, these big churches, you can't become big today "unless you water down the gospel, "'cause nobody wants to hear straightforward, hardening gospel "anymore." And then the next post they do is how they're hoping their church will grow next year. I'm going, "Well, wait a minute." But you just said that can't happen in this culture unless you water down the gospel. - Caught. - Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. I agree with Rick Warren. The reason most big churches are big isn't because they're unfriendly. Nobody wants to go to an unfriendly church. Most of them got big because they're friendly, they're welcoming, they're doing something that people actually like. Now, are the big churches out there that are unhealthy? Sure, there's some big out and out cults out there for goodness. - Oh yeah. - I mean, come on. - And there's some small cults too. - And there are some small cults and a whole bunch of unhealthy small churches who are staying small because of their ill health. - Yes. - That's there too. Again, you can't deny reality. - Mm-hmm. - But either size, either bigness or smallness is not enough evidence to make a decision about the health of the church. - Right, that's a really good principle. Size is not the determiner of health. - Right. Just because you're big doesn't mean you're healthy and just because you're small doesn't mean you're healthy. - Or unhealthy on either side. - Or unhealthy on either side, flip it. No, that's a really good point. Let's talk about the comparison game a little bit. I mean, is that part of the heart of the unhealthy around the dialogue or do you see other factors as well? - I think that's the prime contributing fact. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's a comparison game. It's, and Jesus talked about it so much. You know, not comparing yourself with others. And if we have a healthy relationship with the Lord, if we know what we're called to do and we know we're in the place God has called us, that should be enough. Again, from my story, put the blame on me. I got to the point where I was seeing a grasshopper in the mirror and then living in Orange County, it's really easy to look around the corner and see everything from Saddleback Church to Mariner's Church to Church on the way where Jack Heyford was at the time to crystal cathedrals even close to us in Saddleback is. - It is. I stayed right around the corner. - It's an original Calvary Chapel that I can almost throw a stone and hit from my building. You know, and to look around and go, you know, here's the thing. A lot of times when you hear small churches about the only quote, unquote excuse that you're allowed to use while a church is small. As people go, well, if you're in a tiny little town, of course, you're not gonna have a big church. I live in Orange County, California. (laughing) This is where people come to plant mega churches. You know, Hillsong Church from Australia talks about their L.A. Church. They don't have an L.A. Church. They're in Orange County. They're around the corner from me. This is where people come to plant mega churches. There's something in the soil here. You drop a Bible and a mega church brings up. - So if you really want to feel bad about yourself. - There you go. So here I am and right around the corner from me, Rick Warren is blowing everything up and I'm following all of Rick Warren's rules and it didn't happen for me. Wha, wha, wha, wha, what was me? - Wow. - So that was why it was like, okay, what's wrong with me then? 'Cause I got none of these other excuses. - Well, and I think that's part of the comparison game as well is excuses, right? People make all kinds of excuses. Like, well, the reason you can't grow a big church is because you've got 18 mega churches around the corner or you're in a small town or nobody goes to church or people used to go to church but they don't anymore or travel teams have gotten, you know, travel sports have taken all the families away. And I mean, do you see that too in the dialogue? - Oh, absolutely. Just yesterday somebody reposted one of your posts, I think from last May about stop putting these excuses out. - Oh yeah, yeah. - And I re-read it again and went, yeah, Carrie did it right again. Good for you, Carrie. And you're absolutely right. If we're really doing what God has called us to do, then each church should exist for their own reason. Obviously we have the gospel in common, but if I'm just reduplicating what Saddleback is doing or what the small church down the street is doing, then one of us is unnecessary, right? We should be, there should be something about what I'm doing that reaches a different group of people than that other church is doing, which means I can have a church in the shadow of big Calvary Chapel down the street from us. And I pray for their success and God's blessing on them as much as I pray for my success and God's blessing on me. And there's more than enough people to be reached where I live that the water's warm, jump in the pool, welcome. I welcome Hillsong planting their new church here, right? - See that's such a good perspective and you don't hear a lot of leaders talk about that. I welcome Hillsong planting their new church here. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're great people doing great work. We sing their songs. - Yes, we do. - We all do. - So what makes you able to say that? Like what makes you able with the church of 200? I mean, why do you not roll your eyes and just go, oh, you had another mega church on the corner? - Because Andy Stanley couldn't do my job. - Okay, tell me more about that. Why couldn't Andy do your job? - And by the way, I really couldn't do his. (laughing) - It's mutual, right? - It's mutual. - Yeah, that's not a slam. - Yeah, on your side, it's not a slam. If Andy came to my church, there's no question within a year or two years, he'd have two, 3,000 people. They'd be in a different building. It'd be an awesome church, but it wouldn't be this church anymore, right? - That's a good point. And you know what? That's probably true. - Yeah, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing that he would tear down by tear down. I mean, just re-imagine it and be a different church. There are some people who's calling from God is to go into existing churches and to help turn them around. Years ago, when I started doing pastoring and some of my people I went to school with and so on, were starting their own churches and they were just booming and they were getting big churches. And at the time, there was a phrase that they would use about, it's better to plan a church then to go to an existing one because it's easier to have a baby than to raise the dead. And here I am going to small church after small church that exists and trying to turn them around. And I had a couple of my friends go, you know, why aren't you planning a church? It's easier to have a baby than to raise the dead. And my response was from gone with the wind 'cause I don't know nothing about birth and no babies. (laughing) - That's great, you know what? My wife and I were hit with that. Just when we were starting out in ministry, I had a church planter who was well known say to us 'cause we were in three little small mainline churches trying to, you know, resurrect. And he said, hey, easier to have a baby than to raise the dead. And as we were driving home or flying home actually, we kind of looked at each other and said, we're Christians. I actually think Jesus specializes in raising the dead. (laughing) You know, like he's pretty good at that. And again, when you look at the, and listen, I'm all for church plants, I've planted a church, I've also transitioned to church, but like you look at the ratio, just do the math. I mean, my goodness, what is it? 90% of churches are existing churches that need to be transitioned. They also own all the land as Andy has pointed out. And we need a revitalization of those existing churches and we need new church plants. It's both and, not either or. - Everything about the ministry that I do is both and. No question about it. - Okay. And see, that's so helpful. I wonder what would happen if the dialogue and debate, you know, online, but also in real life, shifted. And we took a both and mentality and celebrated small churches and celebrated large churches. - Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you look at the numbers. I mean, 90% of the churches in the world are under 200, 80% of them are under 100. And when was the last time anybody said that stat without following it with, we have to fix this? Years ago, I heard the stat and in my head, the next question that I had was, what if that's not a problem? And I just started bouncing that what if around my head? What if it's not a problem? What if when Jesus said, I will build my church? What he had in mind wasn't a world that only was filled with mega churches and big cathedrals? What if what he had in mind was a whole bunch of everything, but particularly tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these little gorilla style outpost way stations of faith tucked into every single corner of the globe? When you look at the numbers, there's about two billion Christians in the world. And that's the low end of those numbers. And half of them attend a church around under about 300 or so, the numbers are fuzzy. One, because pastors self-report and none of us have ever lied about our numbers. - No, no, no. No, we sincerely believe they're bigger than they are. We really do. - That is actually true. - Probably is, actually. - And of course, small churches are vastly underreported. We just don't know a whole bunch of them. But somewhere around 300, maybe 250 is about the median point, which means half one billion people choose to worship Jesus in smaller churches. - Right, so, and yet almost everything that we have is aimed towards, it comes from and is aimed towards the bigger churches in the bigger billion, not the smaller billion, smaller billion. There's an interesting phrase, isn't it? - You have to smaller billion. - But you point that out and you say, a lot of the resources that are out there are actually aimed at how to grow your church and how to handle a big church as opposed to what to do in the small church. And I think-- - Well, I didn't have done that. That's their perspective. So it's understandable that that's the perspective they write from. - Sure. - Yeah, and I can see that. And maybe one of the lessons in this is, and I haven't heard anyone say this, maybe you've said this, but it's not the idea that one size fits all, 'cause I think that can be a problem. But I think we're a comparison and excuses come into, it's like my size fits all. - Oh, yeah. - So, because I'm a small church, every church that isn't like me, or every church that isn't a house church, or every church that isn't a mid-sized church, like we've arrived and nobody else has. And I think that that neglects the diversity of the body of Christ. It flies in the face of like First Corinthians 12, which I think is as much about churches and congregations as it is about people. - I completely agree. - And so we need small churches, and we probably need a few healthy house churches, and we probably need some big churches. So what are some things? Let's go here in the time we've got left. What are some things that small churches can do? And let's get a few, 'cause we've been talking now for over half an hour, but just define the different sizes, 'cause you do that in your book, or on your blog, or something. And then what are some things, next question after that, is what are some things that a small church can do that like a larger church just can't? - Sure, well, these are fairly universal. The numbers may change by a little bit, depending on who you talk to. But basically under 50, you're talking really a family-style church. And when you talk small church, that's typically 200 or under. The 200 barrier happens anywhere from 150 to 300. But they call it this 200 barrier. So my church is on the high end of small. And then from the 200 to about 500, you've got kind of a small mid-size from 500 to 1,000, you're beginning to get big. 1,000 to 2,000, you're big. And over 2,000 is universally called mega-church. So in my ministry, I'm dealing with churches of 200 or under, or under the 200 barrier, which might mean 300 or under. - Yeah, and again, what Warren Bird and Carl George showed is that often churches will start at 150, go to 200, 300, but then they'll scale back down. And then they'll bump up and go down. So yeah, okay, those are good. So you're really predominantly talking about churches of 200 or less. - Yeah, that's my thing. - Okay, so what can a small church like that do, that a bigger church or a large church or mega-church just can't? - One of the things is we can fit in anywhere. You take a look around the globe. A lot, here's another reason why we have some of this big church, small church, back and forth arguing is because of our Western mindset. If you go to a lot of places in the world, places, for instance, where the church is illegal, you gotta fly under the radar. The church has to be small there. - Yeah, you can't have a mega-church in persecuted countries. - In other places, because of the culture, I've got friends who are in Japan and they talked about a denomination that raised tons of money to build a huge church on the outskirts of a massively populated Japanese city and nobody ever went. Because in Japan, once you become a Christian, that is considered a shame often to the rest of the family. And then to go to the ostentatious big church on the hill is like slapping your family in the face. - Wow. - So people who come out of the Japanese ancient ancestor religions to become a Christian have to practice their faith in very subtle ways within the Japanese culture in order for it to be considered valid and in order for them to have any credibility with the rest of their culture. - Right, if they're gonna reach the culture, you gotta some extent play the game. - So they have to expand small congregations rather than build big ones. - Okay, so sometimes it's not only an inherent advantage, it's the only way to do it. So what are some other things in North America or the Western world where small churches can do stuff that bigger churches can't? - Small churches can be quirky. - Okay, what do you mean by that? - Once you hit a certain size, especially once you get to mega church size, there are certain systems that just have to be put in place to manage that many people and to manage those size of buildings, to manage that size of budget. And you just have to, there's no options and there's not an awful lot of variance in the way they're administered because of that. And so there's kind of a leveling of the way things are done. And it's not that there's not a great variety in mega churches, there is, but you can't really do quirky in the 2,500 people in the room. But in, you go anywhere in the world, particularly in bigger cities, you're gonna find sub populations within those cities that have, you're gonna have a goth culture, you're gonna have a cowboy culture, you're gonna have a biker culture, you're gonna have a hippie culture, that kind of a thing. And there are people who are called to reach those very small cultures within a particular area. And the church is gonna be, the word I like to use is just quirky. And it's gonna be quirky, it's gonna be different. It's not gonna be traditional. I heard recently about a church in downtown San Francisco that meets in a bread baking company. And their church service is to get together, get their hands in the dough, and while they're breaking bread, literally baking bread, and then breaking bread together, they're talking about scripture as they do that. - Oh, wow. - So you could think of that as niche or niche minister? - Absolutely, yeah, and most of the people in that church are there because they like that kind of close, intimate thing. And probably the biggest thing that small churches can do that big churches can't do is, small churches can minister to people who need to worship Jesus in an intimate environment. - Okay, say more about that. Like what kinds of people prefer small over big, or have that need to worship in an intimate environment? - I mean, I don't know that I can categorize who that would be, but let me put it this way. There are some people who go to mega churches because when they walk in and they see this many people in the room and the music and the lights and the sound is big, it draws them into a place where they go, I'm a part of something big and wonderful and great. And it lifts their spirit and it pulls them forward. There are other people who walk into a big room and it just terrifies them. They're scared in crowds. They don't like it. - It's sociologically. - Yeah, it's just uncomfortable for them. - And their heart is drawn to Jesus and they will invite their friends to a place where there's intimacy, where it's smaller, where it's just not as big or loud or crowded, although we've got a small church that's loud and crowded too, right? So there are just so many different types of people in the world, you can have a greater variety of churches among smaller churches than you can have among bigger churches. So that's one of the things, I think, the smaller church. - Okay, and I think the other group that, you know, research is emerging on millennials, we'll just call them under 30s for convenience sake, that there may actually be a bias towards small over large in a lot of millennials. - Yeah, there's some reporting on that and then there's some kickback that no, that's not exactly accurate. You can't treat all millennials the same and I get that. But the boomers never kick back when we said boomers are like this, they just went, you know, that's who we are. (laughing) - Part of the actual joy of the millennials is that they are not as singular in the way they approach things. We have, you know, in the young people in our church, the millennials in our church, they have so many different musical styles, they like so many different clothing tastes that they like, so many different hobbies that they like, when you and I were growing up, for the most part, whatever school you were in, it was one kind of music is what all the cool kids listen to, one kind of clothes is what they wear, one kind of thinking that they have. And now it's just all over the board. And in a lot of ways, that's very healthy. It means they're actually, in a lot of cases, making independent decisions about the way they live their lives and the tastes that they have. You know, now when that comes down to core issues and fundamental, you know, issues of integrity and of truth and then saying, well, then pick whatever you want, then we've got a problem. - That becomes a problem? - Yeah, yeah, 'cause there are core truths that just simply are true. But when we're talking style, the fact that they're open up to anything is just the way it is now. So smaller churches allow for that diversity to soar and you can have some fun with that. I've got a friend in San Diego whose church has never been more than 120 people and he's pastored, they're almost the 22 years, just about the 22 years that I've pastored where I am. But in the last five years, they've planted six other campuses. They're about to plant two others in this coming year. And of the seven campuses they now have, there's about 500 people who attend those seven campuses. So every one of them is a small church. - And I think you're gonna see more and more of that. - Yeah, and they're niche. This one is in that community and so they, so it's Spanish-speaking 'cause they're in a Spanish community. And this one over here has more of a young hipster vibe because they're in downtown San Diego where all of the craft breweries are and that's where all the hipsters live. - Right. - Right? So because they are quirky, because they're niche, that you're probably going to limit the growth of that particular congregation. But this now network of congregations is having booming growth. And in fact, he has just recently resigned as the lead pastor of his local church because he's so busy overseeing the six and now about to grow to eight congregations, they're a part of his church. And their design is to find a neighborhood, see the maybe overlooked people on that neighborhood that aren't being ministered to by a traditional church style and just go in and turn the quirky up and bring people in who really are ministered to buy that. And each campus, by the way, has their own pastor, has their own worship team, but they share administration, they share the same copy machine in the office. So it's a wonderful new template that he's worked out. - So they recognize kinda the efficiency's a big while at the same time, the benefits of small. - Oh, damn. - Which I do think you're gonna, yeah, there you go. So Carl, we have just raced through the time. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. It's been great. Just very quickly. I mean, you've talked already about that sense of personal failure, which I think impacts, honestly, that's not a small church pastor issue. That's a person issue, a people issue. And I think large church pastors struggle with comparison and insecurity, just like everybody else does. So apart from that and making excuses, what are some of the unique challenges that you think small church pastors face? - Yeah, I think we're looking at the next two decades. I've got bad news and I've got good news. The bad news is my church is an endangered species. And by my church, I mean a small church that owns a building and has a full-time pastor in a large populated area. 15 years ago, after our church got to the point where we were healthy, we had half the attendance we have today. We had half the health that we have today, but we could pay our bills easier than we can today. Expenses have gone up, per capita tithing has gone down, even among healthy church-going people. Part of our growth comes from millennials, college students and high school students. We have tons of them. Sunday morning, you come to Second Service, the front two rows sitting right in front of me and the front row I can literally kick with my foot as I stand on stage is all teenagers and youth leaders. So we have a real reach, but they cost us money. Yes, they're an investment, right? They can't give back at the level that a 35 or 55-year-old kid. Exactly, we're investing and they're not the future of the church, they are the present of our church, but as far as paying the bills, that's gonna happen in the future. They're our farm team for bill paying. Yeah, so my church that's doing those things is being innovative and is in a big city where the prices are going up, up, up, up, up, up. Over the next 10 to 20 years, I think you're gonna see a lot of churches. If the small church doesn't adapt to being, maybe being okay with not having a building, having a pastor who's bivocational, training your farm team that is your young people to come up and be the next people to take over. Right now, if you've got a small church and it's paying the bills well because everybody's a senior, bad news folks, everybody dies, and their deaths will come sooner because of their age. Just welcome to the real world again. And I think if you're not preparing in the next decade to two decades, we're gonna see a lot of those churches just disappearing because we're not adapting to the new realities quickly enough. And as we just, I mean you and I've probably seen it so many times where it's church just pays out of its savings and then it pays out of its debt until finally they got to sell the building and the church collapses because they didn't make the adaptations to new realities at the pace that they needed to. - And I think the other reality too with small churches is I think for a healthy church and a growing church in a church that's making an impact, that's gonna be a real struggle. But Lyle Schaller back in the day used to say the small tiny like 40 people churches, you can't kill them, they're like cats. Cats, pardon me, they have nine lives. That may also have a shelf life as well. You know, and there's nothing maybe if you've got nine people and they're all over 70, I don't wanna disparage that, but I've been in a lot of churches like that. The future isn't very bright, but it only costs $10,000 a year to run the church, right? So they can hobble together and do that. But again, the expiry date on the tag is coming up soon. - That's exactly why 15 years ago when our church was half the size and half the health it was today, we paid our bills easier because 2/3 of the room was older and they were old school church. And it wasn't even age, it was that they were traditionally church people. So they gave their ties and they didn't need to receive much back. But when you're bringing the millennials in, it costs money to serve them. And even if they're willing, and even if they are tithing, they're just not making the money yet. - No, I mean, they're minimum wage, they're McDonald's wages and like, you're not, yeah, they're not gonna fund your next capital campaign. - So that's the first half, that's the bad news. - Okay, what's the good news? - The good news is if we recognize that and start adapting now, and we do things like networking churches together and training up our young students to recognize that they're likely to pastor a small church for a good portion of their ministry. It's one of what I call the undeniable realities of pastoral ministry. 99% of pastors will pastor a small church for at least some time in their ministry. And most of you will pastor a small church for most of your ministry. That's just the way the numbers are. 90% of the churches in the world are under 200. Do the math, folks. You're gonna end up there at some point. - I was convinced that I was only gonna do that for a while and I was gonna be the mega church pastor soon. Didn't work out that way from me. But I have now become to the point where, okay, ministry from the church, not just in the church, we can still contribute to the growth of the kingdom of God, even if I'm not necessarily putting a lot more butts in the seats that listen to me every Sunday morning. So if we adapt to that, if we see the present reality, if we're willing to make the changes that need to be made, I think there is a large and growing audience for, and I don't like the word audience, there's a large and growing group of people who are hungry for the teachings of Christ. I think mega churches will continue to grow and continue to thrive. I hope and pray that as churches like Saddleback with Rick Warren, as they transition in the next decade or two to new leadership, I pray fervently that those transitions go well because the loss of those churches would be tragic. - Well said. - But we've watched the Christa Cathedral do it not well and-- - Mars Hill had the problem too. - Yeah, yeah, and before anybody jumps on it and goes, well, that's what happens when you've got a mega church. No, it isn't. - No, it's not inevitable. - It is not even close to inevitable. It's ridiculous to put that on mega church. That is a very specific situation with a very specific and charismatic person who I think Mark Driscoll himself would probably admit that it was built too much on him and not enough on systems and methods that could be repeated by others. - Well, and at the end of the day, I mean, he was in his early to mid '40s. You're not planning on having it unravel in the middle of its peak. And so yeah, and I've written on that and others have. - Yeah, exactly. - We'll link to that in the show notes. But Carl, man, I feel like we could do two hours here today. This is fantastic, thank you. So there are a lot of smaller church pastors who are listening who are probably came into this podcast discouraged. I think you've probably given them reason to be encouraged. But if someone was really discouraged, if you had one piece of advice to give them, what would it be? - Fix what needs fixing. Keep looking at things that you may not be doing right and fix them. I do that on a constant basis. Nothing's ever perfect. Everything needs to be dealing with. But if you're looking around and going, my church is basically healthy. Why isn't it growing? Stop that sentence at the first half and pause. My church is basically healthy. If your church is basically healthy, you're not broken, you're normal. 90% of the churches in the world are under 200. And I think a lot of time the problem we have is we compare this small church to this megachurch, and that's not a fair comparison. Here's how I like to look at it. Imagine you've got a city where you've got a megachurch of 5,000 people. Also in that church, you're gonna have 5,000 people who meet in 100 healthy small churches. Which one is more valuable to the kingdom of God? 5,000 people meeting in one church under one pastor or 5,000 people meeting in 100 churches under 100 different pastors. I think the kingdom of God needs both. And as long as they're healthy, that I think is something we need to encourage. We need to resource and we need to bless. So if you're one of those pastors of a church in that 5,000 and you've got 99 other pastors to make up that 5,000 people, realize you are a part of one billion people around the world who worship Jesus in small churches. And it's not in most cases because they don't have other options. It's because there's something really special about the intimacy of a smaller church that they want. When a person walks into the front door of your church, they know that the front door of your church isn't the wardrobe door to the magical land of Narnia. They do an eye of spec when they open your front door for it all of a sudden to be huge on the inside. And you're gonna have laser light show during your worship team. And you're gonna have multiple levels of childcare for every conceivable need. They knew it was small before they walked in and they walked in anyway. So do small awesome. - Hmm, that's a good word. And you know what? I love the both and paradigm that we've talked about. So Carl, I know people are gonna wanna connect with you after this podcast. We'll have everything in the show notes, but just tell us about where to get your book and where to find you. - Sure. I blog at newsmallchurch.com and I blog three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And the easiest place to buy the book, Grasshopper Myth is there. It's the cheapest way to buy it. You can also buy it on Amazon, but it'll cost you more 'cause I gotta give a big chunk back to Amazon. And you can get it on Kindle. So if you're a Kindle reader, you can get it from 999 on Amazon as well. So it's in print. It's on Kindle and newsmallchurch.com. You can check that out too. - Carl, thank you so much. - You're welcome. It's good to be with you, Kerry. - Well, that was a great conversation. I just had more and more fun the longer we talked. And Carl, just thanks so much for your transparency. Thanks for what you're doing at newsmallchurch.com as well. I hope you go over to his blog. I hope you get his book, The Grasshopper Myth. It's awesome. And if you are just discovering Carl's blog for the first time and you lead a small church or even a larger church, I think you're gonna find it super helpful. So make sure you head on over to his website and give him some support and some love. And Carl, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I know we're gonna have a lot of conversations in the future as well. If you caught something that you want more on, just go to the show notes there at KerryNewHof.com/episode30 and you can pick that up there. Hey, next time when we come back, I'm really looking forward to the next conversation because I'm gonna be talking with Daniel Decker. And Daniel is somebody who is the guy behind a lot of like great authors. And he's gonna talk all about your online platform. So we're looking forward to that in episode 31, also gonna be hearing from some other great people in future episodes. Tom Rayner, Mark Batterson is gonna be on. So just the best way to make sure you don't miss anything, just subscribe. Just go to that magic subscribe button on whatever platform you listen to us on, whether that's iTunes or Stitcher or TuneInRadio, you will never miss an episode. It will be delivered to your inbox for free every Tuesday. So I will talk to you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in. I really do hope that this time together today has helped you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Kerri Newhof Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (gentle music)