Small Church Essentials: Field-Tested Principles for Leading a Healthy Congregation of under 250

Do you lead a small church? 

Big churches get all the love. Articles, books, conferences—they mostly feature leaders of large congregations. Yet big churches are a small part of the ecclesial landscape. In fact, more than 90 percent of churches have fewer than 200 people. That means small churches play a big part in what God is doing.

Small Church Essentials is for leaders of these smaller congregations. It encourages them to steward their role well, debunking myths about small churches while offering principles for leading a dynamic, healthy small church.

Based on the popular six-hour lecture that Karl Vaters delivers to church leaders across the country, Small Church Essentials will affirm small church leaders and show them how to identify what they do well, and how to do it even better. Readers will:

• Be assured that leading a small congregation does not make them ministry failures
• Come away inspired to lead with passion, regardless the size of their church
• Have field-tested principles for leading a church in their context
• Possess new metrics for biblically measuring vitality in small churches
• Have a toolkit of resources to use in their everyday ministry

Karl Vaters has been a small church pastor for 30 years, is the author of The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches, and the Small Thinking that Divides Us (2013), and travels extensively to churches and conferences to speak about leading a small church well.

If you are pastoring a small church, this book will be a breath of fresh air. It will affirm your calling while giving you fresh tools to help you lead. It will help you:

• Stop believing lies about small churches
• Lead your church to fulfill the role only small churches can
• Understand your congregation’s strengths and weaknesses
• Turn around a dying or unhealthy church
• Identify good trends and bad in church and culture

• Lasting Impact: 7 Powerful Conversations That Will Help Your Church Grow
• Becoming a Welcoming Church
• Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive
• The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective
• Scrappy Church: God's Not Done Yet
• No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry
• Dirt Matters: The Foundation For a Healthy, Vibrant, And Effective Congregation
• Anatomy of a Revived Church: Seven Findings of How Congregations Avoided Death
• Naked Man Running: 100 IDEAS that work in a small church
• The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking that Divides Us