Introduction

CCCC recently held an insightful webinar featuring Karl Vaters, a small church pastor and author of numerous books on leading small churches. During the event, Karl shared his extensive knowledge and experience in the context of small churches. At the same time, our participants asked several intriguing follow-up questions regarding the development of discipleship processes tailored for smaller congregations. We are pleased to inform you that Karl has graciously provided additional practical insights on this subject. For those unable to attend the webinar titled “Three Ways a Small Church Can Be an Effective Church,” it is now accessible on our website. Enjoy the post from Karl below!

Are you happy with the discipleship program at your small church? Does it even exist?

If not, I have some good news. You don’t need an expensive, staff-heavy curriculum to do great follow-up with new believers. And it doesn’t need to kill your already over-busy schedule, either.

After a few hit-and-miss attempts, I discovered a simple five-step process that can work for any small church. And it looks suspiciously similar to what Jesus, Paul, and many other early church leaders did.

1. Meet with Every New Believer

Yes, every new believer.

In most small churches, this is not just possible; it’s usually a significant step for both the pastor and the new believer.

Pastors of big churches can’t do this. There are too many people to meet with. That’s not a slam on them or us; it’s just the way it is. But it points out one advantage of pastoring a small church – the personal touch.

2. Determine How They Learn and Grow

Here’s an example based on my meeting with a new believer who had no Bible knowledge whatsoever.

After a short exploratory conversation, I determined that reading the Gospel of John would be the best way for him to start growing in his newfound faith. I told him to start by reading one chapter a day and then chew on it. If he wanted to re-read the same chapter the next day, do that until he was ready to move to the following chapter.

When I checked in with him a couple of Sundays later, he was only on John 5. “I sat with John 3 for a few days”, he told me with great joy. “That conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus was fantastic!”

I smiled. He was getting it. God’s Word was doing its work. After that, we caught up regularly. He read through Acts the same way. Then he moved slowly through Romans. I answered his questions when he needed help.

I’ve never met anyone else for whom I’d recommend that style of discipleship. But it was the best way for him. People learn and grow in different ways. Let’s use the personal touch we get from being in a small church to help people in the way that suits them best.

If you’re wondering how that first exploratory conversation works, it’s simple. I ask questions like this:

• What was their family like growing up?
• How did they like school?
• Do they like to read?
• Are they a hands-on learner?
• Are they relationship-oriented?
• What do they do in their spare time?
• What was their best learning experience in the past?
• Their worst?
• Who was their favourite teacher, and why?

Simply put, I get nosy about their learning process until I feel like I have a handle on things.

Then, I suggest an idea or two and ask if that sounds like something that might work for them. I also give them a guilt-free way out. If the selected learning style doesn’t work for them, we’ll find another way to get it done.

3. Connect Them with a Mature Believer and the Right Resources

There are new believers in our church who meet regularly with mature believers to learn, grow, and be discipled. Each one of them does it differently, depending on their circumstance.

One of those discipleship/mentoring relationships was between two people who enjoyed book clubs. I recommended a good Christian book for them to read, then they met once a week to talk about it. After the Sunday service every few weeks, I took a moment to hear how they were doing. When they finished reading one book, I recommended the next one. They both grew in their relationships with Jesus and each other.

4. Help Them Plug into an Active Ministry That Utilizes Their Gifts

This is the most neglected step of most new believer programs. We fill people’s heads with Bible knowledge but wait too long to activate that knowledge within real-world ministry. That is dangerous for the believer and the church.

One of the main reasons for pastoral stress is church members with a lot of Bible knowledge who are doing little if any, practical, hands-on, outside-the-church-walls ministry. The Apostle Paul taught us that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). That’s what happens when we cram Bible knowledge into people’s heads without helping them activate it with their hands and feet.

It’s never the new believers that burn out the pastor. It’s the pew-warmers who think they know how to run the church but never lift a finger to help. Then they leave because they’re “not being fed.”

The best solution to that? Teach people how to pick up a spoon and feed themselves from the very start of their faith!

5. As People Mature, Call On Them to Start Leading Others

Discipleship is never finished. Even the most mature believer has something to learn.

The best way for a mature believer to keep learning is to teach others as they do ministry together.

Start with One

One of the great side benefits of these steps is how little time it takes from the pastor’s schedule. After this process was set in place, I no longer had to do endless hours of discipleship myself. Now, I hear about great results after the fact.

If you don’t have a discipleship process in your church, I recommend starting with one person. That’s what I did. I walked a new believer through the early stages of discipleship myself, including letting them know they’d be doing this themselves someday. Then, when another new believer came along, I showed them how to adapt what we’d done with this new believer.

Believers discipling believers.

We don’t need an expensive program, and we don’t need to be a certified teacher. We just need to do it.

Watch CCCC’s webinar here: Three Ways a Small Church Can Be an Effective Church.

The post Making Disciples Without Overworking the Pastor (A Simple, Five-Step Process) appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

While larger churches often attract a lot of visibility and praise, it might feel disheartening when serving in a small church context. But it’s essential to remember—size doesn’t define impact. Discover more encouraging insights about small churches (and other small ministries) in this CCCC blog post “A small team doing big things“.

To empower pastors whose hearts are deeply engaged in ministry within smaller communities, we’re sharing three helpful resources designed to enrich your service in your Canadian church context.

1. Significant Church: Small Church Research Study

Your first tool for empowerment is the report Significant Church: Understanding the Value of the Small Evangelical Church in Canada from the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. This research provides invaluable insights into the role and impact of small churches within their communities. The project involved interviews with ministry experts and small church pastors as well as a national survey of pastors. The research team defined a small church as a congregation with an average Sunday attendance of 150 or less. One of the points from the study reveals that pastors felt their formal theological education did not prepare them adequately for small church pastoral ministry, and the need for more resources tailored to this context. You can find the full report on The EFC website.

2. CCCC Webinar “Three Ways a Small Church Can Be An Effective Church“

Secondly, prepare to attend the upcoming CCCC webinar featuring Karl Vaters, author of The Grasshopper Myth, called “Three Ways a Small Church Can Be An Effective Church. His insights into small church dynamics provide fresh perspectives on leveraging your unique strengths for a more significant impact, challenging the “‘just a small church” narrative. This live webinar is offered free from CCCC, and will be available for replay on our website at no cost for CCCC members and a nominal fee for non-members.

Here is a short video invitation from Karl

3. CCCC Web Membership

The third resource is the CCCC’s Web Membership, offering a wealth of resources tailored for ministry leaders serving in very small ministries. With unrestricted access to online articles, webinars, and downloadable resources, these ministry leaders can have the information they need to thrive as a Christian charity.

Pastor Appreciation

Keep this in mind: despite the challenges you may face as a small church pastor, you’re not leading “just a small church.” You are a distinct community, with exceptional strengths to be embraced and shared. And, if it hasn’t been said, Happy Pastor Appreciation month. Thank you for your service to the Kingdom!

The post Resources for Pastors of Small Churches in Canada appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I remember that as the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony orchestra¹ took their seats in the pit, my wife expressed surprise at how small it was (about 30 people I think, a lot fewer than the number in the YouTube performance I linked to above). She imagined that unmic’d orchestras must have a lot more people to get the rich sound that was on the record. And then, only a few bars into the overture, she whispered in amazement “That sounds just like the record!!!”  Yes, a small group of people produced a very large sound. In fact, they sounded just like a ‘real’ orchestra!

Size and Impact

It’s amazing what a small group can do that is out of all proportion to its size. Think about the dozen apostles. About Paul and his missionary team. A small group can change the world! One of my staff members said that at CCCC “we are a small team doing big things.” I love that thought!

The dream of many small ministries, while often not stated, is to become a big ministry. At CCCC, we have close to 10% of all Christian ministries as members, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be 100%! Thinking like this, though, focuses your attention on how small you are now. And then you run the risk of wondering if you are really accomplishing anything as a small ministry. This angst could become an impediment to your current success. I’d like to say a few encouraging words to the smaller ministries of Canada (next post I’ll say something to the larger ministries). What I’m going to say could apply to larger ministries too, but they have to work a lot harder than smaller ministries to get these advantages.

The fact is that Christian ministries in Canada are very small. Based on the 22,000 T3010’s for Christian ministries that we have in our database at CCCC (and assuming they are correctly filled out):

• 80% have less than $300,000 in total revenue, and about half have less than $100,000.
• 80% have four or fewer employees, and about half have exactly one staff member.
  • 105 report no employees at all (just volunteers).
  • 16% say they have two employees.
  • 93.5% have nine or fewer paid staff.

Encouragement for Small Ministries

Given our small size, here are some things to remember:

• God delights in working through the unlikely, which means he likes to work with the small group that the world might not pay attention to. In Deut. 7:7-8 Moses says to Israel, “The LORD did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you….” God did not take the larger nations of Egypt, Assyria or Babylon as his people; he took a people and made them his people, not because of their might, their size, or their importance in the world, but just because he loved them. You don’t have to be big for God to work through you. Work at your ministry with all you’ve got, knowing that God works through underdogs like a young shepherd boy, a group of country-bumpkin Galileans (at least according to the priests of Jerusalem), and a timid young pastor named Timothy.
• God likes to work in ways that make it clear it is him who is the source of success, not humans. The best example of this is in Judges 7, where the LORD says to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.'” The group of 22,000 men gets whittled down to 300, an appropriately small number to prove that they are fighting under the power of God and not under their own strength. Although a small ministry, and maybe because you are a small ministry, God may use you to demonstrate his activity in our world. When the job is so big that you can’t do it, then you know that your accomplishments are God’s. So work hard, knowing that God is working beside you and around you in ways you may not even know, but be assured he will accomplish his purposes for calling you into ministry.
• Being a small ministry, you are much more likely to think carefully about which programs and services to continue offering. You can’t afford to carry anything forward just because it’s part of your routine. You can’t throw money or people at your opportunities, since you don’t have the capacity to do that, so you must choose carefully how to use the precious resources you have, pruning old programs to make way for new programs. By always focusing on the best use of your limited resources, you will likely have a very effective and efficient ministry.
• You are more likely to find creative ways to stretch your influence, by partnering with others or drawing on volunteers, because you have to. My first boss, Richard Adair, believed the secret to success as a small entrepreneur is to ride the coat-tails of a larger company. They do the heavy work of acquiring the customer, for example, and you simply provide the add-on to the sale. As a small ministry, your calling might be to serve specialized, small niches that the larger organizations have missed while focusing on the more general and broader needs. You might be a specialty add-on to the services provided by larger organizations.
• Small ministries don’t have the resources to develop a bureaucracy, so it is easier to have a creative entrepreneurial environment. Small ministries can be the ‘skunk works’ of Christian ministry, the testing ground for new ideas. Encourage innovation.
• As a small organization, you will probably be able to respond quicker to issues or changes in the environment. You can be fast on your feet and quick to exploit new opportunities. Create an organizational culture that supports change.
• In a flat organization, you can communicate more easily with your staff than a large organization can, and you can also involve them in decisions and planning that they might not experience in a large ministry. Staff will likely have greater variety in their work because the jobs have to be broader in scope to make up for the limited number of employees. In addition, you will likely empower your team more and delegate more to them (out of necessity), thus giving you an advantage in hiring people because they will be able to use more of their talents and have more influence over their work than elsewhere.
• The environment of a small ministry is very motivational in and of itself for your team members because all of them are very close to the ministry’s results and they can see the fruit of their labour for themselves. There is nothing like appreciative feedback to spur you on. It is astonishing how many compliments the CCCC gets, and I make sure that all the staff share the compliments with the team so that we can all be encouraged by them.

As with any ministry, don’t measure your success in terms of growth or size, but in terms of how well you are fulfilling your mission. God created your ministry to assist with his mission, so progressively fulfilling the specific part of his mission that you are called to serve is the way you should assess your success.

Finally, when you feel you are small and struggling along by yourself, remember God’s promise that is so important that it appears not once, but four times in scripture (Deut 31:6, 31:8, Josh 1:5 and Heb 13:5): “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

May God richly bless your ministry!

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