Karl Vaters interviews Matt Lucas about starting your congregation on the road to spiritual maturity through increasing their Bible reading. Specifically, how reading the Bible at least four times a week is so powerful, it's been called "The Power of Four."

Matt is the CEO of Our Daily Bread (known for their quarterly devotionals) and The Center for Bible Engagement.

Karl and Matt talk about:

• What is The Power of Four?
• Why does reading the Bible 4+ times a week make such a difference in spiritual maturity?
• The importance of reading and hearing the Bible in church
• Helpful ways to gauge spiritual maturity
• How to use Power of Four to help a congregation become more mature

Links:

• Bible Engagement: A Key to Spiritual Growth
• Center for Bible Engagement
• A Non Anxious Presence by Mark Sayers
• 
  

A Congregational Survey to Help Track Your Congregation’s Spiritual Maturity, with Matt Lucas

How do you know if your congregation is maturing? Tracking church attendance is not enough.

Matt Lucas and the team at Our Daily Bread are creating a powerful new tool to help pastors and their congregations.

In this Bonus Material, Karl Vaters talks with Matt as he shows us this new tool, explaining what it will do, how easy it will be, and how you’ll be able to use it to lead your congregation well.

Retirement isn’t what it used to be. In the U.S. military, retirement is mandatory at 62 years of age, but U.S. Army Garrison Chaplain (MAJ) Lisa A. Northway is an exception to that. Lisa, who’s currently stationed in Fort Sill, OK, has been called the “Grandma Moses” of the Army Chaplaincy. She recently received permission to extend her chaplaincy for a few more years.

In this podcast, Karl Vaters talks with Lisa about how to have vibrant ministry past retirement age, including

• The value of long-term experience in today’s ministry environment
• How to pace yourself for the long-term
• How not to block the way for younger ministers
• How to mentor younger ministers

Links from this Episode:

• Elizabeth Fulgaro's Eagles Nest
• Book: The Fantasy Fallacy by Shannon Ethridge
• Book: Unwanted by Jay Stringer
• Book: The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller

Bonus Content

Navigating the Challenges of Being a Woman In Ministry, with Lisa Northway

What roles does the Bible allow women to serve in the church? This is a hot-button topic, for sure. In this conversation, Karl Vaters talks with U.S. Army Garrison Chaplain Lisa Northway about the challenges she faces as a woman in ministry, and how to address those issues among the troops she serves.

Small churches aren’t a problem to fix, they’re a unique part of the body of Christ that has gifts we need to embrace.

Karl Vaters talks with Allen T. Stanton about the importance of embracing what’s right about small churches, not in spite of being small, but because they’re small, in a conversation based on the content of Allen's book, The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation.

Some of the subjects they cover include:

• A new take on the “all growth is good growth” assumption, based on the fact that we live in a culture that is so economically driven
• Why small churches should be more nimble, but often are not
• The differences between a hierarchical leadership model and the Solar System Model
• The importance of the “Parking Lot meeting”
• The differences between regular and episodic volunteers

Links:

• The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation
• Reclaiming Rural: Building Thriving Rural Congregations
• 211Counts.org
• University of the Ozarks

Four Practices to Help Your Small Church Stay Nimble, with Allen T. Stanton

Karl Vaters talks with Allen T. Stanton about the importance of:

• Acknowledging the places where small-membership churches are already good at change and where they already practice being adaptive and flexible.
• Remembering that not everything needs to change all the time.
• The looseness of small-church relational networks, rather than strict hierarchies and complicated bureaucracies.
• Understanding and appropriately managing the roles of individuals in the organization.

Working a side hustle is no longer the exception for pastors, it’s the norm. Embracing it might answer a lot of your (and your church’s) needs.

Karl Vaters talks with Jon Sanders about the rise in covocational pastoring and why it’s something more pastors, especially small-church pastors, should take seriously. Jon is the co-host of the EntrePastors Podcast and the co-founder of EntrePastors.com (with Les Hughes).

The culture around us is shifting. The idea that someone entering the workplace will get a single full-time job to pay the bills is a rarity. And the church is no exception. But, unlike the secular marketplace, we shouldn’t be playing catch-up with this. We can lead.

Jon and Karl talk about several important aspects of bivo/covo ministry, including:

• Why this is a growing need
• How to make the shift without neglecting the church
• The difference between bivocational and covocational
• How to prepare your congregation for a covocational pastorate

And more.

Jon also serves as the Director of Coaching for the 95Network, a ministry that specializes in serving small to midsize churches.

Podcast Links:

• Rural Church Rescue, with Jon Sanders (ep 024)
• EntrePastors
• How The Side Hustle Is Changing The Face Of Pastoring

Bonus Material

Finding a Covocational Job That Fits a Pastor’s Skills and Schedule, with Jon Sanders

What marketplace jobs work well for covocational pastors?

The skills you have honed as a pastor are highly desirable in the secular marketplace. But how can they be turned into a paying job that won’t interfere with your pastoral calling?

In the bonus conversation I talk to Jon Sanders of EntrePastors.com about how to make that transition, including several real-life examples of pastors who have made that transition well.

To get Bonus Content every week, click here to become a Financial Partner, or here to subscribe to the Free Weekly Newsletter.

Why would a young church planter choose to do ministry in the poorest neighborhood of a city in crisis?

Many churches are fleeing the inner cities. Grand old church buildings with deep histories sit empty. But Tim Walker and Restored Church are facing these realities head-on in Wilkes-Barre PA.

Karl Vaters talks with Tim about subjects like:

• Their church’s Hub for Movement strategy
• Their decision to do ministry in the poorest part of town
• Ministry in a deeply post-Christian context
• Honoring history, while moving into the future from a legacy church building
• Their plan to plant a microchurch on every block of Wilkes-Barre

Links from this episode:

• Future Church, by Will Mancini and Cory Hartman
• From Megachurch to Multiplication, by Chris Galanos
• Cory Hartman Podcast Interview (Ep 29)
• Frank Wooden Podcast Interview (Ep 81)
• GotQuestions.org
• Restored Church
• Tim@restoredchurch.org

Bonus Content

How To Foster Pastoral Collaboration In Your Town, with Tim Walker

Karl Vaters talks with Tim Walker about how he and other pastors in his town have created a network of ministry collaboration that blesses all churches and reaches the community more effectively.

To get Bonus Content every week, click here to become a Financial Partner, or here to subscribe to the Free Weekly Newsletter.

Karl Vaters talks with Chase Replogle about one of the most controversial, but unavoidable topics today—living with offense without being offended. This material comes from his just-released book, A Sharp Compassion: 7 Hard Words to Heal Our Insecurities and Free Us from Offense.

Karl and Chase talk about why offense is a necessary part of life, how to use it well, and deal with it properly.

Subjects include:

• How Jesus intentionally used offensive words in strategic situations to bring about desired results
• The importance of discipleship
• How the absence of close relationships makes us more offendable
• How church leaders can help those who struggle with being offended
• And more

Chase Replogle is also the author of The 5 Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Becoming a Better Man, and is the host of the Pastor Writer Podcast. He pastors the Bent Oak Church in Springfield, Missouri.

Links from this episode:

• Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Danger Of The Cult Of Self-affirmation

Karl Vaters talks with Chase Replogle about the dangers of using self-affirmation as a guide to life and truth. Recent surveys have shown that self-affirmation, and specifically “how I feel at the moment” have widely replaced universal truths in many people’s lives.

It’s also made its way into the church. While 91% of U.S. adults agree that “the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself,” 76% of practicing Christians agreed with that statement.

As Chase wrote in A Sharp Compassion, “Religion has not disappeared from America, as so many feared; instead, it has, like everything from our entertainment to our diets, become personalized. It has shifted from the risk of offense to the affirmation of the self.”

In September and October over 1.2 million people will search online for “Trunk-or-Treat near me.” Here’s how to be one of the churches they find.

Karl Vaters talks with Darrell Stetler about practical steps to help churches of any size put on a high-quality, gospel-centered Trunk-or-Treat event. Darrell is a small-church pastor in Oklahoma City and he has created a free 23-page guide called Trunk-orTreat Planning for Churches: A Step-by-step Guide.

Karl and Darrell talk about:

• The benefits of having a church Trunk-or-Treat
• Picking a theme
• Who it’s designed to reach
• When to start planning
• Recruiting volunteers
• How to gather info from attenders
• How to follow up

Podcast Links:

• Free 23-page Planning Guide with Trunk-or-Treat Ideas for Churches
• The Gospel Trunk-or-Treat Planning System
• Previous Darrell Stetler Interview (Ep 38)

Also from Darrell Stetler:

• NewStart Discipleship Curriculum
• Free New Believer Bible Reading Plan (1 Page PDF)
• Free audiobook on Discipling Your Children
• Free NewStart Discipleship Journal: A 54-page Discipleship Bible Study for new Christians.
• Free one-hour Discipleship Training workshop

Social media:

• facebook.com/darrellstetler2
• facebook.com/newstartdiscipleship
• youtube.com/@newstartdiscipleship
• twitter.com/newstartdisc

Bonus Summary

Yes, Your Church Can Do Trunk-or-Treat without Compromising Your Christian Values, with Darrell Stetler

If you have problems with Halloween, I'm right there with you. Not a fan. In this short video, Darrell Stetler and Karl Vaters talk about:

• Why our churches do a trunk-or-treat
• The three attitudes Christians can have toward Halloween
• The misunderstood non-pagan origins of Halloween
• Why it’s okay for churches to offer a safe, Bible-based alternative

Bonus Content Links:

• Halloween: A Distinctively Christian Holiday
• Free 23 Page Planning Guide with

Karl Vaters talks with Brad Roth about the content from his new book, Flyover Church: How Jesus’ Ministry in Rural Places Is Good News Everywhere, for which Karl wrote the foreword.

Topics include:

• How the rural church is different from the city and suburban church, not just in scale, but in type
• How metrics are very different in the rural church
• The lure of strategy
• The radically different pace of rural ministry
• And more

Brad is also the author of The Hunger Inside: How the Meal Jesus Gave Transforms Lives, and God's Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church.

Links:

• DoxologyProject.com
• Book: God's Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church
• Book: The Hunger Inside: How the Meal Jesus Gave Transforms Lives
• Book: Flyover Church: How Jesus' Ministry in Rural Places Is Good News Everywhere

​Brad Roth Bonus Chat summary

One New Person: Toward An Authentic Metric For The Rural Church

Karl Vaters talks with Brad Roth about how and why metrics work very differently in rural churches than in urban and suburban churches. As Brad wrote, “Most of us don’t need numbers to know whether our church is thriving. Numbers often stand in for intuition and attempt to substitute with a dashboard what can only be learned through years spent with a people in a place.”

To get Bonus Content every week, click here to become a Financial Partner, or here to subscribe to the Free Weekly Newsletter.