A Little Bit About the Book
De-Sizing the Church by Karl Vaters was a book I randomly came across when listening to a podcast about the future of the church. Karl Vaters happened to be on the podcast and as he spoke I found myself agreeing with him more often than I didn’t. They mentioned his book, it sounded interesting so I bought it. Truthfully, this turned into a bit of an exercise in confirmation bias. I’ve been in churches that are small or shrinking but are abundantly wealthy in faith, outreach and discipleship. It’s from these experiences that I derived the name for the Five Twenty-Two Group. Numbers don’t tell the right story, good fruit does. This book is Vaters’ attempt to deconstruct the myth of size and growth as being the only measurement of church success, a measurement that is falsely attached to “the true value of worship, discipleship and ministry”. He equates the fascination with attendance as a form of “lust” and “idolatry”– strong words, but he makes his case well without condemnation. This is a book written by a pastor for pastors and church leaders encouraging them to put aside numerical growth as a key indicator of a church’s success. He also makes a strong distinction between planning and preparing versus “setting goals and determining outcomes”. By this, he means that churches should plan and prepare and be ready for what the Lord brings. By this he’s really talking about creating a church with depth, mentoring believers, encouraging bible knowledge and reading “…and enforce all of that with teaching and preaching that challenges [the church] to embrace an outside-the-church-walls, Monday-through-Sunday faith.” Setting goals and determining outcomes he argues isn’t the true work of the Church, “Doing the work of faithful ministry is.”
The book is broken down into four separate sections: The Problem of Bigness, Forgotten not Gone: The Science and History of Church Growth, The Consequences of Our Size Obsession and How to Start De-Sizing. Each section could be read independent of the other, but I don’t recommend reading the book this way as you could lose some critical context. In the final section How to Start De-Sizing he offers up his Church Health Assessment and his log 100 Days to a Healthier Church (I’ve put links to both below). I did a test run of both and they are good tools to understand your church culture and to assess what’s happening now and what may need to change. I recommend that the Health Assessment be taken by multiple people in the church to avoid bias as it could easily turn into a unified voice of approval. At the end of the assessment the person taking it can identify what type of role they play in the church, helpful input when seeking to break down barriers.
3 reasons why I liked it
Aside from the confirmation bias I mentioned above, one of my primary reasons for liking this book is that it champions smaller churches. While Vaters is clear that there is a role for larger churches, we need to stop thinking that larger churches are somehow better. He also encourages pastors to more proactively share best practices– bringing pastors from both big and small churches to the table. Bringing pastors of churches from varying sizes creates a healthier exchange of ideas and breaks the one way communication cycle of large churches doing the talking and small churches doing the listening. This type of mutual dialogue will be critical as churches shift in the upcoming years.
My second reason for liking this book is that he doesn’t veer from his primary point that pastors need to stop thinking solely about the numbers. Difficult to do, as I’ve been involved in many conversations where church members wanted to know about growth and “giving units”. He makes the case that the obsession with growth and size leads to craving “Celebrity” which should be avoided at all cost. . He’s bold in his statement saying “We must reject celebrity and excess, refusing to accommodate or platform those who embrace them.” Tricky in a culture that thoroughly embraces celebrity and the trappings that come with it. While he’s really talking about larger churches and the cultural obsession with Celebrity Pastors, I felt his advice was pertinent to pastors of smaller churches as well. A big fish in a small pond can have the same destructive influence as a big fish in a big pond.
Last but not least, I appreciate that Vaters calls out that the result of focusing on growth removes the church from its primary purpose to make, grow and send disciples. A church that is only looking at growth (whether big or small) can’t be a healthy church because the obsession for growth will distract from its true purpose. While he’s critical of large churches he doesn’t negate that large churches can be healthy churches just as small churches can be thoroughly unhealthy. In this way I think he keeps some balance to the book. He wants church health, but wants to deconstruct growth as a measurement of health.
Should You Read It?
100% YES. If you are currently pastoring a small or medium sized church this book is for you even if it only helps you to see your congregation through new eyes. If you’re currently pastoring a large church this book is for you even if it only helps you to see your congregation through new eyes.
Karl Vaters clearly has a love for the church and wants to see churches that are thriving communities where a love for Jesus can grow. His criticism of a numbers based success model comes from his own personal experience and he humbly admits to his own failings. It’s this humility that keeps the book from being a purely critical exercise and moving into a call for the Church to do better.
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