The Church Recovery Guide

The Church Recovery Guide: How Your Congregation Can Adapt and Thrive After a Crisis by Karl Vaters ($5.99 for the Kindle edition on Amazon) is a quick read by one of the most respected voices in the Assemblies of God when it comes to the dynamics of leading a small church. Not only is Karl a prolific author and a specialist in small church ministry, he also is a small-church pastor. Therefore, his perspective is not merely academic, but comes from personal hands-on experience as he helps lead his church through the current pandemic and its aftermath.

Impact: What We Know – and What We Don’t Know

With candor and humility, Vaters admits he often says, “I don’t know” in response to questions about the specifics of the new reality and what the church will look like going forward. Vaters writes, 

Strong, decisive leadership matters—especially in a crisis. But more than anything else, people need . . . honesty . . . An honest “I don’t know” is always better than false bravado. . . We think we’ll lose people’s trust if we don’t have all the answers. The opposite is almost always true. Saying “I don’t know” when you don’t have an answer lets people know you’re not faking it when you do have an answer.

According to Vaters, American culture is experiencing a once-in-a-millennium shift right now. Therefore, he says we must hold onto two competing ideals at the same time.

First: We must stand strong on the unchanging principles of God’s Word, and Second: We must adapt our methods to a fast-changing world. 

Ten Principles for Immediate Implementation

Vaters insists that pastors and church leaders must begin working immediately on the following ten principles. According to Vaters, “. . . the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago—the second best time is today. The same goes for these principles. If you’ve been doing them, strengthen them. If not, get started now . . . The survival of your local church depends on it.”

1. Reestablish the biblical essentials. “While everything else can change, the essentials cannot. Any church that abandons biblical principles won’t just fail to survive, it doesn’t deserve to.”
2. Emphasize discipleship and leadership training. “The days of hiring a team of pastors to do all the ministry of the church is dying . . . churches that thrive are . . . equipping God’s people to do the work of ministry and raising up a team of ministers.”
3. Reduce your overhead. Vaters’ recommendations include getting out of debt (including mortgage); reducing the percentage of budget for paid staff; training and empowering volunteers to lead and serve; sharing expenses with other churches and ministries; and preparing ministers-in-training for the likelihood that they will be bi-vocational.
4. Rethink your building. “If you own a building—especially if you’re one of the growing number of churches that own a too-big building for your shrinking congregation—be relentless about finding creative ways to utilize the space as often as possible . . . it’s use-it-or-lose-it time. As in, use the building or lose the church—facility, people . . . everything.”
5. Work with strategic partners. “In many places, smaller churches are banding together—even across denominational lines—to share resources, think strategically, mend old wounds, and minister to their shared community.”
6. Engage your community. “Churches must stop being identified by the location of their building . . .We must be recognized for the passion of our heart. A church that’s known as “the people who love kids” (or addicts, or single moms) has a much higher likelihood of thriving and surviving than the church that’s known as ‘the old building on the corner of First and Main.’”
7. Emphasize Jesus over tradition (or denomination, building, politics, or . . .) “Everything but Jesus and the Bible must be on the table.”
8. Restructure what needs to be restructured.  “Quit fighting to keep your favorite ministry, method, or tradition alive. If it’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.”
9. Make disciples, not just converts. “Converts join a club. Disciples start a movement. Converts follow traditions. Disciples follow Jesus. Converts change their minds. Disciples change their lives. And other people’s lives.”
10. Figure out why your congregation should survive. “If your church disappeared tomorrow, what would really be lost? Yes, that’s a hard question . . . (but) it’s essential. Any congregation that can’t readily answer why they should survive, won’t.”

Identify Where Individuals Are in the Grief Cycle

There are great chapters about how you must lead a “hurting” church differently, how vision casting and strategic planning has changed, and a very unique application of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. Vaters believes each stage in the grief cycle “can be a helpful means to identify an individual’s primary way of interpreting new events and traumas.” Below are the five distinct steps in the classic grief cycle, as well as how individuals may behave when seeing the world through the lens of a particular stage.

1. Denial. “These are folks who are more likely to point out the lies and falsehoods than the truths. They use phrases like ‘you can’t trust anyone; they’re all liars.’”
2. Anger. “There’s a lot to be angry about. From lost loved ones, to poor political decisions, to bureaucratic red tape, you’ll be pastoring some people who are responding to hurt with anger.”
3. Bargaining. “These are the fixers. People who think ‘if we just did this or that,’ we could make everything right again. They’re often your best volunteers, but they may be burning themselves out trying to do too much.”
4. Depression. “People may slip in and out of this stage at a moment’s notice and without realizing it. They’re likely to say things like ‘I just don’t care anymore,’ meaning they care very deeply but they feel so hopeless that they wish they didn’t care.”
5. Acceptance. “These are folks who are most likely to use phrases like ‘the new normal’ and ‘it is what it is.’ They don’t necessarily like it, but they accept it readily and want to adapt quickly.”

Self-Care for Leaders Who are Barely Holding On

Time and space does not allow me to discuss every thoughtful chapter in this little book. However, let me end with Vaters’ advice for exhausted leaders who feel as if they are barely holding on. He suggests you talk to yourself the same way you would talk to someone else, “. . . you’d go easy on them and help relieve their feelings of guilt. You’d sympathize. You’d emphasize their need to rest emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. That’s good advice. We need to talk to ourselves the same way.”

• Give yourself a break.
• Slow down.
• Don’t push.
• Relax.
• Stay healthy first.

A Highly Recommended, Candid, and Transparent Book

I highly recommend The Church Recovery Guide: How Your Congregation Can Adapt and Thrive After a Crisis by Karl Vaters. It is packed with wisdom from experience. However, even if you don’t agree with all of his advice, he certainly is addressing many of the hard questions that we must answer.