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Welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 26. I am Javier, your host. Wherever you may be and however you listen we always thank you for joining us on the journey to helping Restore the vision, Restore mission, Restore the church.

I'm really excited to have you listen to my conversation on this episode with Pastor Karl Vaters. He is the teaching pastor at Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Vally, California, where he's been a pastor for more than 20 years.

Karl has been a small church pastor all of his life, and he's written two books about it. The first book he wrote, The Grasshopper Myth, we briefly mention as we focus on his most recent book which I recently finished reading, Small Church Essentials: Field-tested Principles for Leading a Healthy Congregation of Under 250. In the book's introduction Karl mentions:

"This book is not about how to get your small church to become a big church. It's also not about how small churches are better than big churches. They're not. And it's definitely not about settling for less. It's not about wanting churches to be small; it's about wanting small churches to be great."

The fact is, most churches in North America have fewer than 200 in attendance and are considered a small church. The question is:What does a healthy small church look like? This book fleshes that out.

An offer for you if you're quick: the first three people to e-mail me at [email protected] and ask about Small Church Essentials will receive a FREE copy.

Two final notes: First, I encourage you to look into attending EC3, the Southern Union's Evangelism Conference, coming this fall. More info is at southernunion.com/ec3. Second, we usually take a break of a month or two in the summer, so stay tuned for the next episode of the Restore podcast a couple months from now.

Show Notes/Links/Resources

• Karl Vaters on Twitter: @karlvaters
• Karl Vaters on Facebook: Karl Vaters
• Karl Vaters Web Site: newsmallchurch.com
• Cornerstone Christian Fellowship: cornerstonefv.com