The Church Lobby

Karl Vaters talks with Sam Rainer about some massive changes that are happening, and how the looming pastoral shortage will affect everything about the way churches function in the next generation or two.

Based on Sam’s article, The Coming Massive Wave of Retiring Pastors and Church Staff, this conversation covers what caused this crisis along with some hopeful solutions including the rise of bi- and co-vocational ministry, opportunities for interim pastor ministry, the importance of planning your pastoral succession, and so much more.

Links:

• The Coming Massive Wave of Retiring Pastors and Church Staff (article)
• Church Answers
• Church Answers University certification program
• Calendly
• KarlVaters.com/OnDeck

Bonus Content

How To Prepare Your Church for Your Pastoral Retirement, with Sam Rainer

Karl Vaters talks with Sam Rainer about what you can do prepare your church if you’re a pastor who’s set to retire soon, including the following three proactive steps:

1. Evaluate your leadership pipeline
2. Create flexibility in your staffing model.
3. Honor and utilize experienced pastors.

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Mentioned in this episode:

On Deck Landing Page

Prayer is a foundation of a healthy Christian life and church. Karl Vaters talks with Chris Paavola about four strategic ways his church prays that can help any church lay a more solid foundation for health.

The foundation of this conversation is a talk Chris gives to pastors, titled 4 Ways Small Churches Can Grow in Prayer.

1. Sunday Intercessory Prayer
2. Prayer Services
3. Prayerwalking
4. A new way to take prayer requests

This last point comes straight from the Bible using the for/that method. It can make your church prayer request times feel less like gossip and more like the time of connection and intercession they’re meant to be.

Chris Paavola is a pastor in Battle Creek Michigan who has written and spoken extensively about prayer, including Pray What You See: A Five-Week Prayerwalk Challenge.

Bonus Content

One Statement, One Question: The Power of a Simple Witness in a Complicated World, with Chris Paavola

Karl Vaters talks with Chris Paavola about how the resurrection of Jesus changed (and still changes) everything, especially to cut through the clutter by bringing unbelievers into the real reason we believe what we believe.

One Statement: “That’s not why I believe.”

One Question: “What do you think happened on Easter morning?”

Links:

PrayForYourChurch.com

@chris_paavola on Instagram

@chris_paavola on X (Twitter)

Using AI To Find Great Sermon Illustrations, with Darrell Stetler (Ep 111)

Books:

Pray What You See: A Five-Week Prayerwalk Challenge

25 Prayers to Christmas: Praying through the Christmas story

52 Prayers for Your Church: Because there's so much to pray

The Seven Symbols of Ash: An Interactive Ash Wednesday Experience

Less for More: Seven fasts in seven weeks for more of Jesus

40 Prayers to Launch: 40 prayers to help people pray for your church plant’s launch

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Karl Vaters talks with Tim Walker about three important subjects: First, they talk about the new world of the “side hustle” culture, and why it can be an answer for pastors and churches to do more ministry with less stress.

Second, the importance of creating margin in our life, our finances, our time, our energy, and our families.

Third, Tim introduces us to the importance of time away from the church, the value of travel, and how to do this well without adding an additional financial burden, through the lessons he's learned about travel hacking.

Tim is the pastor of Restored Church in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and runs the Travel Multiplier website.

Links:

• Travel Multiplier
• Seats.aero
• Point.me
• The Church Lobby, Ep 86 with Tim Walker

There is no Bonus Content for this episode.

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Karl Vaters talks with Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn and Dr. James N. Sells about the state of mental and emotional care in our culture, and how churches are uniquely situated to alleviate these needs in healthy, life-giving ways.

The conversation focuses on the CARE strategy (Coordinated Attention, Restoration, and Encouragement), and how churches of any size can be better equipped to help, starting with renewing friendships, training a CARE coordinator, and more, based on the content of their book, When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis, which was named one of Karl’s top books of the year for 2025.

Links:

• When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis
• CARE Pyramids Illustrations
• My Top Nonfiction Books Of 2025
• When Hurting People Come to Church (Free first chapter)
• The Church Cares Initiative
• The Church Cares Kit
• Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (by Andy Crouch)

Bonus Content

Three Key People Every Church Needs to Help Hurting People, with Shaunti Feldhahn & James N. Sells

Your church doesn’t need a licensed counselor to help people with emotional needs. Karl Vaters talks with Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn & Dr. James N. Sells about the three key people every church should have in place to help the hurting people who come to every church.

This conversation is based on the content of their book, When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis, which was named one of Karl’s top books of the year for 2025.

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 Peyton Jones about the severe need for our churches to become better at the main command Jesus gave His church: making disciples.

Peyton is the author of several books, including the newly released, Discipology: The Art and Science of Making Disciples, which is the basis for this conversation.

The stats are troubling. In a recent survey, pastors acknowledged that discipleship is the aspect of church ministry that they do least well. And when church members are surveyed, only 23 percent of Christians say they were ever discipled one-on-one.

Peyton is a church planter and church planting specialist who is tackling this crisis head on. In his new book, Peyton uses the disciple-making pattern from the life of Jesus to describe the Discipology Flywheel, where three essential elements come together:

• Time—Where Disciples Are Formed
• Teaching—Where Disciples Are Trained
• Tactics—Where Disciples Are Sent

• Discipology: The Art and Science of Making Disciples
• Church Planting For Everyone, with Peyton Jones (Podcast Ep 021)
• Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches
• Few Pastors Believe Discipleship Tops Their Churches’ Efforts (article)
• The State of Discipleship (article)

The SHALOM Star: Six Aspects of Life that Find Balance as God Permeates Them, with Peyton Jones

Karl Vaters talks with Peyton Jones about Peyton’s acronym for balanced Christian living, based on the word and the concept of Shalom. From the content of Peyton’s new book, Discipology: The Art and Science of Making Disciples.

• Spirit: Your soul’s connection to God
• Honor: The areas of life you steward
• Affections: Your family and friendships
• Learning: Your intellect and creativity
• Others: Your allies on mission
• Mental: Your emotional well-being

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Karl Vaters interviews Darryl Dash, a long-time pastor in Toronto, Canada. Darryl recently wrote the article, Advice to New and Aspiring Pastors, for The Gospel Coalition, Canada in which raised several issues that are helpful, not just for younger pastors, but for anyone who wants to be a better pastor for the long haul.

• Advice to New and Aspiring Pastors
• DashHouse.com
• Gospel for Life Podcast
• PrayerMate App
• How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to All of Your Life
• 8 Habits for Growth: A Simple Guide to Becoming More Like Christ
• Preach Well: A Short Guide to Making Even the Average Sermon Much Better

Bonus Content

8 Habits to Become More Like Christ, with Darryl Dash

Karl Vaters interviews Darryl Dash about the content of his helpful discipleship book, 8 Habits for Growth: A Simple Guide to Becoming More Like Christ. The habits include: the importance of spending time with God, daily Bible reading, involvement in a healthy local church, and more. This is a great book for discipleship in the local church, and this interview with Darryl will give you an idea of what it’s about and how to use it.

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Karl Vaters talks with Kurt W. Bubna about what to do if you’re a Christian leader who has betrayed people and broken trust. This conversation was sparked by the Facebook post, An Open Letter to Philip Yancey Regarding His Extramarital Affair, that Bubna wrote in early January.

So many have opined about Yancey, and understandably so, but most of them know little if anything about his situation, including Karl and Kurt. So, while this conversation was triggered by that news, it’s an attempt at a measured approach from a perspective that we need to hear—a pastor who broke trust and is rebuilding it again. This conversation focuses on practical help for anyone who is walking through a similar time of sinful behavior, by talking through Kurt’s helpful article, How to Rebuild Trust After You’ve Broken It.

Links:

1. An Open Letter to Philip Yancey Regarding His Extramarital Affair
2. How to Rebuild Trust After You’ve Broken It
3. Kurt Bubna’s Amazon author page
4. KurtBubna.com

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Karl Vaters talks to Laurie Graham about some of the big ways volunteerism has changed, and how we, as church leaders, can respond to these trends.

Laurie runs smallchurchministry.com, an online ministry that provides resources and support for volunteers and ministry leaders in smaller churches.

This is Laurie’s second time on the podcast (the last time she was known as Laurie Acker), and in this conversation she and Karl talk about how church volunteerism has been affected by people’s changing schedules, their desire for deeper meaning, the need to restore their trust, and more.

Links:

1. Website: https://smallchurchministry.com/
2. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallchurchministry/
3. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smallchurchministry
4. Creative Solutions for Small Churches Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry
5. Small Church Network & Academy: https://smallchurchministry.com/membership/

Rethinking Church Programs for Volunteer Flexibility, with Laurie Graham

Karl Vaters talks with Laurie Graham of SmallChurchMinistry.com about different ways we, as church leaders, can start to change church programs that were originally designed for the way people used to volunteer, into ministry that works for the more personal, seasonal way people live and commit today.

1. Website: https://smallchurchministry.com/
2. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallchurchministry/
3. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smallchurchministry
4. Creative Solutions for Small Churches Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry
5. Small Church Network & Academy: https://smallchurchministry.com/membership/

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Karl Vaters talks through some helpful guidelines with Dave Ripper about how to read, meditate, and teach from the Bible in a richer, deeper way.

Dave is the lead pastor of Crossway Christian Church, a multicongregational church in southern New Hampshire, focused on spiritual formation, and is the author of Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard.

Karl and Dave explore who Dallas Willard was, and what his way of reading the Bible can do for us, including:

1. Willard’s four steps on how to read the Bible
2. A five-step outline for meditating on a text
3. The IMMERSE method
4. Preaching out of the overflow
5. How to let God speak to the church instead imposing your ideas into the text or onto the congregation

Links:

1. Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard, by Dave Ripper
2. The Dallas Willard podcast
3. DaveRipper.com
4. Deeper Experiences with God Podcast, with Dave Ripper
5. Dave Ripper on Instagram
6. Dave Ripper on Facebook
7. Contact Dave Ripper

Bonus video summary

Three Warnings from Dallas Willard about How Not to Read the Bible, with Dave Ripper

In this subscriber-only bonus material, Karl Vaters talks with pastor Dave Ripper, the author of Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard, about why Bible readers should stay away from:

1. Bible roulette
2. The “It’s all in the Bible” View
3. Bible deism

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Have you ever gone to a church growth conference and been told “all healthy things grow?”

Karl Vaters talks with Jeff Hoglen about what’s happening behind that idea, and why it can be a problem for a lot of pastors and churches. The conversation is based on an article Jeff wrote, called “The Church Growth Lie No One Talks About.”

Karl and Jeff talk about what that lie is, why we keep believing it, and what to do, instead.

They also discuss alternative ways to look at church health and growth, including:

1. How growth feels more like farming than fireworks
2. How most real growth is slow, often invisible, and always hard
3. How the slow seasons don’t have to discourage you
4. How to deepen before you broaden
5. How to pursue health over hype
6. The importance of celebrating the small stuff

And more.

Links:

1. The Church Growth Lie No One Talks About
2. ChurchPlanting.com
3. Canva
4. ChatGPT

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