Description

In this episode of the 95 Podcast, Dale Sellers welcomes back his friend Karl Vaters for their fifth or sixth conversation together. Recording in early 2026, they dive deep into the critical topics of pastoral succession, retirement transitions, and the future of small church ministry. Karl shares insights from his recent seven-week world tour, including stops in Malaysia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and West Virginia, where he ministered to small church pastors facing diverse cultural challenges. The conversation explores why so many pastoral transitions fail, how to avoid the “narrative void” of retirement, and why discipleship is the answer to nearly every church challenge. With tens of thousands of pastors approaching retirement in the next decade and a shrinking pipeline of new leaders, this timely discussion offers practical wisdom for navigating one of the church’s most pressing issues.

Key Points In Brief

• 160,000 pastors will transition out of ministry in the next 10 years, creating a tsunami of pastoral retirement with fewer qualified replacements
• Traditional succession planning is broken — most pastors leave without preparing a successor, often required to cut ties completely with their former congregation
• Karl successfully transitioned leadership at his church after 33 years, moving from strength to strength rather than crisis to crisis (a rarity occurring in less than 1% of transitions)
• The “narrative void” problem — pastors struggle to retire because they have no next thing to do, losing their job, salary, friendships, and place of worship all at once
• Churches need reinvention every 7 years to avoid decline, ideally at the peak of maturity rather than during crisis
• Global perspective on small church — Karl’s world tour revealed that small church works everywhere, though challenges vary from persecution in Muslim-majority Malaysia to post-Christian secularism in Europe
• Innovative contextualization — Churches in Jakarta’s malls run seven one-hour services on Sundays, creating accessible on-ramps for Muslim seekers
• Conferences are losing appeal — Pastors are tired of one-off events focused on “getting numbers up” and are hungering for longer-term cohort-based relationships
• Discipleship fixes everything — Rather than adding programs, bring people alongside you in everything you already do

Key Takeaways

1. Start succession planning at the peak, not the decline

The best time to plan for pastoral transition is when the church is at its healthiest and most stable, not when crisis forces your hand. Every 7 years, healthy churches need to rethink and relaunch to avoid the natural decline that comes from maintaining the status quo.

2. Retiring pastors need a “next thing”

You can’t send people into a narrative void. Before stepping aside from pastoral ministry, identify what you’re going to start doing, not just what you’re stopping. Both Karl and Carey Nieuwhof transitioned well because they had thriving ministries to move into.

3. The traditional “clean break” model is cruel and counterproductive

Requiring pastors to completely sever ties with their congregation removes their support system, friendships, and place of worship at the most vulnerable time. Churches that transition well allow for ongoing connection and honoring of the previous pastor’s investment.

4. Small churches fail to prepare successors for two key reasons

• Pastors who need to be needed hold onto everything themselves
• Church governance structures are American, not biblical — viewing the pastor as a hireling rather than an equipper of saints

5. Discipleship is the solution to most church problems

Instead of adding another program, simply invite people to do life and ministry alongside you. Hospital visits, sermon planning, building maintenance — bring someone along. Jesus and Paul modeled this “come with me” approach to discipleship.

6. Context matters more than method

The Jakarta mall churches demonstrate the power of understanding your community’s culture. Meeting people where they already are with an accessible format led to Muslim conversions in a way traditional church buildings could not.

7. Cohorts over conferences

Pastors are moving away from one-time conferences and toward ongoing, relational cohort experiences where they can share common challenges, solutions, and build genuine friendships with peers.

8. Advanced preparation eliminates urgency

Karl’s ability to handle a seven-week international ministry trip (even after family emergencies) came from preparing all materials, presentations, and logistics weeks in advance. Working 10% harder for three years allowed him to push deadlines 3-4 months ahead, eliminating crisis mode.

Notable Quotes

“I had to figure out how to define success in ministry without numbers attached to it.” — Karl Vaters

“Just because you haven’t built a large church doesn’t mean you’re a failure.” — Dale Sellers

“Over 99% of pastoral transitions either are caused because of a crisis or create a new crisis or both.” — Karl Vaters

“You can’t put people into a narrative void. When you’re going to look towards retirement, you have to ask yourself not just what am I stopping doing but what am I going to start doing.” — Karl Vaters

“Everywhere I went, small church works. Every single place.” — Karl Vaters

“Discipleship fixes everything. Everything we are talking about right now, the answer is discipleship.” — Karl Vaters

“I don’t mind the work, but I hate urgency.” — Karl Vaters

“What we call persecution in most places in America is simply loss of privilege.” — Karl Vaters

“If it ain’t broke, break it… that was the point where it’s if it’s not broken, now’s the time to make the transition.” — Karl Vaters (on transitioning at peak health)

“You may be better than me, but you’re not going to outprepare me.” — Karl Vaters

“The biggest problem in small churches is we don’t follow through and there’s no accountability.” — Dale Sellers

“It’s not about adding a program. It’s about doing everything we do towards discipleship.” — Karl Vaters

Next Steps

For pastors approaching retirement:

• Identify your “next thing” before you announce your departure
• Begin succession conversations when the church is healthy, not in crisis
• Start building relationships with potential successors 7+ years before transition
• Read “De-Sizing the Church” by Karl Vaders and the upcoming book on pastor’s retirement by Doug Bullock

For all small church pastors:

• Join a cohort rather than relying solely on annual conferences for support and training
• Connect with 95Network’s “Let’s Connect” initiative or Karl’s cohort programs
• Implement a “bring someone along” approach to everything you do — hospital visits, sermon prep, facility maintenance
• Rethink your church structure every 7 years, ideally at the peak of health
• Study your community’s culture and ask what “language” they understand (like the Jakarta mall churches)

For churches:

• Develop a biblical governance structure where the pastor equips rather than does everything
• Create space for retiring pastors to maintain connections rather than enforced “clean breaks”
• Raise up multiple leaders through apprenticeship rather than hiring from outside during crisis
• Focus on discipleship as the core solution to volunteer shortages, succession needs, and spiritual health

For bi-vocational pastors:

• Work 10% harder to push your work 3-4 months ahead, eliminating urgency and crisis mode
• Give volunteers maximum lead time since they’re serving between the cracks of their regular life
• Prepare sermon series, communications, and logistics well in advance

Link To Podcast Audio: 95Podcast 323

Link To Podcast YouTube:

Q & A Transcript

Dale: Kind of tell us the Karl Vader story and then we’ll kind of dive into some of the things I want to talk to you about.

Karl: I’m Karl Vaters, and I’m a small church pastor. I’ve been in pastoral ministry for over 40 years now. I’m actually a third generation pastor. I came into pastoral ministry just as the church growth movement was exploding onto the scene. I went through Bible college maybe the last class before the church growth movement hit. I came out and everybody was talking church growth. I tried to apply its principles and many were very valuable — there was an outward-lookingness, a dropping of denominational barriers, an interest in reaching the community. But as hard as I worked, the numerical increase that the church growth movement promised did not happen. I’m now at a church where I preached for the first time on my 33rd birthday, and I’ve been there for exactly half my life — 33 years. The church got healthy, strong, and stable, but it never got big. I had to figure out how to define success in ministry without numbers attached to it. Out of that exploration, I created the ministry of helping small churches thrive, which we’ve now been doing for 13-14 years, trying to help other small church pastors and make small churches strong, not necessarily bigger.

Dale: We’re not anti-big church. We love the church. But we want to encourage those who pastor churches that maybe they did the principles and it didn’t work. I think between you and me together thousands of pastors are just extremely discouraged. You went full-time into what you’re doing now and no longer on staff at your church. What’s that been like?

Karl: It’s been interesting. Eight years ago I stepped aside from being the lead pastor and my youth pastor became the lead pastor. I stayed on staff with him for six years working for the guy who worked for me for 25 years. For the last two years now, our church has sent us out as full-time missionaries to small church pastors. It’s weird — I can go to any church in the world on a Sunday and enjoy the worship and teaching, but at my home church I feel odd because I’m learning how to behave in that room in a non-leadership capacity.

Dale: I have a friend named Doug Bullock who’s written a book coming out called “The Pastor’s Retirement.” Carey Nieuwhof recently had a guest on who said that within the next 10 years 160,000 pastors are going to transition out of full-time ministry. Have you heard that?

Karl: Yeah, we are heading towards a tsunami of pastoral retirement and a lack of qualified pastors to step in their place, not because the next generation is stupid or unqualified — there just simply aren’t as many being trained for ministry now. The pipeline to replace the current group of pastors is smaller than it’s been in my lifetime. We’re going to have to come up with new ways to help the pastors who are retiring and new ways to lead the churches that are going to be left without pastors.

Dale: For some reason we don’t prepare for succession training. Have you seen that?

Karl: This has changed in the season of ministry I’ve been in. When my father left each of the three churches he pastored, the rule was you announced you were leaving, within a month you were expected to be out, and you had a hands-off approach to your succession because if you helped you were manipulating the process. My dad did that three times and in each case the church had real struggle. In two of them the churches pretty much collapsed. The pastor who comes in after a long-term successful pastor is almost always the sacrificial lamb because they’re compared to the previous guy. Now we’re in a place where a lot of churches are looking at it and going, maybe the pastor spending time in prayer and counsel and working with the church is actually good stewardship to make sure it’s handed off well to the next generation. And that needs to start early.

Dale: I use Tony Morgan’s bell-shaped curve of the life cycle of a church. Talk about it from your perspective.

Karl: On the left side you have launching, growth, and learning, then stability and maturity. If you don’t do something at the time of stability and maturity to relaunch and rethink, you end up in a place of stubbornness, which leads to decay. The closer you can do a rethink and relaunch at that peak, the better. I’ve noticed it’s about every seven years or so if a church is going well. If you can anticipate that and get ahead of it at the point of maturity, you’ll be doing well. Eight years ago we did our most recent turnaround at the strongest point I’ve ever been in pastoral ministry when the church was as mature and strong as it’s ever been. This is when it’s tempting to go “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but that was the point where we realized now’s the time. We were able to make a pastoral transition that wasn’t caused by a crisis and didn’t cause any new crises. Well over 99% of pastoral transitions either are caused by a crisis or create a new crisis or both.

Dale: Why did the church get the mentality that you kick a pastor to the curb once they’re done?

Karl: My hunch is it began back in the revivalist days during the first, second, and third great awakenings. Pastors were really busy and would look at the model of Paul who would train them up, stay a while, and move on. But they forgot about the piece of leaving someone behind. Paul didn’t abandon the churches — he left trained pastors and followed up, which is why we have half the New Testament. We forgot that piece in our busyness. When a pastor leaves, they can’t go to their church on Sunday to talk about it, hang out with friends, or have their pastor pray for them. We remove their position, salary, friendships, and place of worship. Donald Miller uses the phrase “the narrative void” — you can’t send people into a narrative void. When you’re looking toward retirement, ask yourself not just what am I stopping doing but what am I going to start doing.

Dale: You just finished a world tour. Talk us through where you went, why, and what you saw.

Karl: Last April we went to Indonesia, then in the fall we spent seven weeks circumnavigating the globe. We went to Malaysia for two weeks doing three conferences in three major regions, then Switzerland, Germany, and Austria for 9-10 conferences for small church pastors, with one last stop in West Virginia. It was seven weeks total going around the globe doing ministry with small church pastors.

Dale: How did you sustain your health during that?

Karl: I’m very aware of my physical limitations and don’t push myself to the edge anymore. We planned for this, but life happened — Shelley’s father got sick and passed away that summer with other family crises. Two days after the memorial service we were on the plane to Malaysia, so we left exhausted. What I’ve discovered is I don’t mind the work, but I hate urgency. I’ll work all day but the moment something gets urgent I have a problem. So I do a lot of advance preparation. Before we got on the plane, I had every single one of my notes for the entire trip done, PowerPoints finished and sent in, every flight, car rental, and hotel laid out weeks before. Because we were prepared, we could handle the family emergencies. On the plane, I wasn’t thinking about what needed to be done — we knew exactly what would happen. I had all my articles, newsletters, and podcasts in the can for the next three months. It took probably three years of working at 10% more than normal to push all my work 3-4 months out ahead so now I can go back to regular pace with no urgency.

Dale: What was the vibe? Was the church vibe the same everywhere?

Karl: Very different feelings. Both Indonesia and Malaysia are predominantly Muslim countries. In Malaysia, 63-64% are Muslim because the law requires if you’re ethnically Malaysian, you must be Muslim. If you convert to Christianity, at minimum you’re sent to re-education camps or worse — severe persecution similar to first and second century Christians under Rome. Most Christians we talked to were not ethnically Malaysian but Chinese or Thai ancestry. Then in Europe it’s very post-Christian, the opposite end where everyone can do whatever they want except for thought police issues. In both situations Christians are a severe minority, sometimes persecuted. What we call persecution in America is simply loss of privilege. But here’s the cool thing — everywhere I went, small church works. Every single place. In Malaysia big church doesn’t work well. In Indonesia it’s so culturally Muslim that Muslims interested in Christianity won’t go to big ostentatious churches. One pastor in Jakarta realized he needed to get into neighborhoods. In Jakarta, the neighborhood is the mall — people live almost their entire life there. He rented space in a mall and Muslims started showing up because it’s in their neighborhood. Now there’s a church in every mall in Jakarta. One is called “Church in One Hour” — they do seven one-hour services on Sunday with 15-minute breaks. Muslims slip in to check it out. They’ve understood their culture and placed churches where their neighbors are.

Dale: What are you seeing as you work with small churches in America right now?

Karl: People are done with conferences. We’ve had so many pastoral conferences and people are looking at it going they don’t want to expend time and expense to go to another conference where they’ll be told to get their numbers up. They’ve given up on going. On the other side I’m seeing growing desire for cohorts. The ones out front are offering longer-term training. Recently in Southern California we had a Saturday conference and at the end offered two cohorts going through my book “100 Days to a Healthier Church,” meeting every two weeks for eight sessions. They lined up like crazy because the idea of a one-off conference doesn’t go anywhere. But if we can connect them to longer-term training where they make relationships and get deeper education, that’s where the excitement is.

Dale: Speak to the skeptical pastor about why it’s valuable to be involved in a cohort.

Karl: The one-off conference could give some help, but I got to the point where if I could find just one piece of information that would be helpful, I’d consider it a success, and many times I couldn’t even get one. We often get more out of lobby conversations than sessions. The cohort takes that lobby hangout idea but gives it definition, schedule, and strategy. I work with 9-12 pastors over 100 days, meeting eight times every two weeks. Yes it’s on Zoom, not as good as the same room, but we make connection that’s more than once-a-year conference. We talk about common frustrations, challenges, and solutions. We make friends with people in similar situations who can help us or who we can help. The relational connection of the cohort is as valuable, sometimes more valuable, than any content I bring. You can’t do that in a one-off once-a-year thing.

Dale: There’s a pastor listening who’s discouraged and doesn’t know how to get started. What would you tell them?

Karl: In “Decizing the Church,” one chapter title is “Discipleship Fixes Everything,” and I phrased it that way intentionally. Everything we’re talking about right now, the answer is discipleship. It’s too pastor-centric? Discipleship will fix that. People aren’t volunteering? Discipleship will fix that. Don’t know how to make a transition? Discipleship will fix that. We’re called to equip God’s people for works of service, to disciple people who become disciple-makers. The first question everyone asks is “Do you have a discipleship program?” Yes we do, but stop worrying about that. If you’re just adding a program, you’ve got one more thing to manage. It’s not about adding a program — it’s about doing everything we do towards discipleship. Think about everything you do and ask, am I doing this toward discipleship? When you visit someone in the hospital, ask someone to come along. You’ll share the burden and joy and disciple them in the drive there, at the hospital, and on the way back. When preaching, ask how does this disciple my people rather than just teach them? When opening the church Sunday morning, why are you doing that by yourself? Call somebody and say “walk through that with me.” Discipleship doesn’t need to be a program or hours of study — it just means people walking alongside you. Look at what Jesus did with disciples and Paul with followers — they brought people along for the journey. Too many of us do this solo. A simple invitation of “Hey, would you do this with me?” is a really low bar for entry. It’s not about skill, it’s about availability. Most people will feel honored, not burdened, by being asked. Would you take this hospital visit with me? Would you help me unlock the church? Would you sit down as I figure out my sermon series for next year and give me input? Just bring them along for the ride. You’ll be amazed at what comes out of that.