In 2013, Leadership Journal conducted a “Listening Tour.” We met with groups of pastors in six different cities across the U.S. One message we heard over and over again: we’re tired of resources—books, conferences, websites—that are all designed for doing ministry in a big-church context. These leaders weren’t down on large churches. But, like the majority of pastors, most of them led smaller churches—and they found the resources being offered simply didn’t work in their context.

Hearing the hunger for small-church specific resources made us realize we needed to do more for these leaders. When we reached out to people in our network, the name Karl Vaters kept popping up. Vaters is the pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California and author of The Grasshopper Myth. Here was a guy who was leading a small church and successfully connecting with other small church pastors. After many conversations with Karl we ...