Five Signposts of a Healthy Church

Look for these clues to see if your church is on track.

These five signposts will tell you how to bring your church new strength.

Rediscover your purpose

Searching for the purpose Christ has for your church can counter the seemingly inevitable slide toward spiritual entropy.

One of the most observable principles of physics is the law of entropy, which states that things left to themselves will degenerate and become useless. Unfortunately, the Church as an institution has historically been a reliable place to observe this law in action. For example, a telling passage in 2 Kings 22 highlights the "spiritual entropy" that plagued the Israelites throughout the Old Testament. In this chapter, we find the Temple in disrepair—literally falling apart to the degree that young King Josiah imports new stones and timber for its restoration.

However, in the middle of the rebuilding project, an amazing discovery is made: the Book of the Law of God.

Apparently the religious leaders of the time had kept the day-to-day activities of the Temple running while the Living Word of God collected dust on some obscure shelf—unused and forgotten. In other words, the residents of Jerusalem had continued to observe the ceremonies and traditions of worship without even knowing why they were doing it. They had lost their purpose.

Sadly, many of today's churches are experiencing a similar situation. No longer rooted in the Great Commission, they have gradually succumbed to the attacks of entropy and have fallen into a rut of useless activity. These attacks—so often unseen and unfelt— come from a wide variety of sources, but the following are among the most common:

  • Satan. The Great Commission embodies all that Satan hates and fears and so he will do everything in his power to destroy a Kingdom Lighthouse. Using the pride, fear and greed of individuals, he subtly bends the focus of a congregation inward, until it can only see itself.
  • Division. The interests, experiences and cultural views of individual members, while positive for a congregation in terms of diversity, will hollow it out from the inside if there is no unifying purpose.
  • Sin. When it is not dealt with biblically, the sin of individuals—especially church leaders—will tarnish the "light of the world" until it is cold, and dim and ineffective.

These are the forces that eroded the nation of Israel and are still at work today. However, the good news is that these forces are not insurmountable. The discovery of the Book of the Law in 2 Kings led to a renewed sense of purpose and a nationwide revival. And a reinvigorated focus on the Great Commission can provide any church with a worthwhile purpose—to go and reach its community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Return to the Original Vision

Take an active step by reshaping your original purpose into clear, compelling words that can be adopted and applied by all.

Have you ever experienced a "self-service" church? On the outside, these types of churches are hard to distinguish from other churches unless you know what to look for: a lack of fruit. These churches seek out volunteers, raise money and sponsor activities; but it seems as if their only goal in going through these motions today is to ensure that they will be able to go through them again tomorrow. In other words, their sole purpose for engaging in Christianity is to further the cause of Christianity, not to further the cause of God and bring Him glory through fulfilling His Great Commission.

The transition from a Kingdom Lighthouse into a self-service institution usually takes time and is rooted in a disconnect between the original vision of the founders and the everyday lives of the current members.

Of course, there is good news and bad news for today's churches that wish to return to their original vision. The good news is that all churches are required by the government to form a constitution, which includes a purpose statement. The bad news is that founding pastors often do not spend a great deal of time writing these, which results in a "boilerplate" constitution—a copy of another church's constitution, which was copied from another church, and so on.

However, even the most meager Church Constitution will provide a rough outline for moving forward.

In addition, we all have Scripture to fall back on, and the Great Commission provides support for even the shakiest of foundations. In the end, it will take energy and effort to revitalize the vision of a tired institution, but doing so is a necessary step to revitalize the members of that institution and transform them into a Kingdom Lighthouse that will ultimately bring glory to God.

Rededicate the Church Family

All the members of a Body must covenant to work together before positive steps can be taken and momentum established.

Nature abhors a vacuum and will seek to fill it with anything available. Similarly, no church really exists without a purpose. The problem is that so many churches today simply have the wrong purpose. The church is slowly dragged away from its original vision, which creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is quickly filled with whatever is most convenient and enjoyable.

But why does it all happen so easily? Why doesn't anyone realize what is going on and throw up a red flag? There are two reasons. First, the Bible says that we Christians are like sheep, and sheep follow their leaders. Second, every church has at least one antagonist; a poor leader. Whether it is the oldest member of a church, the strongest personality or the largest donor, we must identify and deal with those people who are leading falsely, because we can be sure that others will follow. Of course, one effective way to identify these individuals is to note how they react to change—usually they will be very resistant to it, even to a positive change back to the original vision. While we can sympathize with their struggle to leave what is comfortable, we must not allow them to prevail. Our calling is to fear the Lord, not man, and that calling should force us to firmly confront those who oppose God's design for His Church.

Once the antagonists have been identified and dealt with biblically, the pastor will then face the challenge of convincing the rank-and-file members that their church must change. This process can be taxing, especially because it is impractical to move a large flock of sheep one at a time. However, the rewards of this rededication are immeasurable in terms of the joy that is generated when the Body of Christ moves in unison and brings glory to its Head.

Reorganize Your Approach to the Community

The church must take an honest look at the community surrounding it and eliminate any blind spots.

Not many years ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that there were 19,000 accidents and as many as 6,000 deaths on America's roadways due to "blind spots" in a driver's vision.[1] Simply put, a blind spot is an area that drivers think they can see, when in reality they cannot. These are dangerous on the road, but even more dangerous in a church.

All too often, a local church will have a serious blind spot when it comes to the community surrounding it, causing a glaring omission in that church's present and future plans. These churches often wonder why they don't encounter more visitors, and why those who do visit choose not to stay. They assume that the community will know and appreciate their church's existence because it has a steeple, or an electric sign, or even a Yellow-Pages advertisement—but that simply isn't the case. These churches feel that they are doing everything they can to encourage evangelism, but they have a blind spot. They just don't see what they're missing.

Therefore, churches with a blind spot must reorganize their approach to the community and must do so using the examples of those who got it right. For example, in Acts 2, after the anointing of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were emboldened to take their message to the streets using different languages to make sure they would be heard. They did not care that they were made fun of and ignored by some; they only cared that they were noticed, were given a chance to proclaim the good news, and were used by God to save the community around them. They had no blind spot.

Peter and John preached in the Temple, Paul made tents and taught in the synagogues, and Jesus performed miracles on the street. The common denominator between each of these individuals is that being noticed was a prerequisite of being useful, and the same is true of our churches today. We must not have a blind spot. We must reorganize our approach to the community so that people know we are there and care about the community. If that doesn't happen, our community will not care about us.

Remember

Continually remembering, repenting and redoing your church's vision is essential for its vitality.

God expects us to remember. Throughout the Scriptures, He continually exhorts us to remember our experiences with Him, both good and bad. For example, the Israelites were commanded to remember the miracles of God through feasts and celebrations, such as the ceremony of Passover and the Feast of Booths (see Exod. 12:21-27; Deut. 16:13). Similarly, in the book of Revelation, Jesus chastises the church at Ephesus because its people had forgotten their first love (see Rev. 2:4). Indeed, the old axiom is true that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

It is important to note that this type of spiritual memory is different from human memory. It bears no resemblance to a middle-aged man looking back at his glory days on the football field. Instead, this spiritual memory is focused on the present and the future. In other words, the primary function of spiritual memory is to relocate an original vision in order to adjust the present and prepare for the future.

But of course, remembering the past is only the first step. After we remember, we must adjust what we are currently doing; and in order to do that, we must repent. This was Jesus' command to the church at Ephesus: They must repent of their sin in order to get back to their first love (see Rev. 2:5). And this is what we must repent of: our sin. We must admit that we have abandoned God's purpose for the Church and we must commit to falling back in line with Him. It is also important to note that one individual can only repent for his own sin—not the sin of an entire church. Therefore, a corporate remembrance of a church must lead to a corporate repentance by the church.

By remembering the past, we can repent in the present, and then we must redo in the future. This was also Jesus' command to the church at Ephesus: They must once again do the first works. It is important to understand that Jesus is not simply talking about going through the motions again. He's talking about taking all of the activity and energy of the church and filling it with love and a desire to do His will.

In addition to remembering our first love, we must also remember the times we failed, especially as a church. In order to escape the mistakes of our past we must never forget them, and we must unashamedly hang them on our steeples so that we can see the pit out of which we were saved. In other words, we must constantly celebrate our church's history—wares and all—in order to keep the vision alive by recalling the good along with the bad. This is what it means to remember.

A quote from A. W. Tozer sums up the salient points of this epilogue:

There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less…. No man is better for knowing that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. The devil knows that, and so did Ahab and Judas Iscariot. No man is better for knowing that God so loved the world of men that he gave his only begotten Son to die for their redemption. In hell there are millions who know that. Theological truth is useless until it is obeyed. The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action. (A. W. Tozer, Of God and Men: Cultivating the Divine Human Relationship, Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1995, p. 23)

The Five Signposts in this book are all based on biblical doctrine—let these words become actions. Your church can be restored to its rightful place as a powerful Lighthouse for the kingdom of God if you are willing to take a step of moral action, get on the road and follow the signs.

1 "New Technology Prevents Blind-Spot Accidents," The Bridge, January/March 2001, v. 15, n.

From The Return of a Mighty Church, © 2005 by Jack Eggar. Published by Regal Books, www.regalbooks.com. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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