How can you tell if your church is healthy?
Plenty of church experts have ready answers to that question. And many of those answers can be useful if it’s understood they apply only in certain conditions. But too often the easy-answer folks get carried away and claim their one-dimensional yardsticks can be applied across the board.
Of course, such overgeneralizations aren’t restricted to churchmen. It’s a common failing of theorists in any discipline.
For example, economist K. E. Phillips, after examining the economic history of the modern Western world, noted that whenever inflation was high, unemployment was low, and whenever inflation was low, unemployment was high. This pattern was so persistent that in 1958 Phillips proclaimed it a law of economics.
Thus, in the 1970s when unemployment rose to high levels, the theorists claimed that if inflation were allowed to drift upward, the unemployment rate would fall as a consequence. Unfortunately, for the first time in history it didn’t. And the combination of high inflation and high unemployment gave us a serious economic crisis.
Needless to say, the church is not an economic system. But throughout history, those who have attempted to attribute church health to one or two isolated factors have met a similar fate:
-When doctrinal rigidity was thought to be the key to church health in the thirteenth century, the Inquisition was the scandalous result.
-When Peter Waldo, in 1184, decided a return to the poverty of the New Testament church was the key, he and his followers were excommunicated.
-And when the Donatists of the fourth century held up absolute moral purity for every believer as central, a passionate rift threatened to tear the North African church apart.
We took note of these historical lessons in centering this issue of LEADERSHIP on the important theme of church health. We struggled with what we could say about the health of the local church body without being overly simplistic. Our research uncovered examples of healthy churches so diverse they didn’t seem to have any common factors except that they were churches.
We discovered that healthy churches come in every conceivable size and shape. Some are small, others large. Within the parameters of orthodox doctrine, we accept endless theological variations, which most of us agree still send their adherents to a place in heaven (although probably on a 14-carat golden street across town from our own 21-carat boulevard). Polity is important, but organizational health doesn’t seem to correlate with who’s telling whom what to do. Is there any pattern at all to healthy churches?
We think so. An understanding emerges from the behavior of the children of Israel as they conquered Canaan. Read the Book of Joshua and picture the Israelites as a church facing the problems of everyday ministry. One day the problem is how to conquer Ai, and the Israelites execute a military strategy any modern general would be proud to have devised. Another day the problem is how to conquer Jericho, and they embrace a plan that’s laughable by worldly standards. Yet both plans work, because both come from God.
As the conquest of Canaan unfolds, the fate of the Israelites rises and falls on the degree to which they listen to
God. The plans rarely follow a pattern: one day God goes by the book and the next he throws it away. One quickly gets the feeling that the plans are secondary, the divine blessing primary.
D. L. Moody tells of an argument he once had with his grandfather. The old man said the reason the church worked so well in the good old days was that “everyone came to the anxious bench la seat reserved at revival meetings for those troubled by conscience and eager for spiritual assistance]. Nowadays they don’t, and you see the result.”
Moody responded, “God doesn’t have to repeat himself. Because God did a certain thing through one instrument at one time, it is no sign that he will do it the same way all the time. What we want to do is let the Holy Spirit work in his own way.”
We need the Holy Spirit working in our churches today.
A recent nationwide survey of 1,348 opinion leaders revealed that the majority didn’t think organized religion is meeting the family, moral, and spiritual needs of our nation. Yet those same people felt the church was our most important resource for coping with the problems of the future.
When faced with statistics like these, our immediate reaction is to try to fix the church and make it responsive to society’s problems. But the fix-it answers don’t come from church history, new management techniques, or reorganization, as valuable as these might be. The answer comes from God, who will give us the instrument we need-if only we ask for it.
What is a healthy church? It’s a body of believers who walk with God in the good times, cling to him in the bad, and have their ears constantly tuned to the still small voice that, piece by piece, reveals the Masterful plan that can change the world.
Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
