What Does a Healthy Church Look Like? (Part 1)

Your doctor says you’re healthy, no signs of disease; blood pressure and weight are within normal limits.

The fitness instructor says you’re in terrible shape, resting pulse and body-fat percentage are way above normal; flexibility is poor, and you just flunked the treadmill test.

If both can be right, what does it mean to be healthy? And following the same analogy, what does it mean for a church to be healthy? What signs indicate a congregation is both free of disease and spiritually fit?

Leadership set out to answer those questions. We talked with a variety of pastors and leaders and gathered diagnostic tools and checklists, both descriptive and prescriptive.

We did not find just one answer, but we did find the many responses revealing. So here, with contradictions and redundancies intact, are various ways to identify and maintain a healthy church.

Finding the Focal Point by Tracy Keenan

Church health is a matter of focus: a focus on Christ, not the church. Our focus determines whether we have a survival mentality or a service mentality.

If the primary emphasis is on maintaining our building, or on getting more people or money, it’s a clue that our focus is on survival.

A willingness to serve is the greatest indicator of a Christ-ward focus. It’s a sign that faith is strong and the people are open to the workings of the Spirit.

It shows up as a ready, easy smile. It’s a willingness to reach out and greet somebody whom you don’t know well or whom you’ve never seen before. Part of my responsibility as a leader is to have and serve out of that joy.

I heard someone in a meeting say, “How can we go beyond talking about this and actually do something?” That willingness to help in a tangible way can come about only with a servant-focus.

A focus on Christ allows us to support one another, even in our differences. I was called to this church to develop a contemporary worship service. We added a third service that was, stylistically, quite different.

Yet I’ve had a surprisingly large number of people say to me, “This contemporary worship is not my cup of tea, but if there’s any way I can help support this, let me know.”

That was a healthy thing to say. It shows people’s respect and appreciation for our tradition, but also their unwillingness to make it into an idol. You won’t see that apart from a clear focus on Christ.

Tracy Keenan is associate pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It’s the Structure. Period. by Ralph W. Neighbour, Jr.

The American church is unhealthy because it has an unbiblical structure. By denying this and continuing to live under the illusion that the basic problem of the church is something other than ecclesiology, we have a chronic condition.

If we look into the New Testament, we recognize that, apart from community, the body of Christ cannot effectively present itself. Yet the need for community is something that we avoid, and that makes us unhealthy. Jesus lived in a community of twelve disciples. The 12 became 120, then 1,200 in a day’s time, and the first thing they did was to break the crowd up into communities that went from house to house.

Around the world today—far more so overseas—healthy church life is built around cells, basic Christian communities that allow the people of God to join together, responsible to and for each other. The true cell church does not see the cell as a small group attached to a larger blob of protoplasm called church membership. The true cell church is a community of Christians numbering usually no more than fifteen who are the body of Jesus Christ.

Here we find people who care about each other, accepting accountability and responsibility to and for one another, exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, the church is called the oikos, the household of God. The early church was composed of household churches.

Then, by breaking into the broken lives of unbelievers around them, these cells show the presence of Christ. In that context, just like in Acts 2, the unbeliever says, “Wow, God is certainly among you,” and he falls on his face and is saved.

The individualism that pervades American society perceives the world in relation to “me” rather than to “us.” Evangelical Christians have a great concern for personal salvation, but we’ve been particularly prone to lose sight of the corporate dimensions of New Testament Christianity. Pure, basic faith never ends up as rugged individualism. Rather, it ends up living in a community where I am responsible to and for my brother and where I recognize I can never have salvation from the power of sin in this world if I live apart from the community of God’s people.

Ralph W. Neighbour, Jr., recently retired as president of Touch Outreach Ministries in Houston, Texas.

Honest to God Steve Sjogren

We equate health with authenticity. Healthy churches are led by pastors who are real, who tell their honest, heartfelt stories. Not unwisely, but they disclose.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder, and I don’t make a big secret of it. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says, HONK IF YOU’RE ON RITALIN. My church knows I’ve been in long-term counseling for depression. They know I’ve been married for eighteen years, and we’ve had fifteen years of happy marriage. We embrace our humanity here.

We try to help a bunch of serious, overcommitted people rediscover fun. We help people create boundaries. We help them face their fears. Right after Christmas, I always do a sermon series on how to overcome depression or difficulty. This year’s theme was “Growing beyond Future Fear.” The future fear for many is poverty. For others, it’s loneliness. So how do you get ready for those things? Well, you develop a relationship with God and people now.

Another characteristic of health is being a “real life” church. A real-life church teaches the Bible in such a way that we equip people in their families, work, and relationships.

We exist to train people to live life effectively. If you approach church from that angle, then everybody—old Christians, new Christians, soon-to-be Christians—are going to benefit, because who doesn’t need to learn to live life?

Steve Sjogren is pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Cause-Driven Church by Erwin McManus

The early church existed with a dynamic tension: it was both expanding and consolidating—growing and unifying. The Bible tells us that first century believers “shared everything in common” and that “the church was being added to day by day.” We want our church to live in this same tension.

This tension is illustrated by two biblical images—the body of Christ and the army of God. The body of Christ is centered on community; the army of God is centered on cause.

Healthy community flows out of a unified cause—not the other way around. Jesus called his disciples and said, “Follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” This was not an offer of community. “Follow me and I will give you something worthy of giving your life to” is a statement of cause. But the neat thing is, when they came to the cause, they found community like they never knew could exist. That’s the power of the church.

One danger of the American church is that we often try to offer people community without cause. Without cause, you’re just another civic organization. You don’t have life transformation.

Jesus said, “I have come to the world to seek and to save that which is lost.” The cause of Christ is accomplished by expanding the kingdom of God.

Communicating the gospel in a postmodern context can make us feel forced to compete with the entertainment industry. You might be able to compete if you have millions of dollars and that level of expertise. Most of us don’t. We have only one advantage that neither Hollywood nor mtv has. We have the presence and power of the living God!

Why in the world would we eliminate God’s power from our core strategy and actually move to a deficit rather than to an advantage?

Erwin McManus is pastor of The Church on Brady in Los Angeles, California.

Jesus’ Surprising Definition by Lee Eclov

In the second and third chapters of John’s Revelation, we find the letters dictated to the seven churches. Here, in a uniquely direct way, we have the Lord’s assessment of health indicators for local congregations.

What strikes me is that some of the usual indicators—evangelism, stewardship, church planting, attendance—are not evident. In a quick scan of these two chapters, the indicators that stand out are:

—holiness and dealing with sin.

—endurance—being “overcomers.” The Lord praises churches that face corporate challenges with vital faith. That’s an idea I hadn’t thought much about, but churches do face difficult times—a rash of deaths or unemployment or natural disaster.

—confronting evil and heresy in the church.

—exclusive love for Christ.

—corporate growth in ministry—”you are doing more now than before.”

—love for one another. This is evident in the specifics of how the Christians are called to relate to each other—dealing with sin, earnestness of purpose, etc.

More careful study will probably refine this list considerably. Interacting with a text like this would be an important exercise for church leaders seeking to discern the health of their congregations.

Lee Eclov is pastor of Chippewa Evangelical Free Church in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.

Health Checkup Stephen Macchia, president of the Evangelistic Association of New England, worked with colleagues to develop ten telltale signs of church health:

“A healthy church is prayerful in all of the following aspects of church life and ministry, is reliant upon God’s power and the authority of his Word, and values …

1. God-exalting worship. 2. Gempowering presence. 3. An outward focus. 4. Servant-leadership development. 5. Commitment to loving/caring relationships. 6. Learning and growing in community. 7. Personal disciplines. 8. Stewardship and generosity. 9. Wise administration and accountability. 10. Networking with the regional church.”

(First of two parts; click here to read Part 2)