Healthy Church

Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get ready for a ‘break-out’ session that I am responsible for as part of our Fellowship Atlantic Regional Convention taking place this coming weekend. The session is supposed to be a workshop on church health and its indicators. There has been a lot of good work done over the course of the last few decades to help church leaders identify the marks of a healthy church. For example, German researcher Christian Schwarz and his team spent years doing what may be the most comprehensive research on church health ever conducted. The initial research was done with over 1000 churches in 32 countries. Nearly 4.2 million responses were analyzed. According to the organization’s website they now claim that they have analyzed data from “more than 70,000 churches on all six continents”!

That’s a lot of data. And the results of the findings are significant. Schwarz set out to answer the question - “What are the essential qualities of a healthy, growing church, regardless of culture and theological persuasion?”  What did he find? Eight things:

• Empowering Leadership

• Gift-Oriented Ministry

• Passionate Spirituality

• Functional Structures

• Inspiring Worship Services

• Holistic Small Groups

• Need-Oriented Evangelism

• Loving Relationships

This is a pretty impressive list. And though it does not gain a complete consensus among church and leadership authorities, it does appear to me that a church possessing each of these characteristics in some measure would have to be a pretty healthy church.

I guess, the thing I’m struggling with though is this – so much of church health just seems to be ‘a God thing’. I mean a healthy church is ultimately a work of God. That’s why we can look at a list like the one above and readily recognize it as being pretty much bang on, and yet still have that sinking feeling. Because realistically, as leaders, how do we go about making some of these things a reality?

Take the last one for example – Loving Relationships. If real love, the kind that puts the needs of others ahead of our own, isn’t a work of God in a person’s heart, then what is?  Just ask anyone attempting to work with a bunch of back biting, self-centered individuals adamantly affirming all the while their devotion to Christ. We’ve all heard the horror stories and some of us have lived it.  

I guess that’s why our focus needs to remain on the Lord. It’s ultimately His work. We have only the privilege of being part of it. And as for that part, though it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it, I received some really good advice one time - focus on the one. No, you can’t save the world, you can’t even change your local church. But you can make a difference in the life of an individual in Jesus’ name. Focus on what you can do, instead of all you can’t do. Yes, the church is the body of Christ and it’s all about community, but community is built one life at a time. And in each of those lives, each act of compassion is significant. Our ability to focus on the one (remember the story that Jesus told about the one lost sheep and the ninety nine others?) allows us to make a difference without being overcome by the huge waves of all that we can’t do. If we can truly represent Christ well in the life of one person at a time, one action at a time, then we are doing the work of God.