Thursday, November 13, 2008

Healthy Churches

What is a healthy church?

I have this picture in my head of going to the doctor. The first thing I do is get on a scale and they input a number in their little computer. Then they take my blood pressure and input another number. Then they take my pulse and input another number. Then they take my temperature and input another number. Then depending on my symptoms they do more tests and come up with more numbers. They look at all these numbers and tell me what is wrong with me or use these numbers to determine the current condition of my health.

Interstingly enough I could be walking around with a major artery blocked by 80-90% and die tommorow! The numbers would have never predicted that event nor indicated my lack of true health.

Working in a place where we look at numbers to determine a church's health is a daunting task. One of the things I keep asking myself... "Are we looking at the right numbers?" Are the numbers (avg. worship attendance, professions of faith, apportionment giving, & mission involvement) we look at really giving us a picture of church health?

Jesus gave us a whole other persepective on this in Matthew. Throughout the Gospel he and John the baptist use the metaphor of a tree and it's fruit. "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." (Matthew 12:33 red letter edition :) In another Gospel episode Jesus curses a tree for having no fruit. Jesus was simply looking for something that should be so obvious to determine the health of the tree; FRUIT.

I picked up the book Natural Church Development again and read in it that 7 out of 10 healthy growing churches have no numerical goals yet keep growing by 10% over several years. My assumption is that they may be focused on producing something else. My guess is they are focused on their fruit.

Now if we look at the church as a tree what is it's fruit? I would propose the fruit are followers of Jesus Christ. Are there fully devoted followers of Jesus hanging on that church? Maybe the only thing we should be counting are those disciples. What do you think?

4 comments:

The Lost Pastor said...

I just came across this article from one of our Bishop's. This came out after I wrote my blog here so no plagarism is goign on!

http://www.churchleadership.com/leadingideas/leaddocs/2008/081119_article.html

Ray McDonald said...

Matt,

I agree with you. Goals for 2009 should have little if anything to do with numbers and everything to do with developing disciples.

Some of my 2009 goals have to do with becoming a better more informed pastor. If I am to be instrumental in helping others grow in Christ I cannot be stuck in one decade but rather current with my knowledge and understanding of the people I intend to reach for Jesus. The Gospel never changes but the methods we use to share it must constantly be shaped and tweaked. Relevance is essential if we are to reach the ever changing society in which we live.

If I stay stagnant in my abilities and methods, I will only reach those who stay stagnant with me! I do not want to be a maintenance pastor.

I plan to do some of the following and to encourage the leadership team at Mt. Oak to do the same. Listen to a sermon a day in 2009 (easy on podcasts). Attend training conferences, have planning retreats and do brainstorming with leadership on ways to grow ourselves and others in Christ. Interview new members, seeking for clues that drew them to Christ. Our worship team will continue to tweak our style of worship to reach those already in the church and folks who have never been to church. And more...

None of this will be done with any "growth numbers" in mind. But as we are faithful to this, the Word will not go out and come back void! For the year 2007-2008 our numeric growth was over 120% in worship attendance. We don't expect that kind of growth annually. Since we are not targeting growth we are not disappointed that the current 2008-2009 year has shown 11% growth, after 5 months.

Growth is a by-product of developing disciples. Producing fruit as you say. I would like to read what others have to say.

David said...

So if the ripened fruit is a fully devoted follower of Christ, then let's start talking about what that looks like. I have some ideas I'll publish later.

I think it was Jim Walker from Hot Metal Bridge who made the parallel between disciple-making and sex. His point being that disciples are not the product of some formula or complicated ministry strategy but are a natural result of the church truly living in authentic community and simply following Jesus.

Now that's different.

Anonymous said...

I guess we'll always fight the tendency to count numbers. Perhaps we need to evaluate the unspoken assumption that "a growing church is a healthy church"!

I'm working through the Thessalonian epistles, the Pastorals and the Letters to the Seven Churches. I think we'll find what Jesus looks for when he's trying to diagnose whether a church is healthy or not.