If you seen the statistics pastors are burning out at a record pace. When polled a common thread is the church didn’t grow like we had hoped. The truth is chasing growth will never beget growth, just like chasing money will never make you wealthy. If you study successful wealthy people you will find that non of them set out to become wealthy, that in fact becoming wealthy was just a bi-product of seeing a vision fulfilled.
Church growth is no different, growth occurs when the leaders concentrate on creating a healthy church.
Church Health is the Key to Church Growth
All living things grow if they’re healthy. You don’t have to make them grow — it’s just natural for living organisms. As parents, my wife and I didn’t have to force our two sons to grow. They naturally grew up. As long as we removed any hindrances, like poor nutrition or an unsafe environment, their growth was automatic.
If my children had not grown up, something would have been terribly wrong. I would have done whatever it took to discover the disease and correct it. I wouldn’t have remained passive, spouting clichés about faithfulness, or wanting “quality not quantity” in my children.
The same principle is true for the church. Since the church is a living organism, it’s only natural for it to grow if it’s healthy. The church is a body, not a business — an organism, not an organization. It’s alive. And unfortunately if a church is not growing, it is dying.
What then is the secret of church health?
In a word, it’s balance!
Your body has nine different systems (including circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and skeletal). When these systems are all in balance, it produces health. But when your body gets out of balance, we call that “disease.” Likewise, when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs. Health and growth can only occur when everything is brought into balance.
The Importance of Balance
Our entire world is based on this principle of balance. Our planet was perfectly balanced by God, at just the right angle on its axis to support life. It rotates at a speed that minimizes vibration. If this planet were just a little closer to the sun, we’d burn up and, if it were just a few miles farther away from the sun, we’d freeze to death.
Nature is a collection of ecosystems that live in balance with each other. We now know that even the tiniest variation in the ecosystem creates a chain reaction. God has set up a food chain with plants and animals in balance.
In architecture, structures must be balanced. If the stress isn’t balanced, a building will collapse or a bridge will fall through. There must be equilibrium. If your life is not balanced, you might collapse, and if your congregation is not balanced, it might collapse. As pastors and counselors we must realize that healing is the recovery of balance to the body, soul, and congregation.
Healthy, lasting church growth is multidimensional. I’ve written extensively on the fact that church health has five facets: Every church needs to grow…
- warmer through fellowship
- deeper through discipleship
- stronger through worship
- broader through ministry
- larger through evangelism
These five purposes of the church are commanded by Jesus in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, explained by Paul in Ephesians 4, described in Jesus’ prayer for the church in John 17, and modeled by the first church in Jerusalem.
In Acts 2:42-47 these five facets of health are mentioned: They fellowshipped, edified each other, worshiped, ministered, and evangelized. As a result, verse 47 says, “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (NIV).
Church growth is the natural result of church health. But church health can only occur when our message is biblical and our mission is balanced. Each of the five New Testament purposes of the church must be in equilibrium with the others for health to occur.
