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The 10 Marks of a Healthy Church
What does a healthy church look like? This article (adapted from Pat Abendroth's article) gives a succinct outline. May God help us to be faithful to His design for a healthy church. "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). This goal should permeate all areas of ministry and each life. It means that everything is done with the intention of pleasing and honoring the Lord. "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The profound reality of these verses must find their way not only into the doctrinal statement, but must also impact the way practical ministry is carried out. If the Bible is sufficient as it claims to be, then it and it alone must be the authority in evangelism, preaching, counseling, discipleship, worship, church government, and so forth. "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction" (2 Timothy 4:1-2). In an age where story telling and excessive humor are substituted for preaching the Bible, this command is a fitting reminder of the priority God places on preaching His Word-the Bible. If the people of God are going to do the will of God, they must hear the Word of God from the man of God. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). Being "the power of God for salvation," the gospel believed and proclaimed in a faithful church must be the biblical gospel. The Gospel is not a means to get rich, it is not self-help, self-actualization, or a magic power to fix all our problems. The New Testament is clear that salvation is by grace, through faith in Christ who was crucified for our sins, was buried, arose from the dead, and offers forgiveness and eternal life as a gift for God's glory. The Good News does not make much of us, but much of God. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20). Faithfulness here must be a compelling force in every church desiring to be true to the Lord. His mission is our mission - to reach the nations with the message of salvation. "They were continually devoting themselves to prayer" (Acts 2:42). Just as the early church expressed their reliance upon the Holy Spirit for spiritual empowerment, so must the church of the 21st century. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35). According to Jesus, it is the love of believers that sets them apart. From this sacrificial love comes the healthy body-life of the church family. "For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man is above reproach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. For the overseer must be above reproach as God's steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict" (Titus 1:5-9). These are God's qualifications for His Church. Faithfulness requires us to maintain this divine standard. "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector? (Matthew 18:15-17). This four-step accountability plan is as essential as it is clear. God has always and will always desire a pure church. Though these verses are seldom mentioned and even less often practiced, anything less reveals disobedience to Christ's plan for the Church. "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12). To be faithful to God's plan for ministry is not to have pastors doing the ministry for the people, but to have pastors equipping the people for the ministry! When this happens, the entire church family is involved, significant ministry is shared, and the church is effectively doing the will of God by the power of the Spirit. A Warning about Entertainment Style Churches: You see, if we do not have a perspective on life that is higher than what we can touch, taste, and see, we cannot appreciate that life is not an accident of evolution, but a gift of God and so ought to be preserved. Instead, when the only direction we can look is down, we conclude that we have evolved a bit up from the animals. And because we define ourselves by the creation, we cut ourselves off from God-the source of every good and perfect gift. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we find ourselves and our society justifying sinful, wicked behavior by appealing to the animals? If we do not retain the knowledge of God in our minds, but rather suppress it, we experience what Paul so clearly documents in the first chapter of Romans: the revealing of the wrath of God. The result is we act like the animals, and in the end we do what even the animals will not. I am convinced the great problem in America today is that people are not thinking. It’s a cultural phenomenon that has spilled over into the church. It is not just that there is a lack of a Christian way of thinking-a “Christian Mind”-but there is hardly a mind at all. In our day and age people, Christian and non-Christian alike, just do not think. We act and we react, but we do not consider and contemplate. There are many ways to explain this phenomenon: secularism, relativism, materialism, or just the fast pace of our lives. But we cannot overestimate the fact that our society has become so obsessed with entertainment that it has never learned to think. And this is because we have embraced a television culture rather than the print-based culture of our ancestors. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “What difference does it make? If entertainment is the way television operates, why not have religious entertainment? Wouldn’t it be better to have that than what the networks offer?” And I am inclined to agree with you here, except for two points. First, if what people expect from religion is what they see on television, then there is going to be (and as a pastor I assure you there already is) enormous pressure on churches to conform to the entertainment motif. Out goes expository preaching, because people cannot concentrate very long. Forget theology: People are not interested in theology, and they can’t follow an argument anyway. Let there be funny stories, and let them be short. As for the worship service, bring on lively ditties that make people feel good! Surely God will be blessed. And, above all, do not permit long prayers. Postman asks, “What happens when you put religion on television, what do you lose?” His answer is, you lose everything that is important, specifically, a sense of the transcendent. It is God who is missing when religion is put on television. And I am afraid that when television is allowed to reshape our churches, God is missing from them too. My second objection is a point I’ve already made: we must not believe that television is making us think. It is not. If we are to learn to think, we must go about it in a different way. We’ll have to leave the set off more often and begin thinking. So what is the answer? How do we combat the entertainment agenda infiltrating our churches? How do we stop being entertained to death and learn to think? We do it by following Paul’s instruction in Romans 12:2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect(ESV). “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That’s the way it happens. The answer is to study the Word of God. That is how we learn not only to think but to think as God does. I used to say, “If you’re not feeding yourself with the Bible all the time, you will be thinking like the world.” In view of our television culture, I have amended that saying to, “If you are not feeding yourself with the Bible all the time, the world is going to entertain you and you’ll end up not thinking at all.” This presents a unique opportunity for churches today. The world is filled with entertainment and entertainment is fun and people like it and will go where they can have a good time. But sooner or later some will get sick of being entertained-they are made in the image of God, you see, and part of that image is the capacity to think. They will realize that life is more than entertainment, more than just a good time. They will come to a crossroad and say, “There has to be more to life than this. I’m not here just to be entertained, to be sold products, to spend my money on what people want me to buy. Aren’t I more important than this?” They will come looking for an alternative. Now, it will not be the vast majority of people, but it will be the people with whom God is working. Churches, if they have not sold themselves wholesale to the entertainment agenda, will be that alternative. “Yes, you are more important!” they will say. “You’re infinitely more important because you are made in the image of God. God has made you to be like Him!” Then the churches will point them to Jesus Christ and encourage them to be “transformed by the renewing of [their] minds.” But if churches have absorbed the entertainment mentality, if they have themselves lost the ability to think, they will offer seekers nothing more than what they have already. Instead of pointing out the path of the righteous which is like “the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day,” these churches will be like “clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted” and will leave the lost on a downhill path with the vision of God becoming increasingly dim. Then, like the Newsweek article I referred to earlier said, they will be no better than so many ducks on a pond. - James Montgomery Boice, Wanted: Thinking Christians
Mark 1: The Glory of God is the Supreme Goal Mark 2: The Bible is Sufficient Mark 3: The Bible is Proclaimed Mark 4: The Gospel is Pure Mark 5: The Great Commission is Prioritized Mark 6: The People are Devoted to Prayer Mark 7: The Members Demonstrate Sacrificial Love Mark 8: The Leadership is Biblically Qualified Mark 9: The Members are Accountable Mark 10: The Believers are Equipped for Spiritual Service
