We believe that a healthy church can be recognized by marks such as biblical preaching, dynamic prayer, loving community, the spiritual growth of its members, and relevant outreach to the world.
When we speak of “church health,” we are referring not only to values behind the “church health movement,” but also to the outreach focus promoted by the “missional church” concept.
Some Background Related to
Several Modern Ministry Paradigms
A brief overview of recent theological and ministry constructs that have influenced the Western Evangelical church include a focus on church growth which began in the late 1960s, largely promoted by the late Dr. Donald McGavran of Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission. The church growth movement arose from Dr. McGavran’s missionary work in India and emphasized numerical growth with the recognition that certain types of people are attracted to certain types of churches.
As this movement began to wane in the 1990s, Christian leaders, including megachurch leaders Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, placed emphasis on church health. Christian Schwarz helped define the movement with eight principles for church health: 1) Empowering leadership, 2) Gift-oriented ministry, 3) Passionate spirituality, 4) Functional structures, 5) Inspiring worship services, 6) Holistic small groups, 7) Need-oriented evangelism, and 8) Loving relationships. (Christian Schwarz, Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches. Carol Stream, IL: ChurchSmart Resources, 1996).
More recently an emphasis on the missional church has combined and expanded on the values behind both church growth and church health movements and woven them into a mission focus that is both immediate and broad-reaching, both local and international. The attention has thus moved from growth strategies around types of people (church growth), to a more introspective focus on developing a healthy local church body (church health) to allowing outreach to dictate the construct of programs and values in a church as it reaches people in the community and beyond (the missional church).
As is naturally the case, promoters of each new emphasis tended to point to the weaknesses of the past approaches. The older movements have not truly been replaced, however, for they are foundations of the new. The missional church movement is a blending of past movements with a push toward outreach and community relevance.
Other movements, such as the “Emergent Church” movement, have also arisen in the early 21st century. We recommend cautious study of the principles behind this and other modern movements. The emergent church movement itself seeks to create ongoing conversation with a postmodern world. It is broad, diverse, and sometimes unorthodox. We encourage those who study the emergent church movement to glean insights through the lens of biblical discernment, being careful to maintain Christian essentials. It is possible to become so focused on “relevance” to the world that we lose our distinctive as Christians and our witness to the world. Around the topic of homosexuality, for example, the emergent church can teach us much about listening to and learning from people who struggle with homosexual attractions, but it may be weak on guiding them toward health and wholeness with biblical conviction.
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