The mark of a healthy church

What is the mark of a healthy church?  What identifies a church as healthy?  Is it attendance, budgets or programs being used?  I think what we see as we look at the New Testament, it is that the church is making disciples. (Matthew 28.19-20).  There are all kinds of things to look at to gauge the health of the church but I think the Scripture would challenge us that the most important one is disciple making.

Author Randy Millwood writes, that a healthy local church, "is recognizing and embracing our new identity, which is found in being a disciple of Jesus who makes disciples. (Pg. 72 To Love and to Cherish from this Day Forward)  He challenges us to ask and answer two significant questions.

1. What is a Disciple?
2. How do you make one?

If you are like me I wasted many years of ministry doing church stuff without asking these two important questions.  I wrestled with those questions and have tried to figure out what it means.  That is what I challenge you to do.  Search, wrestle, pray and figure out as a leader of the church, what is a disciple and how do I make one?  Until we do that we are just going through the motions and doing church rather than being the church.

A good place to start may be to read To Love and to Cherish from this Day Forward - A portrait of a healthy church by Randy Millwood.

The Missing Link in Fulfilling our Mission

In my denomination, the SBC, we have come to grips with the fact that we are failing in our mission.  The mission of the church is the great commission (Matthew 28.19-20), which is to make disciples.  We have formed committees and commissions, made radical changes and have shaken up the "how we do it" across our denomination and churches.  Now I don't want to be a party pooper or a pessimist or anything but I fear it is to no avail.  Why do I say that, you might ask?  Because we have missed a very important leadership principle and a biblical truth.  I don't think it will matter what the denomination does.  Our mission boards, state conventions or Associations are not going to right this ship.  What they are doing will make little difference till the people in the churches decide to make a change.  And it must begin with us the leaders and pastors in our churches.

Henry Blackaby writes, "When God sets forth a requirement of His people, He most certianly demands it of the leaders."  And, "God had to make adjustments in the life of Moses before He would use him to lead His people.  Are you trying to serve God and yet ignore something He has told you to do?"  Now Dr. Blackaby is writing in the devotional (Experiencing God Day by Day, March 15) about holiness.  But the biblical truth he shares applies in many areas.  Leaders, we have ignored and made excuses why we are not doing what God has called us to do.  We preach to our people about evangelism but we are not doing it ourselves.  We speak passionately about evangelism, planting churches and making disciples but we are failing at the most elementary level in simply sharing the good news outside of our pulpits. The early church did not just preach the gospel they lived it day to day on the streets and in the market place.  It must begin first with the shepherds and leaders of the church and then the people in the pew will catch it as well.  Then you truly will see a resurgence of the great commission.