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.