Young Theologians Society

Most of us in the ministry desire to be successful. In fact, I doubt you would speak with many pastors who would admit that he would be just as happy in a declining, dying church than in a growing, exuberant one. This may have something to do with our infatuation with numbers equaling success. We’ve all sought out how to help our church grow from guys with dramatic stories of how they grew a church from 10 to 10,000 after only 3 short years – with detailed encouragement on how we could do the same thing in our neck of the woods. After a barrage of conferences, hearing from many of our modern ‘church growth’ experts; I began to wonder ‘what really did make a new church healthy?’

Church health does not happen overnight. There have been many who have grown incredible ministries with great stories of God doing amazing things in short amounts of time. However, even with the prospect of a new mega-church being born every 2 days, the 1/3 of new churches considered successful may not all hit the profile of a large, mega-church very quickly. And numbers can’t always equal success, can it? Numbers can be an excellent gauge on our effectiveness, but are rarely the definition of it. Every church regardless of its age needs to question its vitality, and I’ve made some observations about successful church plants that could also apply to the established church:

1. Strong Ecclesiology – The first step of a healthy church is a strong foundation for the church. This foundation can’t be found in a business handbook – it needs to birth out of our strong theology that derives from Scripture. Too often new churches structures don’t differ too much from a fast-food franchise or coffeehouse. We can gain much from business practices to help make us more effective and efficient, but we need to begin with the Biblical view of the church.

2. Transformed Lives – Simply having high numbers is not enough, it is what you do with them. A new church needs to be a place where these individuals are experiencing a lifechange. Part of our command in the Great Commission is to make disciples, and we can’t do that with solely entertaining services with non-committal attendees. At some point, we need to see some major lifechange happen; whether that is new believers, or existing believers committing to a deeper relationship.

3. Proper Missiology - The church needs to be an accurate representation of its community stylistically. We can’t try to force a community to express themselves differently than is common to them. Fights over style need to come to an end, and we need to realize our goal is to contextualize the Gospel to the culture we are trying to reach. A healthy church should represent their culture well, while still offering the counter-cultural life that Jesus calls us to.

4. Impact in the Community – A healthy church needs to be shaping the community around it. McManus and others have considered themselves to be ‘cultural architects’ because of their desire and ability to have a cultural impact on the community around them. Our churches need to be incarnational in the sense that we are taking the Good News to the community surrounding us, not waiting for them to come to us.

5. Active in Multiplication – Many new churches have started with the help and support of other networks, churches, and organizations, but when they start to do well they often forget that there is a huge need still out there. If a new church is not actively involved yet in helping plant other new churches, they need to have a solid plan at the very least that their congregation needs to be aware of. A healthy new church is one that multiplies, by its support of new churches and ministries both here and abroad, it needs to have a strong focus on mission. For most churches, this is where the rubber hits the road for true success.

If your church is doing well at these five observations, you most likely will experience growth; both numerically and in spiritual depth. But defining your success by numbers alone can be dangerous; there are plenty of invalid ministries (just turn on the tv) that have huge numbers. Not to mention the fastest growing religion in the world is an invalid one – but they have the numbers. They are a good gauge of success, but not a means to an end. Our success needs to be understood from several angles, not just attendance.

Look for more in the future about evaluating these 5 things. But if you’re not finding your new church has busted at the seams just yet, maybe you will find encouragement in these ways of self-evaluation for success.