by Rebecca Barnes, editor 18 Dec 2007

Assessing church health can be complex and confusing. However, church leaders and consultants can help congregations face the truth about their ministry by posing insightful questions and helping them design solutions to any weaknesses. This year Church Central offered eight questions to diagnose your church health with an ongoing series by Dr. Chuck Lawless. As the year draws to a close, a review may be in order for reflection and goal-setting:

1. Is the church’s teaching based on the Bible?
The transforming power of the Word of God will be found in a healthy church because leaders will believe in it.

2. Is the church a praying church?
Churches that really pray teach people to pray. They actually pray at prayer meetings. Leaders preach about prayer and pray during preaching. Congregation members intentionally pray through the prayer list. These churches have a prayer ministry that covers every other ministry. They also have leaders who model prayer.

3. Is the church driven by a Great Commission focus?
Where the pastor is not committed to reaching the world, the church is unlikely to be that concerned. One of the best ways to increase a church’s passion for the Great Commission is to send the pastor and members on a mission trip. When they return and relate their experiences, other members often find it hard to remain unconcerned.

4. Is the church reaching non-believers?
Clearly, the early church was concerned about reaching non-believers. In fact, new believers were added to the church daily (Acts 2:47) as church members preached and lived their faith before others. How different that is from the 80-85 percent of North American churches that are plateaued or declining!

5. Is the church keeping the new believers who join?
Stated expectations help the new believer understand what God and the church expect. These expectations should include: ministry involvement, healthy relationships, learning from convictional teaching and preaching.

6. Is the church both locally and globally minded?
A church must recognize its responsibility to reach its local community while simultaneously accepting its mandate to reach the world's people groups (Matt. 28:18-20). Fulfilling both of these callings is never easy, but the healthy church strives to be faithful to each mandate.

7. Does the church have a strategic plan for future growth?
While most churches operate from week to week, the enemy attacks methodically and strategically. We are often not prepared for his schemes.

8. Are the leaders committed to the ministry of the church?
By far, the most common problem we see in unhealthy churches is poor or unfocused leadership. Leaders who are not committed to a long tenure seldom lead a church to lasting growth.

How is your congregation’s health?

Church Central also offered six New Year’s resolutions this year to promote church health. Let’s review them and determine goals for another year:

Checking off just one of these pledges may have meant major change for most churches and hopefully set them on a course toward becoming a healthier body of Christ.

Ministry 101

Perhaps you started a new ministry this year, or are looking to a new ministry next year. Church Central posted a series of Ministry 101 articles to address the basics of effective ministry for women, married couples, children, youth, men, singles, and family. Designed to help you insure that healthy church work results in making disciples, these articles provided helpful introductions to new ministries or keys to evaluate existing work.

Whether you are beginning something new, or evaluating changes needed in existing programs, keep in mind that changing a church can only happen effectively if it happens slowly. Church consultant Josh Hunt wrote about slow change this year.

"Constant and small adjustments keep congregations both comfortable and growing, as well as create the momentum necessary to sustain a healthy church," Hunt wrote.

Pastors must be healthy

Finally, we posted an article that really cuts to the heart of the matter for churches wanting to grow and be healthy—the pastor’s spiritual health. Instead of trying to escape an inner-city church, a squabbling congregation or a rural outpost where it seems few people care, Richard Blackaby, president of Blackaby Ministries International—founded by his father, renowned author Henry Blackaby, advised church leaders to appreciate that God has trained them for their challenge. Not only do pastors need to be faithful, Blackaby says more need to devote more time to spiritual matters.

Noting that "you can’t give people what you don’t have," he said the best way pastors can lead people into a growing, dynamic walk with God is to have their own.

"Too many pastors get into the pulpit expecting people to do things they haven’t done themselves," he said. "The best thing you could ever do for your people is to go to the next level yourself."

That may be enough of a challenge for any year. Hope you can meet it in the upcoming months.