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Church Health

In this section of the factbook, we offer two summaries of some of the common factors behind healthy, thriving churches, many of which will have experienced growth over recent years. A useful exercise for a church leadership team is to score your church on each element of these two lists, and examine strengths and weaknesses.

In his book, Natural Church Development, Christian Schwarz quotes eight quality characteristics. These are based on research in 1000 churches over 32 countries across 5 continents between 1994 and 1996. Schwarz's eight quality characteristics are :

Empowering Leadership - 'Leaders of growing churches concentrate on empowering other Christians for ministry'

Gift-oriented Lay Ministry - 'The discovery and use of Spiritual Gifts is the only way to live out the Reformation watchword of "the priesthood of all believers"'

Passionate Spirituality - 'Our research indicated clearly that church development is dependent neither on spiritual persuasions nor on specific spiritual practices... The quality characteristic of passionate spiritality demonstrates empirically the theological core of the matter in church growth: the life of faith as a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ."

Functional Structures - 'Anyone who accepts this perspective will continually evaluate to what extent church structures improve the self-organisation of the church. Elements not meeting this standard will be changed or eliminated.'

Inspiring Worship Service - 'The word "inspiring" deserves clarification, meaning an inspiredness which comes from the Spirit of God. People attending truly "inspired" services typically indicate that going to church is fun.'

Holistic Small Groups - 'If we were to identify any one principle as the most important, then without a doubt it would be the multiplication of small groups.'

Need-oriented Evangelism - 'The key to church growth is for the local congregation to focus its evangelistic efforts on the questions and needs of non-Christians.'

Loving Relationships - 'Growing churches posess on average a measurably higher 'love quotient' than stagnant or declining ones.'

Canon Robert Warren gives ten marks of a missionary congregation (Building Missionary Congregations, 1995, Board of Mission of the Church of England.) They are :

Celebration - 'refers to the ability and desire to enjoy life and the gifts God has given, and to participate in celebrating the new humanity modelled for us in Christ.'

Whole Life Christianity - 'Expressing faith in God in the whole of life.'

Simplicity - 'Both in lifestyle and in church structure'

Community - 'Only a community living by a different set of values has the strength to witness prophetically to modern society.'

Empowering - 'one that has broken out of the provider/client relationship into collaborative ministry, and equipping individuals to make their contribution.'

Doing things differently - 'A missionary church will be marked by doing the ordinary things (family life, work leisure) differently.

Engaged - 'A missionary church will be strongly engaged in the local community.'

Distinctive - 'Such a church multiples the number of points of contact with the surrounding culture as members live Christianly.'

Dimensional - 'A missionary and post-modern congregation thinks of the depths of whole-life issues, and of the spiritual dimension within every issue.'

Still - 'A missionary church will be an oasis of peace and quiet, in a frantic church, able not to be driven by doing but reflecting on experience before moving on.'