4 Pillars of EVERY healthy church
To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like a man who finds a pearl of great price, who, when finding it, sells all that he has and buys it.
When Jesus describes the Kingdom of God, He does so using many different stories, parables and examples. The beauty, the treasure and the truth of the kingdom of God is beyond the power of words to capture. Jesus says that He will build His church, and that the church are to be the bearers and messengers of His Kingdom.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article on where the Co-lab journey started. An article on the big four questions (or sets of questions) that drive me. Two of those questions pertain to abuse in churches, and two pertain to beauty and restoration in churches.
Before delving into what goes wrong, I want to explore what makes a church healthy and strong. What are the pillars which ensure a church will be holy and healthy? The truth is that as much as the church can get things spectacularly and catastrophically wrong (and it does!) the church is still God’s vessel for seeing righteousness, peace and joy established on the earth. While there are many stories of sin, abuse, denial and cover up, there are also stories of truth, confession, repentance and restoration. There are wicked, abusive and horrible churches, and there are holy, loving and righteous churches. And there is everything in between!
Over the last three years I have been studying and working with churches, victims, perpetrators and restorers. Through the course of my work and research I have identified 4 pillars I believe to be present in every healthy church. These pillars seem to be universal and appear in every healthy church I have known personally or studied. Similarly, the absence of these pillars directly reduces the health and holiness of a church. Without further ado here are the 4 pillars present in every healthy church:
Ministry exists to connect people with God and His plan for their lives
The purpose of a church’s ministry are universal and unique. David Bosch said that the universal mission of God’s people is to alert everyone everywhere to the universal reign of God through Christ. Yet God also has a unique plan for every local church. God’s plan for every individual person is also universal and unique. He desires for all humanity to be reconciled to Himself through the death and resurrection of Christ AND to write a unique and intertwined story through the life of every individual.
When a ministry is focused on connecting people with God and His plans individually and collectively (much easier said than done!) it will have righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The church will be holy and healthy.
Human beings are recognised as spirits.
Healthy churches remember Jesus words; ‘It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I speak are spirit, and they are life.’ (John 6:63) Life and joy come from connecting with Christ through the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom of God is not just eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom that is not of this world, yet it interacts and influences this world. The centrality of the work of the Holy Spirit in directing people to freedom in Christ cannot be overstated.
When these ideas are practiced by the church God is worshipped in spirit and in truth and battles fought are spiritual in nature. This is not to say healthy churches spiritualise everything, it is to say that remembering a person is a spirit means the person will not be mistaken as an object, an experience relayed many times by people who have suffered from abuse in churches.
Truth is sought, discerned, confessed and celebrated.
Some truth is difficult to find, and is unflattering when it is found! Other truth is easy to see but difficult to look at. A healthy church has as one of its pillars a commitment to knowing and responding to truth, irrespective of how beautiful or horrid the truth is. The Holy Spirit can and does redeem horrendous things, and exchanges ashes for beauty. He does so by redeeming truth, not by avoiding truth. A church is healthy when mechanisms of avoidance and denial are absent, replaced by a trust in the gospel of Christ, that whatever sin is confessed, He is faithful and just to forgive, and to cleanse the sinner of all unrighteousness.
Similarly, a healthy church will seek, find and celebrate beauty. There is a cadence of meditating upon things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely and praiseworthy. There is a recognition and celebration of the hope of glory, which is Christ in the local church congregant.
Elders commit to live as disciples of Truth, walking the narrow road of loving, godly discernment.
The health of a church community is directly proportionate to the health of the relationships between the elders. The primary commitment of each elder is to Christ, yet an immediate expression of that commitment is to love their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
What this means practically is that elders have faced the presence of sin in themselves and brought that sin to Christ. They have received His forgiveness and are willing to extend that same forgiveness towards one another when needed. Because the third pillar is in place, truth can be responded to in loving and godly ways.
Walking the narrow road that Jesus speaks of involves loving, godly discernment. There are two key thoughts here. Firstly elders need to see one another in clear and unflattering light. Elders who are close enough to see one another warts and all, and mature enough to love because that is what Christ has done for them will have a church that is healthy and holy. Secondly, being a disciple of Jesus means giving, receiving and responding to candid feedback. Feedback is actively sought from God through the studying of the scriptures, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Feedback is also sought from fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Logs and specks are dealt with in love, not avoided through denial.
I guarantee that if a church is healthy, it is because the above pillars are being built and maintained.
I guarantee that if there is dysfunction or sin in a church, it is because one (or more) of these pillars has begun to erode.
