From the Pulpit: What is a healthy church?

When it comes to evaluating what is a healthy church, it is often a pretty subjective matter. Too often we are prone to listen to the opinions of men instead of Scripture when it comes to matters such as this. Scripture does address this issue in Ephesians 4:11-16.

If our aim is to be Biblical in our thinking then this is the place we need to start when we answer the question – what is a healthy church? 

Getting to the crux of the issue – when we see what is to be attained by the building up of the church, two church health indicators immerge in this passage: First, in vs. 13 “until we all attain to the unity of the faith.” In the context, “the faith” is the content of what Christians are to believe (vs. 5), the body of Christian doctrine. 

Ministers of the Word are to teach and build up the body and an indicator of church health will be that the congregation will be becoming more and more like minded in doctrinal convictions. They will be more unified in what they believe – they will have “unity in the faith.” Secondly, in vs. 13b church health will be indicated by the congregation growing in “the knowledge of the Son of God.” This is what we will be doing in eternity, learning about our Lord and Savior, and this is what is to mark what we do when we gather together as well. 

There is nothing more glorious in all existence than the Lord, so when we gather, we learn about this glorious Redeemer. You should have more knowledge of Christ this year than you had last year. Your depth of understanding of Christ should be growing every Lord’s Day as you gather with your church, and sit under the ministry of the Word. These are two sure fire marks of whether a church is going in a healthy direction. 

Ultimately, the goal of a congregation is spiritual maturity (vs. 13c). Paul does give us two evidences of spiritual maturity so we can evaluate whether our congregation is growing in spiritual maturity and thus healthy. The first is a mature congregation is marked by doctrinal stability. Immature Christians are “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (vs. 14). 

An immature congregation lacks the doctrinal stability, so it is tossed to and fro by doctrinal error. Secondly, a mature congregation will be marked by “speaking the truth in love” (vs. 15).

 Its members’ lives will be lives of integrity, so they will tell you the truth. The world’s person is a flatterer and will tell you what you want to hear; not God’s people. They will tell you the truth, but they will do it in love with gentleness and kindness. The lives of a mature congregation will be saturated with the Word of God and the truth of His Word will sprinkle their speech.