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Signs of Health


                Charting a child’s yearly growth by putting marks on the wall is interesting.  It is fun to see progress.  On the other hand, that same exercise is less exciting with a twenty-five-year old.  To chart their current development, different qualities must be considered.
                When churches want to measure how they are doing, they most often turn to the ABCs:  Attendance, Buildings and Cash.  Interestingly, the New Testament never comments on any of those categories.  How big was the church in Corinth?  Where did they meet?  How much was their budget?  We have no idea! 
                A more Biblical model would be to think about church health.  To do that, here are three indicators to measure ourselves against.
                First, healthy churches do not just exist, they respond.  In 2 Corinthians 8, we are told that the Macedonian churches, “Gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability” (verse 3) and that they “Urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people” (verse 4).  When a need arose, they stepped up!  This is essential.  As someone said, “It is no good to sit up and take notice if we just keep sitting!”   Action is required, because, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). 
                Secondly, healthy churches believe that they have a God-given job to do in their community.  They are “compelled by the love of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:14) and believe that they are “Christ’s ambassadors” (verse 20).  This is important because the gospel is contextual.  In other words, our faith must be lived out in a certain time and place.  A good question to ask here is, “If your congregation ceased to exist, would your town miss you?”  If not, something needs to change. 
                Lastly, healthy churches recognize that they are completely dependant on God.  They understand that nothing happens without prayer, trust and faith.  We like to talk about what the early church did, but they did nothing on their own.  Anything good that happened was the result of God working through them.  Even Jesus said, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19).  If Jesus was completely dependant on his father, how could we do anything by ourselves? 
                In summary, healthy churches are busy making a difference in their communities because they believe that they are doing the work of God by his power and not their own.
                When we as individuals start living this way, the church becomes what it ought to be. 
   We like counting big numbers, but any congregation, whether it has 20 members or 2000, can be healthy.

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