Church for God
“Church health is greater than Church growth.”
I woke up this morning with this phrase on my mind and I instantly knew the Lord was inviting me to consider His desires for what the church can be. I began to get clear thoughts about the necessary changes we need to make to see the church become “the city set on a hill” God has destined her to be. In this blog, I want to share some of these thoughts with you.
We have seen the Western Church spend countless hours and dollars trying to catalyze church growth through programs, outreach, organization, and at times gimmicks. Sometimes churches find the right combination of factors in their region and growth ensues. At other times, for all our efforts to grow, we simply exist without any real progress. In the worst case, at times, when the church has grown it has multiplied unhealthy paradigms that have sacrificed the well-being of the very people it’s trying to reach.
I have found when church growth is the major vision that drives the congregation, the goal of numerically and financially enlarging the church becomes central. It’s assumed that God’s desire is for every church to outpace every and any secular outlet. Many think that if they draw human hearts and affections without any concern for their well-being, why wouldn’t God’s desire be to cause His church to win the battle for these same hearts?
My concern is that If we view God in this light, we essentially picture Him with a “win at all costs” mentality. This isn’t how He is. God is not desperate and He doesn’t think in terms of win or lose. Instead, He thinks in terms of glory: the widespread revelation of His nature to humankind and the human response to His majestic beauty. When we imagine He’s trying to “win at all costs” I believe we’ve diminished Him to an image that is altogether inferior of Him.
“Wait a minute”, I can hear you saying, “Doesn’t God want to reach the Lost?”
ABSOLUTELY.
“Well then doesn’t He want us to grow our churches?”
I absolutely believe He does. I also believe He wants His church to reflect His nature in word and deed. If the Church doesn’t look like Him, He isn’t interested in multiplying it. Remember He is interested in His glory. Why would He want to increase something that doesn’t look like Him?
Our Father cares far more about how we produce what we produce than the question of whether or not we are “productive”. Said another way, God doesn’t want His church to produce His desired ends (reaching the lost) without His glory manifest in it. A healthy church not only produces His ends, it does so by His means, according to His mentality. This is the basis of Jesus' corrections of the churches in Revelation 2-3. He tells the church of Ephesus you’re doing a lot of good things, but it’s not according to my will because it’s not my way (Rev 2:2-4).
In light of this, how do we start on the journey of becoming a healthy church?
I believe church health begins with proper church alignment. Church alignment simply means what the church is centered on. Church must not be aligned around a leader or even a vision. Leadership and vision are essential to a healthy church and critically important to alignment. However, leadership and vision should emerge as a response to the first and most important impetus - the centrality of Jesus. Jesus Christ, the Knowledge of Him and His majestic glory must be the central guiding focus for a church to be healthy.
Because this seems so evident, Jesus’ pre-eminence in church is often assumed. Unfortunately because this is assumed it is often ultimately overlooked. We end up doing church for God’s ends but miss God in the process. It’s painful to say, but I believe it to be true, we have made our services for everyone except God. I believe we must grapple right now with this simple question - have we centered our churches on Jesus? Is He the centerpiece of our gatherings, our services, and our outreaches?
If we haven’t allowed Him to have the first place in our church we must repent right now. We must de-center things from us and re-center them on Him. We must tear down every bit of church machinery that causes Jesus to take a backseat. If our church culture, programs, preaching, personas, and practices don’t ooze Jesus we need to start over. We don’t have time to continue building and multiplying churches that are not firmly centered on the glory of Jesus.
Historically God achieved this centrality by setting worship at the center of His - and not simply momentary worship. He set up continual worship in order to create spiritual formation around His person and glory. The church today should be no different. Our adoration of Jesus should be central, continual, overt, and excessive. We should center our spiritual families around Jesus in regular and constant worship. It’s the answer to Jesus regaining pre-eminence in the midst of His people.
When the church is centered around Jesus first, then the church will be properly aligned and ultimately be able to become healthy. With the adoration of Jesus at the center, we can finally begin to love others rightly. This operation of centering the church on Jesus will deliver us from being a man-centered people producing man-made results. With Jesus glorified in the midst of His people finally the prayer of the Apostle Paul will be realized, “to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen”