If you have spent any time working with a church, especially as a pastor or on a pastoral staff, you probably have a large shelf in your library filled with a plethora of resources related to church growth and health. As I work with churches as a transitional pastor, I come back to these studies time and again. Some of them are faddish recaps of what worked in some church somewhere, but probably have little meaning for my church situation. Some are rather complex evaluations of where your church is and where it is going (often with surveys and consultations available at a "reasonable" cost). Some are much simpler and to the point. (One of my favorites, in fact, is called Simple Church.) There is just a huge amount of information available to those who work with churches today on how to help a church become a growing, healthy body.
Yet for all of this growth in church growth material, there seems to be something missing. Few churches today are growing at all. It has become almost commonplace to hear people say if you want a growing church you need to start a new one. What is keeping us from seeing the kingdom of God, and as a corollary our churches, growing?
I think the problem may well be that many churches fail to seek a balance in what they do as a church. Whatever the pastor's gifts are, or whatever the staff specializes in, or whatever the major contributors give to becomes the meaning of church for that congregation. So some churches emphasize evangelism, but have nothing in place to help the new Christians grow. Others emphasize discipleship, but see few new people come to know Christ. Still others favor pouring themselves into ministry, yet their busy programming schedules aren't matched by increasing numbers of maturing disciples. We could multiply the possibilities here, but they all result in the same thing: a one-dimensional church that is extremely good at what it does, but still does not see the growth it expects.
Maintaining balance in a church is hard, as in "herding cats" hard. This is due to our natural tendency (yes, it is mine as well) to emphasize the area in which we are gifted as the primary function of the church. We are most comfortable when the church we are part of majors in what we do best. Yet when we allow that to happen, we are hindering the church from becoming what it can be in God's plan.
How do we overcome this tendency? The hard way is to follow Paul's advice to "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4) That's right, to encourage health and growth in our church we should desire to see those whose gifts are different from ours flourish in exercising them. I firmly believe that every church that is seeking to do God's will and carry out His mission is given everything they need to do so. That includes people with all the spiritual gifts necessary to enable the church to function in a healthy, balanced way. We need to encourage others to use their gifts in a ministry for which they are gifted.
What will happen if we do this? We may very well find a natural balance to the ministry of the church. If the Spirit give gifts as He wills, and He gives them so we as a body can carry out our commission, then when everyone uses their gifts all of the functions of the church will take place. Evangelism, discipleship, worship, fellowship, and ministry will work together to make our church one which glorifies Jesus and engages in a well-rounded mission for the kingdom of God.
Such a humble attitude toward encouraging others will also make the church a witness to the love and compassion of Jesus. There may be nothing that Satan enjoys more than watching Christians fight. C.S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters about what he calls "party" churches; these are churches where taking sides is more important than showing Jesus' love. His "hero" Screwtape writes (specifically about the Anglican Church, but with application to us) that without the work of the devils the church "might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility." What would love and humility in our congregations say to our communities? A change in our attitudes and in our ministry could be the breakthrough we need to truly reach those around us for Jesus Christ.
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