Pastor Rick Warren, author of the best-selling “Purpose
Driven Life”, is often quoted as saying, ‘Healthy things grow”. As the pastor of one of the largest and most
influential mega-churches at the time, many pastors used Pastor Warren’s quote to push
for numerical growth.
I confess I’m a fan of numerical growth. The Kingdom of God is for ‘whosoever’ and
there are literally millions of people that pass by our local churches every
week that could benefit from not just church attendance but the remarkable life
change that accompanies any movement towards God and his Son, Jesus Christ.
However, Rick Warren has said that he is often misquoted in the
‘Healthy things grow” as he was referring as much to church heath, not church
growth, as being a primary indicator and primary concern. I agree whole heartedly with Pastor Warren.
Church health should be the concern of every pastor in
every church. The World Health
Organization (WHO) defines, health as a state of complete physical, mental and
social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In the church, our focus is on the person of
Jesus Christ. A healthy church embraces
the truth of Jesus as the Christ, practices and then celebrates the teachings
and disciplines (i.e. discipleship) of the faith including the essentials of
the faith.
In these essentials, a local church will find that they
not only have unity with the rest of the Body of Christ, regardless of
denominational or doctrinal traditions, but will also find revival.
Growth is also process that leads ultimately to maturity. In this process, the Apostle Paul encouraged
us to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in
love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph 4:1-2)
In this way, the Apostle Paul equates spiritual maturity
with unity. This is why we are to walk in
‘humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in
love’. All too often many church leaders
walk in arrogance and embrace their theology, morality or practices as being
superior to others. This is exactly how
the church becomes divided and weak.
When we embrace the fact that our theology is at the best
somewhat flawed and that the Holy Spirit is not bound by our doctrines and
traditions we can begin to humble ourselves.
In humility we pray and believe that it is Jesus that is truly the head
of the church and that any growth we see, either numerical or in spiritual
health, is hopefully a result of the work of the Holy Spirit through His humble
servants.
This work of the Holy Spirit can be found in the early
church as recorded in Acts 2:42-47 where the believers “devoted themselves
to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and
to prayer.” When these early believers
embraced the essential faith and found themselves having all things in common,
the Lord “added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Spiritual health is definitely a precursor for numerical growth
