Well, where do we go from here? See the articles in the Resources section at the foot of this paper for a general overview of topics like 'What Does a Healthy Church Look Like?' John Mark Ministries also has an audio-tape on this topic.

A little word of caution comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his brilliant little book, Life Together he warns against being critical of the church, whatever that church's faults. If you love your dream of a Christian community more than the community itself you become a destroyer of the latter. He writes that we are not given a mandate to enter the community of Christians with our demands, setting up our laws, and judging others. We are not only in danger of being an 'accuser of the brethren' but also of God himself. We must not 'complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily... A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to anyone in order that they should become its accuser before God and others'. Sobering words!

Christ loves the church - even though it is not-yet-fully-redeemed. That's what grace is all about. We are loved before we change, as we change, after we change, whether we change or not. Christ loves the church like that - and so should we. But we can be 'critical lovers' or 'loving critics' rather than conformist 'uncritical lovers' or angry 'unloving critics'.

IF ONLY

Here's a random list of comments I hear as I consult with churches. When I ask about the future of their church, they often reply with an 'If only' - to which I often respond with a 'Yes, but'.

'IF ONLY WE COULD GET A DYNAMIC PASTOR/PRIEST/MINISTER!' It's true that leadership is a very important key to a church's health. but the Archangel Gabriel is not currently available. The best churches operate like families are supposed to - they learn to work with their leaders, in most situations. On the other hand, if the pastor handles divine things lightly (not apparently focussed/engaged in worship-adoration as she/he encourages the congregation to be, for example), that doesn't encourage respect by the congregation.

'IF ONLY MORE PEOPLE CAME TO CHURCH' (Or, 'if only more people who visit would come back again!') There are many reasons why people don't return, but they basically boil down to an 'effort/reward' ratio. In a consumer culture people - even church-going people - think in terms of a return for their expenditure of commitment, time and money. If they make a judgment that their needs won't be met in a particular church, they won't return. The presenting issue for most is the church's perceived 'friendliness'. As Peter Wagner used to say, they ask themselves, 'Are these my kind of people?'

'IF ONLY WE HAD MORE LOVE IN THIS CHURCH'. My response as a consultant is always to ask: 'Love, primarily for whom?' To be frank, in the vast majority of human groups there's a disinclination to welcome any outsider who will mess with the social mix - particularly if they're sexually, criminally, or socially 'odd'. And if we let all those kinds of people in, they might marry our children, and do we want that? I know it's noble to say 'Ask not what your church can do for you, ask instead what you can do for your church' but not very many people think that way, and many shy people and newcomers certainly don't. It's a form of hypocrisy to claim to be loving, tolerant, and just while discriminating on the basis of gender, race, and sexual orientation or on any other grounds. I talked with a single male in his forties who described himself as 'NQR - Not Quite Right': 'Yes, I've had emotional problems. I feel welcome at first in many churches, but after a while I find I don't get invited to things. And when I drift away no one cares very much. ' The secret of Jesus' healing and social ministry, as Morton Kelsey and others have pointed out, was that he related to people's presenting needs. Love does that - and waits until one has earned the right to 'preach at' people (and even then, as St. Francis suggested, we 'preach the gospel, [and only] use words if necessary').

'IF ONLY WE WERE BETTER ORGANIZED' Yes, good organization is like good digestion: it's very important for the body's well-being; but if you notice it there's something wrong. In a Western culture the best organizations operate consensually. People have a sense of belonging, and their opinions are valued. The organizational structure is simple and flat (rather than hierarchical). But the question of authority is more complex. Who ultimately decides what/how? There are at least four answers to this - in terms of episcopal, presbyterian (eldership), democratic/congregational and prophetic models (the latter authority usually exercised by people outside the institution). In terms of time-involvement if church leaders in most cases spend more time on committees than in faith development groups, the church is unhealthy. (An exception may be those who are called to a vocation of 'administry'). If fewer than 70% of worship service attenders are not in a small relational/faith development group, that's also unhealthy, in my view. If your committes/ Board has to meet more than once a month - except in times of critical transition / major decisions - you're probably wasting time. Management guru Peter Drucker suggested somewhere that churches spend ten times as much time in committees than they need to. The best committees are committees of one - selected wisely, with adequate terms of reference, and proper accountability! (See my chapter in 'Your Church Can Come Alive' on that).

'IF ONLY WE GOT OUR WORSHIP STYLE RIGHT'. Which style? There are at least six biblical understandings of 'worship': it's the whole of life (Romans 12:1,2); its locus may be temple (worshipping an awesome God), synagogue (worship majoring on the Scriptures), home group (relational worship), the festival (celebration: the child within us worshipping God as Parent/Father), or the desert (solitary worship, 'alone with the Alone'). All of these worship modes are important. .

'IF ONLY CHURCH WERE MORE ENTERTAINING'. There are two sides to this: the worship of the church is not about entertaining us. Soren Kierkegaard was quite critical of many churches whose worship had become 'user friendly.' Most Christian worship was a drama in which God was the prompter, the liturgical leaders (musicians, readers of the scriptures, preachers and celebrants) were the actors and the congregation was the audience. An elitist class of leaders believed they were better equipped to be the performers in this drama and the congregation were to watch as onlookers. But Kierkegaard said this understanding of our worship-as-drama was totally wrong. The liturgical leaders (musicians, readers of the scriptures, preachers and celebrants) are really the prompters in worship. All of us, the congregation as well as the liturgical leaders are the actors and God alone is the audience. But, yes, worship is meant to be a joyous experience. Good worship is never dull or boring. And concerning happiness in general: a preacher used these three points for his sermon: If you endure life and see life as a burden, others may control you. If you try to escape life and see it as a battle, you'll feel you always have to be in control. If you enjoy life and it's a blessing, you can more easily allow God to be in control.

'IF ONLY OUR MUSIC WERE BETTER'. Church Growth teacher Peter Wagner's advice to a church 'moving into renewal': 'Sack your organist!' There's an old saying that the devil prefers to enter churches through the choir vestry. Have you heard about the difference between a terrorist and a church organist? ('At least you can negotiate with most terrorists'). In an age where everyone has access to brilliantly-performed musical entertainment, if the contrast when they 'come to church' is too great they'll be discouraged from coming back again. Most growing churches realise that the music has to be good, and well-rehearsed. Another issue (often the catalyst for conflict in changing churches): what about new songs versus old ones? Short answer: mix them, sensitively!

'IF ONLY WE KNEW THE BIBLE BETTER'. Yes, according to a recent survey covering 32 industrialized countries, biblical illiteracy is spreading among Christians. Commenting on this research, Volker Gaeckle, dean of studies at the evangelical Albrecht Bengel Center in Tuebingen, Germany, said 'More are finding it difficult to comprehend biblical texts. At the same time, many preachers pay too little attention to whether their message is easy to understand. The Scripture reading in some worship services has become a mere "ritual,"' he says. 'Churches should heed the study's warning that text comprehension is a major problem.' (But, then Pharisees ancient and modern may know their Bibles off by heart - and miss the main point!).

'IF ONLY WE KNEW WHAT WE BELIEVED' This is the question of 'doctrine', or 'What is the Gospel?' There's a major intellectual and spiritual crisis for the churches at this point. [Evangelical] Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney has just delivered the first Halifax-Portal Lecture. His title: 'Speaking the Truth in Love'. In a strongly worded address Dr Jensen argued that the Christian Churches have lost confidence in their message to the community, and that they face a major crisis of confidence that may see the loss of Christian faith itself: 'We must speak the truth or perish and leave our beloved nation to the gods of this world. The truth is first and foremost to be defined as the truth, the truth of God's word, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.It is this truth which it is the role of the churches to witness to in this country, here and now. One of the chief reasons why Christians have ceased to speak the truth of the gospel to the community is fear of the reaction to this message. Even when we have adopted a profoundly Christian stance on some issue, we have not explained how it is an application of the word of God. We have even fallen into the trap of justifying our moral stances by a secularist theory of ethics. We have contributed towards the gagging of God. What is truly alarming is that we are not alarmed,' Dr Jensen said. 'We have accepted the secular world's view that we have nothing of importance to say, and we have adjusted ourselves to this reality. We have become domesticated. It has all the sadness of seeing the great cat of Christian theology turned into a house pet. We have become the sort of Christian movement which you would want to have if you never wanted to be troubled by it, if you wanted to control it'. Now some of us may not share Peter Jensen's 'conservative evangelical' theological stance, but he's making a valuable point, I believe. Note his emphasis on both truth and love. (That's the conservative theological order: liberals put love before 'truth'). I would add that 'God has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Holy Word.' Sometimes we can be too smug and arrogant with our claim to have a unique possession of divinely revealed truth. There are 34,000 Christian denominations out there, each of which claims to be most 'right'. Often the more ardently one believes, the less lovingly they act. And with more people doing courses in theology, there's a greater openness (by them) to diversity. A book like Richard Foster's 'Streams of Living Water' - in my view, now in the top ten books every literate Christian should read - says there are six broad answers to the question 'How can we know God?'.

'IF ONLY THE CHURCH HAD A BETTER PRESS'. This one is serious. Recently I spoke at a Lenten service in a church in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. They'd done a letterbox drop to advertise it. But someone contacted them and said, 'While church leaders go soft on child sexual abuse you won't find me in a church.' Watch for a brilliant Time Essay on this topic, by Andrew Sullivan, which will appear on the John Mark Ministries' website within the next week.

'IF ONLY OUR PASTORS WERE BETTER TRAINED'. They are, academically, and in practical theology. And there are more denominations encouraging pastors to be regularly involved in continuing education. The big challenge is still in the mentoring area, and in social skills, conflict resolution, counselling skills etc. When I am asked why pastors/leaders have problems with conflict-resolution my short response is 'unfinished family-of-origin stuff' .

'IF ONLY OUR PASTORS STAYED LONGER'. This one is serious. See the Expastors section of our website for a lot of material on this issue. Over 100 Southern Baptist ministers are terminated each month. The Southern Baptist Convention listed the 'Top 5 Reasons for Forced Termination in SBC: Who's going to control the church? Poor people skills on the part of the pastor; the church is resistant to change; pastor's leadership style does not match the congregation; unresolved conflict before the pastor arrived. When we marry church and pastor, ideally it should be for better, for worse - and for a long time. Longer pastorates generally produce healthier churches.

'IF ONLY WE DIDN'T HAVE SOME DIFFICULT PEOPLE IN OUR CHURCH'. Perhaps we all need training on How to Get Along with Almost Anybody. We all have 'difficult people' in our lives. They are to be loved too, rather than exist as 'objects for change'. There are at least three qualities required for dealing with such folks: genuineness, non-possessive love and empathy. If someone's 'difficult' they are living with some unresolved guilt or grief or anger: they were hurt somewhere along the way. Healing, prayerful love is the answer for most of them. (But then, as a wise pastor told me, the best thing you can do for some people is leave them alone!).

'IF ONLY OUR PASTORS AND LEADERS WERE HOLIER PEOPLE'. Here we touch the need for pastors - for everyone, ideally - to have a spiritual director and be in a relationship of accountability with someone. Otherwise, 'your dreams may carry you to places your character can't take you; likewise, your talents may carry you to places your character cannot sustain you.' Every pastor is supposed to be a spiritual director, says Eugene Peterson so eloquently in many of his books.

'IF ONLY WE PRAYED MORE/BETTER'. Yes, prayer is our response as creatures to a powerful Creator, as children to a loving Parent, as obedient servants requesting guidance and instructions from our Master. We pray, writes Jacques Ellul, because we are commanded to pray, not primarily because we 'want results' or 'feel better.' However, if I can be forgiven for this apparent oxymoron, there is something we have to classify as 'neurotic prayer' - it's escapist, an alternative sometimes to action. 'Then the Lord said to Moses, "Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward!"' Sometimes prayer means work, action!

'IF ONLY WE WERE MORE PROPHETIC'. Depends what you mean by this. Some people read 'prophetic' as a ministry of discernment of people's needs and/or destinies. That's part of it. Others read an apocalyptic meaning into the word - like best-selling 'end-times' books. I'd prefer to regard prophecy as God's dynamic word for us at this time, in this place - to the church, and to the world.

'IF ONLY WE KNEW WHAT OUR MISSION WAS SUPPOSED TO BE'. We do. We are called to do/be in our world what Jesus was/did in his. Mission involves preaching and teaching and healing and relating to people on the margins and social justice - all of the above. In particular, let us never forget the 200 million Christians who have to live dangerously because they're Christians. A little contribution I try to make for them is to post up-to-date information about the persecution of Christians to about a dozen Christian newsgroups. Tens of thousands will read the stories there and pray for our sisters and brothers who live in danger of their lives because they are followers of Jesus Christ.

'IF ONLY WE CONCENTRATED ON WHAT WE DO BEST' There is a general acknowledgment that if we don't pursue excellence we will die. The eminent church consultant Lyle Schaller says the small church in urban areas will only survive if it specializes in what it does best - rather than trying to do everything larger parishes do.What has God put into the hearts of some of our people in terms of mission?

'IF ONLY PEOPLE WOULD WORK HARDER' say the pastors. The basic axiom of inspiring leadership: Generally speaking, you get the level of commitment you expect. At Blackburn Baptist Church in the 1970s I used to encourage literate people to read a book a week about the Christian faith and life. We had a large bookstall and tape library. A sermon-a-week is a very thin diet for a growing Christian. 'But not all are readers'. Right, but 90% are, and others listen to tapes. (And about 'working harder': note Eugene Peterson's dictum - pinched from C S Lewis - that many pastors are busy because they're lazy).

'IF ONLY THE PASTORS WOULD TRAIN US BETTER' say the people. There's a catch 22 here. The pastor's task is to equip the church to minister to itself and to the world. We don't do that very well, infected as most of us are with a spiritual virus called 'clericalism'. See the article 'Ministry as Empowerment'.

'IF ONLY WE HAD MORE PASSION/FIRE'. Two years ago Jan and I did a SKI trip around Australia ('Spending the Kids' Inheritance'). We listened to the Psalms as we drove down the beautiful Western Australian coastline, and to Paul as we drove across the Nullabor. The passion of Paul is amazing, when you hear him in a short space of time. Read Colossians 1: 24-29 for example - the best pericope I know in the New Testament about ministry in the church and the world.

If I were to select one key factor determining the health of any church, now or in the future, it would be this one. Let me conclude with a quote, from arguably the best Methodist preacher in the English-speaking world in the first half of the last century:

'All true progress in this world is by the echo of the groan of God in the hearts of men and women. How were the slaves freed in the British Empire? Did all England wake up one morning and say: "This is wrong. We must free the slaves"? No! One man woke up one morning with the groan of God in his soul, and William Wilberforce and his friends laboured until that most splendid hour in our history, when Britain was worthy of herself, and, under no pressure from anybody but the pressure of her own conscience, paid a larger sum than her national debt to free the slaves.

'How was all the social trouble after the Industrial Revolution ameliorated? God groaned in the heart of Lord Shaftesbury, and he toiled and toiled to serve and save the poor. How were the prisons cleaned up in England? Did everybody suddenly say, "These prisons are places of indescribable filth"? No! God groaned in the hearts of John Howard (! - my exclamation point) and Elizabeth Fry. How were the orphans rescued from the streets of London? A century ago (as recently as that!) God groaned in the heart of Thomas Barnardo. Progress is by the echo of the groan of God in the hearts of men and women. And you need never despair for our wayward race while "the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered". (Westminster Sermons, Volume one, page 84).

But let us never forget that a truly Christian passion is not only for mission, but for a personal relationship with the living God. Read the stories of Sangster himself (the biography 'Doctor Sangster' by his son, Paul Sangster), and Augustine, and Francis of Assisi, and Patrick and the three Teresas (Avila, Lisieux, Calcutta) and John of the Cross, and Wesley, and Spurgeon (who often counseled with people for 15 hours at a stretch and forgot to eat), and Dom Helder Camara, and our Lord Jesus Christ, whose 'Passion' for us cost him his life.

Prayer (from the morning office in the Australian Anglican Prayer Book): As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you, now and for ever. Amen.

~~~

RESOURCES

John Mark Ministries website:

What Does a Healthy Church Look Like? http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8567.htm http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8488.htm

Does the Australian Church Have a Future? http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8517.htm

How To Tell If Your Church Is Healthy (even Though It Looks Sick)! http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8485.htm

Ministry as Empowerment http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8113.htm

Your Church Can Come Alive http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/section/ycca1.htm

Other Resources:

Christian Swarz and Christoph Schalk, Natural Church Development, ChurchSmart, 1998

Christian Research Association http://cra.org.au/

Oikos House Church Ministries http://avoca.vicnet.net.au/~oikos/

National Church Life Survey http://www.ncls.org.au/

Andrew Sullivan, 'They Know Not What They Do', Time Essay, May 6, 2002.

Rowland Croucher

May 2002