Video Transcript: Lesson 23 Indicators

Welcome back. Let's jump right into this. We're at lecture 23. We're talking about a healthy church, and what are some of the indicators that your ministry is  healthy? What are some of the targets we're looking for? So, let's pray. Let's get  the Lord involved in this process. We know more than anything, we need him.  And so join together, and then we're gonna get right into our conversation today. Lord, we give you thanks for this day, for your grace and Your Mercy, Your  goodness, Lord, we want to put this time before you that this would be a time of  learning and just Lord of time of worship, that we can just honor and glorify, you  Lord open up our hearts and our minds to see the truth of what you would have  for us and Lord, I pray even as I'm speaking, you will bring so many other  thoughts to the minds of those listening God, and how it applies to their specific  context. That spirit, you're going to be at work throughout these next few  moments and just a special way, Lord bless these dear people who labor in your vineyard, may they see much fruit in there as a result of their hard work. We  pray this in Your name, amen. Okay. So I mentioned in the last lecture that in the last 15 or 20 years, there has been a lot written on this subject of Church Health, that there's been a shift away from the Church Growth Movement to Church  Health, which has been just, I think, a really good or really smart thing. Now,  with that, though, I'd say there's almost been a little bit of an explosion of writing  on Church Health, which is a good thing. But it can also be kind of maybe a little  bit of an overwhelming thing. Because there's so many different options out  there to kind of, or theories or models to look at and where do you even begin?  What What, what, what should we look at? There's a wonderful book on church  revitalization, if you're interested. It's called Nine marks of a healthy church by  Pastor Mark Dever, who just in nine marks is a just a fantastic church  revitalization Church Health Ministry, and he's just a wonderful guy, really  effective pastor, great writer. So if you're interested, Mark Dever's nine marks of  a healthy church. Well, anyway, in his book, Mark Dever sets out what he would  say are nine marks of a healthy church. And he goes through his list and it's a  great list and I've got nothing against his list. It's fine. In the back of that book,  though. Mark Dever has an appendix. And he lists other church, church  revitalization books that focus on Church Health. And he has over 40 books  listed there. And he's even Dever, says this is just a small sampling of all that's  out there. So he has 40 books kind of like his listed in the back. And in each of  those he lists what their marks of a healthy church are. And they have about 10  to 12. In each of those, I'd say the typical number is about 10 for these books,  and there's just a wide variety. So you've got Dever's nine marks, you've got  these other 40 books, which is just a small sampling of all the books, and each  of these 40 have about 10 and the reading through this appendix. These are  things you need for church vitality, everything from expositional preaching, to  prayer to better facilities, to restoring self esteem, to high impact worship. I  mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. So where does one begin in order

to get a grasp on church revitalization that is effective and faithful to Scripture.  So I'm gonna just very humbly throw out my list in light of the hundreds of other  lists that are out there. I'm going to present to you mine and then a little bit of the rationale of why I chose this. Okay, so here's my list of indicators of Church  Health. One is a church is healthy, when there's the priority of prayer, that  there's a regular communication between the church and the Lord and the Lord  and the church. Okay. I'm going to break these down more specifically in a few  minutes, but we're just gonna run through the list now. Two is the centrality of  God's word. That is that it is the final say it is the authority of all things in the  church. Three, that there's a proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in Word.  And in deed, we'll talk a little bit more about that fourth, godly leadership, that  there's godly leadership over the church. And fifth, that there is just a  demonstration of loving covenantal relationships within the local body. Okay, so  these are the five that I have picked in terms of Church Health. Okay, so why did I pick these five and not more or not others? Well, I can say, I chose these five,  because one, there is very strong, biblical support. For each of these things, you can probably already in your mind, just start thinking of various scriptures, or  examples, where these are all, you know, really elevated that this is what the  church is supposed to be about, right? Second, these are visibly demonstrated  in the early church in the book of Acts. In the letters that Paul writes, all of these  things are really elevated, what the church is supposed to be what the church is  supposed to do, right? Also, I chose these five, because when you look at all the lists of hundreds of lists that are out there, I would say these five are some of  the most frequently cited characteristics of healthy churches. And so I would say there's really a strong consensus within the body of Christ, among church  leaders, that these are indicators of what the church is supposed to be. And I  would also say, these five are universal in nature. So for me teaching this class  where we have students all over the world, that's really important. Here's what I  mean, by Universal, that these principles, these five, can be applied to  determine the relative health of a church at any time. And any place in history,  regardless of the size of the congregation or circumstances. Okay, so we could  be talking about a large mega church in the United States, we could be talking  about a small church in Mexico, we could be talking about a medium sized  church in Africa, we could be talking about a church in the 1400s, we could be  talking about a church in North Africa, or in Asia, or anywhere at any time. This  has nothing to do with the size of the church, it has nothing to do with budget, it  has nothing to do with anything like that. We could even apply these Church  Health Indicators towards the persecuted church, if there's an area in the world  where the church is being persecuted. If we want to know if that church is  healthy or not. Would these indicators stand? And I would say, yes, I would say  that they're, they're still the this would apply to really every and any  circumstance. Okay. So that's why I chose these five. And, and this is not 

intended, these five is not intended to be like exhaustive like, This is it? This is  the only thing that indicates whether or not a church is healthy, in fact, or a  ministry of that was everything. Whether you're a church, kind of worshiping  community, or you're doing some kind of ministry, or chaplaincy or some kind of  an outreach. This should, this should work for you as well. Even if you're not in a formal church context, These, these should still stick and work for you. Okay. So what I did was really tried to come up with what I thought would be the  minimum. Okay, so this is not an exhaustive list. In fact, I think it's the opposite.  It's really the minimum. This would be like the minimum standard for Church  Health, okay. Or I would say, ministry, health, whatever you're doing, or you're in a church and your your over a smaller subset of ministry, again, whatever if  you're a military chaplain or you work in a hospital or you work for the fire  department or whatever it is, these are still like ministry health indicators. Okay.  So so why Why have I kept it at five? I, you know, I really tried to prayerfully  discern, you know, getting it to the minimum? Well, I kept it at five for a couple  reasons. One, well, here we go. I'm sorry, we missed this slide for you before,  but we can go back here are here are the reasons, strong biblical support,  demonstrated in the early church, especially in the book of Acts, these are  frequently cited, and they are universal in nature. Okay. So why did I keep five?  Why Why stick to a minimum? Well, first of all, revitalization can really become  very overwhelming, it can be intimidating. And when you're looking at a list and  say, Okay, we're going to start doing some revitalization here, what do we need  to do, and you see a list and it says, here's the 14 things you need to do first,  like 14, or 10, or 12, like, that just feels like a lot, we have to do well in all of  these things. And so I think, kind of, if we can shrink that down, it makes  revitalization seem just a little more attainable, a little more easy to get at. Okay.  And I think it's worth noting that when we look at Jesus's letters to the churches  in Revelation, the words of correction he has for them, like, it's only like a couple of things. Like, you know, he doesn't say, here's the 73 things you need to do,  it's often 1, 2, 3, things like that's it. It's just focused on this first, that's what you  need to do. And so instead of like, overwhelming somebody with, with it, like,  let's just, let's just create the minimum we're trying to work towards, and then  we'll get there, okay. Next, I just think also, the longer the list, the less focus,  we're going to have on maybe the things that really matter most. So if you've got a list of 12, things of what's the indicator of a healthy church, I don't think they're  all equally important. So what I tried to do is really just elevate the ones that I  thought were just super, super important that you just had to have, okay, these  were the, like, non negotiables, for Church Health. Because there, there are  other things that are important, that are, you know, contribute to Church Health,  but, but you can, you can build a God honoring community, apart from them. For example, if your church is struggling with stewardship, you might live in an area  of like, great poverty or something, and, and just stewardship is going to be an 

incredibly difficult thing for you to do. Now. Certainly, looking at scripture,  stewardship is an important thing. It's a critical aspect of discipleship, Jesus  talks about it a lot. And that's something that needs to be cultivated in our  churches, and in our ministries, but at the same time, I wouldn't say like, if you  don't have good stewardship, like you're, you're not going to be a healthy  church. Like, it's important, but we can probably get around that, at least for a  while. It doesn't have to be the first thing we address. Also things like, you know, having adequate facilities or, or more strategic things like vision, casting, those  sorts of things like all of those things, they're helpful enhancing the health of a  church, but I wouldn't say they're of first importance, they're they're most critical.  And I would say this, kind of going back to those five, that a church that  demonstrates obedience to God's calling in each of those five principles, I can  pretty much guarantee that you will be a strong and healthy church that is  pleasing to Christ. Okay. So if you can hit those five things, you will be stronger  and healthy and you will be a delight to the Lord and He will be using you.  Conversely, if there is a church that fails to implement any of these five  principles, I would say that you would suffer from some significant measure of  ineffective ministry. Okay, these are just like, there's no substitute for these when it comes to doing healthy, effective ministry, in the name of Jesus Christ. So  we're going to walk through these five, and actually, we're not going to take a  whole lot of time because through previous lecture, you become bit familiar with  them already. And that probably shouldn't surprise you as I listed the five. But a  couple, we're going to talk a little about more in depth, but we're gonna move  through it fairly quickly. Okay, so let's talk about Church Health Indicators. Okay.  So let's start again, with the priority of prayer. Obviously, this was tremendously  important to the early church, Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, it was as a  result of a 10 day prayer meeting that the disciples were having, and so the  church was really birthed out of prayer. And the descriptions of the early church  in Acts 2 and Acts 4. They very much are a praying community. Again, Paul's  letters, I mean, there isn't much argument here about the priority of prayer. We  see also in Acts 6, when there is the issue of the widows, the Gentile widows  who aren't getting adequately fed during the food distribution. They the the  apostles form a team of deacons because they said, We cannot abandon the  ministry of word and prayer, in order to serve tables. Now, they weren't saying  that feeding the widows was a unimportant job. It was a very important job. But  they said, what we're called to, and what we need to be about is the ministry of  word and prayer. Now, where did they get that from? Well, that's what they saw  modeled in Jesus, a ministry of preaching and prayer, well, to get to the  preaching piece in the minutes. Okay, but for right now, we're gonna focus on  prayer. So right again, right off the bat from the early church, we see this is just  grounded in. So let's talk about the priority of prayer. One thing I think that we  often overlook, and I've tried to mention this that a few times, is that 

revitalization is is a matter of spiritual warfare, there is really an active enemy  who seeks to undermine the church, who seeks to cripple the church, who  seeks to, you know, lock the doors of the church who seeks to bring division  within the church, and seems to distract the church. Right? I mean, Satan  stands against the church. Jesus even told Peter about this, like, you know,  Satan has asked to sift you, as wheat. There's all kinds of attacks that come  against the church. And so when we are doing spiritual or doing church  revitalization, it's we're entering into the realm of spiritual warfare. And so prayer  is critically important. You know, we need to fight a spiritual battle with spiritual  weapons, which is prayer, right. And so, a couple of things that we were  challenged to do as a church that I'd like to share with you. One is really having  the people commit to pray for you, the leader of the church. We had done this  Sunday in our church where we talked about the importance of praying for  leaders. And we had a kind of these little commitment cards and people sign  their name on it, and they turned it in. And it was I commit to pray for Pastor  John, I commit to pray for the leadership team and, and daily and this is, and we gave them things to pray for. And because we knew as soon as we got really  serious about revitalization, we were going to come up against an enemy, who  was going to try to stop us at every corner. And so we just got really serious  about having people pray for kind of on the flip side, leaders, we got really  serious about praying for the people in our church. And we we've done some  different things. We had some prayer cards we worked through, we had different things that we would pray over, praying for leaders, praying for ministries, all that kind of stuff. Just we were just really in a place of committing to pray for each  other. People praying for the leaders, leaders, praying for the people. And then  together, we were praying for the mission. That God would use us as the things  we were trying to do, we're going to be successful. Until I just think it's a good  question to ask you at this point, just like, hit the pause button for a minute. Are  your people praying for you? Are they praying for the leaders? How much are  you praying for them? And then when you gather together, how much of your  time when you pray, is it praying for the kingdom, it's praying for mission it's  praying for what God wants you to do? Because if you're like, most places,  when it comes to praying, we're praying for Aunt Sally's, you know, broken  ankle, and my cousin Larry, he's having surgery next week. You know, those  kinds of things. And it's great, we should pray for Aunt Sally and you know,  cousin Larry, that's, we want to give everything up to the Lord. But are we  praying for the Kingdom? Are we praying for God to intervene and to do  something significant in the ministry of our church? And you cannot, as I said,  this is this is one of those things, there is no substitute. If you're not a praying  church, you're not a healthy church, I don't think there's any better indicator of  either personal, a person's own spiritual health, or a church's kind of corporate  health, then then, then prayer prayer is like the thermometer. If you tell me what 

your prayer life is, like, honestly, I can tell you exactly where you're at, with the  Lord, because nobody has a vibrant prayer life, that is struggling and unhealthy.  And vice versa. There's very, very few people I can imagine, who don't have  much connection to the Lord in prayer. And they're, they're just not following  through with praying. And they're just growing and thriving. Okay, so that's a  priority of prayer. Okay, to the centrality of God's word, just as we don't have to  hammer on this too much, because we've talked about it quite a bit already.  We've discussed at some, remember we talked about Ezekiel, about the power  of the Word and the Word is like a hammer, the word is a fire, the Word is living  and active, it's a double edged sword, all those kinds of texts. And we just really  have to stand on the centrality of God's Word. In terms of our doctrine, what do  we believe? Now I know there's going to be denominational differences, and not  everybody who watches this is going to believe the same things. And you  probably have different views on things like maybe baptism or end times that I  do. But when we think about the core orthodoxy of our faith, you know, we we  gather around statements like the Apostle's Creed, you know, the distinctive, like salvation by Christ alone, those sorts of things, right? The idea that Jesus is  coming again, we might disagree on what that looks like, and the order of all  things, but we know he's coming back, and he's making all things new. Okay, so  just in traveling of God's word, in terms of our doctrine, and then also in terms of our practice, like, what is the church supposed to be? How was the church  supposed to act? How do we treat each other? What a marriage look like? How  do we relate to each other? What does God say about giving and those sorts of  things? So we can only be the church, when we follow God's design for the  church, right? We can only be obedient to God when we know what God says.  So that's why the centrality of God's word is, is everything. Because if we're  doing kind of what we just want, or what we think is good without it, being in  Scripture, like, we're going to be off base, we're going to be off target. So we  always have to come back right to what Scripture says because it is the Lord's  church. He died for it. He purchased it with his blood. It is his bride. It's his idea.  We are graciously invited into it. So the idea is, then this is his we do what he  says he's revealed that in his word, not, well, I got invited into this now I'm going  to change everything up or we're going to do what we want, right? So there's  always the centrality of God's Word. And we cannot, I've said this before. We  cannot elevate the word enough. In, in our in our communities in our ministries,  that that is a bedrock, it is the final say in everything. Okay, we've talked about  that a lot so we can move on three churches. An indicator of a church being  healthy would be that it has a proclamation of the gospel in word and deed.  Now, last lecture when I was talking about no fascination with numbers and  getting beyond that and the problems was the church growth model. I hope  nobody took that to mean that we don't want to go out and share the good news. Of course we do. That is the Jesus, he was an itinerant preacher and he went all

around Galilee, and Judea, and out into the desert the Perea area and went to,  you know, Tyre and Sidon and just all over the place, preaching the good news,  right. And that is the model of the church, Jesus in a very famous passage in  Matthew 28, the great commission says, Go out into all the world and make  disciples teaching that, you know, baptizing them and teaching them, all the  things I have commanded you, right. So if a church is going to be healthy,  there's going to be a proclamation of the gospel, certainly, like in the pulpit, but  but also in the lives of the people. We're always talking about Jesus, and we're  bringing the good news that churches are actively engaged in mission, of the  good news going forth. We think of Romans 10:13, in that passage, where Paul  says, you know, How will anybody know unless they hear and how will they, you  know, know, unless someone preaches, and how will someone preach unless  they go and how will someone go unless they are sent that whole piece. So  there definitely has to be this declaration of the good news in Jesus Christ. I  mean, we talked about the gospel, I don't know about five or six lectures ago,  really hard and really in depth, that gospel needs to be shared. And if it's not  being shared, if it's not being declared, within the walls of the church, or within,  or the ministry, and then outside the walls, within, it's not doing what it's  supposed to be doing, it's not functioning the way it's supposed to be  functioning. I mean, imagine, you've got a factory that makes shoes, that's the  purpose of the factory, the only thing is, the factory doesn't make any shoes, we  would say that would be a very unprofitable factory. It would be soon to go out of business, it would not be doing the very thing it's supposed to do. So in that  mindset, you know, we need to make shoes, right, we need to be declaring and  proclaiming the gospel through the spoken word, whether that's preaching or  sending missionaries, or witnessing to my neighbor, or family members, or co  workers or whatever it is getting the word of Jesus Christ out, right, I think we  can all agree on that. And I want to make sure that based on what I said in the  last lecture, there's no confusion that we want to get the word out about Jesus  Christ. Now, the heart, the why we don't want to get too much on statistics is, we can't determine who hears the gospel and responds to it. I can determine how I  preach and the number of spiritual conversations I get in with lost people who  live in my circle of the world. But I can't control whether people say yes or no to  the gospel, that that's really the work of the Holy Spirit, right. Also, though, I want to focus on the part of proclamation of the gospel in deed, Scripture is very clear that the gospel of the kingdom of God is more than just a matter of words. But  its actions right. James tells us that faith without works is dead. I John, let us not just love in words, but but in our actions in our deeds and in the things we do.  So we see this in Acts, right. Early in the book of Acts, people are like selling  their possessions. They're giving things up to, to make sure that there's no poor  among them, and what a statement it was, you know, there was no need among them. It was the gospel being lived out. And being lived out in such a way that it 

became so incredibly attractive to the outside world, that people wanted to join  them. They had such respect and revere and admiration because of the way  they cared for each other. So sacrificially, right. So there's, it was the living out of the good news of Jesus Christ. And I would even take it a step further. That  proclamation of the gospel in deed has to really be in some form or fashion.  There has to be an inclusion of ministry to the poor, whether it's in your  community, or the world's poorest in third world countries. Now some of you may be in a situation like that. And so just the ministry right outside your door is to the poor. But for those who aren't, I mean, look at that, look at the model of Jesus's  ministry, there was always room, there was always an attention of focus on the  poor. He tells us in Matthew chapter 25, this really haunting parable about  people who at the end times find out that even though they declared the name  of Jesus, that they weren't didn't belong to Him. And so they're confused. And  why is that Lord, he goes well, when I was naked, and, and poor and hungry,  and imprisoned, you didn't do anything for me. And I think for churches in the  affluent parts of the world, that is one of the scariest texts of Scripture. Because  I think we've fallen into this trap of like, as long as we believe the right things  about Jesus, then were cool. But a church that is healthy and strong and really  resembles Jesus in the world today, there has to be this declaration of the good  news. Now, that's not to say that, as long as we're doing good stuff, we don't  need to proclaim the gospel, it has to be both in the spoken word, and in good  deeds, that demonstrate the truth of the gospel, that is what Christ salvation and leads people into that right. That's, that's what we have to have. Okay, moving  on. Fourth, godly leadership. We talked a lot about this last time, in our last  series of lectures, about godly leadership about the character of a leader. And  so, you know, your commitment to do the right thing, and you just your  commitment to Christ, and how that's demonstrated, you know, things like  integrity and all that, okay. And a church, a healthy church is going to have a  leader of character and integrity, right? I mean, it's so self evident. I don't even  know, you know, how much we need to talk about this, right? I mean, we think  about somebody like Saul, who got appointed as king over Israel, and he was  not a man of character or integrity. And he was removed, right? That's just how  God puts in then a man after his own heart, right. And David, so the reality is,  godly leadership is is such a defining characteristic. I mean, right of the church, I mean, who is the head of the church, Jesus Christ? I mean, is there any more  godly leadership, which are taught in terms of like, perfect character, holiness,  uncorruptible, righteousness, like, and that's really what we are to me. Now? Are we perfect people, by no means? We put we plead the blood of Jesus Christ.  Yet, there's this calling to holiness, there's a calling to sanctification. So whether  that's something you need to work on, or you've got some leaders around you,  that are not living this way, I can tell you the kind of the support on which you're  building ministry, like, those are going to get knocked out and they're going to 

crumble. And how many times do we hear about a church leader who falls into  sin, right? And stumbles and just a huge kind of ripple effect that has and so we  want godly leadership, right? We want people to look at the leaders of the  church and get a belief, a sense of this is who Jesus is. And this is what his, uh,  his family is like, right? And so if they don't see a model and where are they  going to see it? Okay, so we've we've talked about that plenty. And then also,  loving, covenantal relationships, we have to remember that the Church is the  Body of Christ. It's a body of believers. It's not just me and Jesus is Jesus, me  and Jesus, and you and you and you and, and you, right? So there's all kinds of  commands in scripture on this. Jesus, when he's asked what is the greatest  commandment and goes, you know, Love the Lord your God. The second is just like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Those are so intertwined. Jesus can't  even pull them apart, loving your neighbor, and loving loving your neighbor, or  loving God and loving your neighbor. In I John says, You can't hate your  neighbor and love God. Right? You have to you have to love people. Jesus tells  us on the night before he's betrayed, he's, he's praying with his disciples and he  teaches them, the world will know that you are my followers because of the way  you love each other. Okay? So a church isn't just a group of people who believe  the right things, it's a group of people who believe the right things, and live  together in in harmony in the unity of the Spirit. Okay? Again, this becomes so  wildly attractive to the rest of the world. This is what we see in the early chapters in Acts, people who were living together in covenant, in covenant with God, and  in covenant with each other, with the motivation of love and service, above all  things in such a beautiful picture, right? I mean, it's such an amazing picture,  that it's really jaw dropping to read the stories of what these people were doing  for each other. Okay, so it's not just, we want to have the right belief system, we  want to have a community that's also built around the right belief system and  embodies those beliefs. So we really can't have a healthy church. When  everybody's fighting, when there is unresolved conflict. When there's, you know,  different cliques and divisions, and people don't get together outside of worship  services, all when, you know, they're not really friends, you know, that's not a  healthy church. If we think of a healthy church, the first thing, in fact, we might  think of as, oh, the way they all get along, together, they enjoy each other, they  love each other, they pray for each other, they laugh together, they sacrifice for  each other. They they come alongside each other, and the good times and the  bad, and, you know, they just go through life together. I mean, that's, that's really the idea of a healthy church. And I think that that's just something that a lot of  churches need to work on. I went to a church some time ago, and I was there to  kind of evaluate and just see how they were doing. They wanted me to come  and just say, What do you think, how are we doing in terms of health? And so I  came into the church, and for Sunday morning worship, and nobody said hello  to me. And actually, I got dirty, suspicious looks from people in the congregation 

who were kind of like, Who is this guy? And what's he doing here? Like, we don't like him. That was very much the impression I got. But then I noticed, it wasn't  just me that they were very, very cold. towards each other, there was very little  interaction. And without even the church service starting, I knew that I was not in a healthy church, I knew that there was a lot that needed to be addressed here.  So we absolutely want to kind of think about that, work on that. So again, we say these are some really good indicators of what Church Health is. Obviously,  there's a lot of other ways if you do assessments like NCD, there's eight  categories you can do, Mark Dever, his nine marks, Harry Reeder, embers to a  flame, he's got 10. They're all well and good, and they're wonderful. And I  wouldn't say anything bad about them. But for our sake, for this class, I really  tried to boil it down to five, universal factors. So whoever you are, wherever you  are, whatever circumstance you're facing, if you can move towards these five  things, you are in a good place, you are in a healthy place. The numbers may  come, they may not. But I can tell you, if you're doing these five things, the  numbers are far more likely to come. Okay. But even if they don't, you're  honoring God, you're, you're embodying what it means to be a church and to be  followers of Jesus Christ in this world. Okay, enough on this, let's pray, and  we're gonna wrap this up. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your church.  Lord, thank you for creating a community that we can all be a part of. It doesn't  matter, Lord, our skin color. It doesn't matter the language we speak, Lord, it  doesn't matter even when we live or where we live. By faith, we are invited into  this community of all the saints and Lord we bless you for that. Lord, we thank  you for all the churches represented around the world. And as for the ones that  we are part of Lord, that You would do a great work in them, so that the world  would see the salvation that you offer and that they might join our family. Lord,  we love you. We pray this in Your name. Amen. All right, we've got one more  lecture here to go as we think about thinking about Church Health, and I'm  looking forward to sharing that with you.