Calling a Congregation Healthy is Fruitless

No Agreement Exists in Christianity as to What it Means to be Healthy

Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash

Calling a Congregationa Healthy is Fruitless

Throughout my six decades working as a strategic thinking mentor for congregations, the most fruitless term I continually hear to describe them is that they are healthy.

Healthy as a label for congregations is absurd, hollow, worthless, reactionary, confusing, prejudiced, useless, and most of all from a Kingdom perspective fruitless.

I avoid its use like I avoid COVID. Periodically the word healthy slips out of my mouth during a presentation. I either take it back or hope my audience does not remember me saying it.

If they ask me about it later, I deny I ever said it.

Every once in a while, when writing a stream of consciousness flowing from my tired brain, I keystroke the word healthy and stop immediately to replace it with another word.

Too often this disrupts my flow of thought. In my 70s, I cannot get back to where I wanted to be in my writing. The next words I would write did not stay in my short-term memory.

Why Not Healthy?

Why, and yes you may ask, do I have such an aversion to the term healthy when describing the current or future condition of a congregation?

First, see the second paragraph of this post.

Second, no clear agreement exists as to its meaning. Too many schools of thought within Christianity embrace the term. At times they mean the opposite of what another school of thought means.

Third, healthy is a fill-in-the-blank term. If people cannot think of anything else to say to describe their ideal for a congregation, they call it healthy.

Fourth, it is co-opted by people pushing certain ideologies about congregations.

Fifth, at least from my perspective, better terms exist to describe the ideal vitality and vibrancy of congregations. But there is no agreement about these.

Uses of the Term Healthy

Time does not allow me to describe all the fruitless uses of healthy. Here are just a few for you to consider.

First, early in my ministry, I heard the terms "healthy" and “unhealthy” used to describe congregations experiencing numerical growth versus those experiencing decline.

Second, I heard it about congregations adapting to the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, population density, and lifestyle patterns of their community context compared to those who did not.

Third, I experienced it when working with congregations in conflict. Their fighting resulted in them being labeled unhealthy. They wanted to return to a condition of health. I always wanted to stretch them. For them to be on mission once more in response to God’s leading.

(Note: To show my humanity, if you look deep enough you can discover I use the terms health and unhealthy in my writings about congregations in conflict. In this case, I only use them to describe the intensity of conflict in a situation, and not to label the congregation.)

Fourth, I see books, programs, and consulting processes about how to help congregations become healthy and sustain it. Even organizations that promote books, programs, and processes with the word health or healthy in their title and/or mission statement.

Fifth, for some leaders and movements, their ideological approach for congregations being what God wants them to be results in calling them healthy if they have the correct theology.

This fifth point motivated this post. I recently read that healthy congregations must hold a certain foundational belief about the Bible. They should preach and teach accordingly, as this miraculously contributes to their health. It is claimed to be the best—and perhaps the only—way to achieve health.

Why Fruitless?

I primarily experience the word healthy as describing a congregation in neutral terms. It is about a state of being, an existence, a sense of arrival with no need for further action.

I do not agree with this perspective.

Congregations are spiritual organisms, Live, active, and transforming.

Both spiritual and strategic words are needed to describe and characterize congregations as movements of God on a journey with an eternal mission.

If they are only healthy, they are not bearing the fruit of the Spirit to which God has called the Church.

What are some words with great richness you would suggest that best characterize congregations?