Living the Abundant Life: 
4 Principles For Church Health and Growth

In the King James Version, Proverbs 29:18 is rendered, Where there is no vision, the people perish.   Vision is God’s dream of what he wants to accomplish in and through our lives and the lives of our churches.  Vision tells us what God's goals are for us, painted in word pictures of what each life, congregation, or denomination will look like when he's finished, including the differences we will make in the world around us.  Knowing God’s vision for us is the key to excitement, enthusiasm, hope, energy, and motivation. 

When I was a mental health counselor, I worked with people who had no personal vision.  We said that they had “major depressive disorder”, and sometimes called them “suicidal.”  Being suicidal is the result of despair, and despair is the result of losing one’s vision.

The situation is the same for the Church, which is why the Church in the West (Europe and N. America) is largely dying.  In the U.S., 80% of parishes average 100 or less in weekly worship.  Most of these churches have a mission statement that tells what they believe God’s task is for them, but it is surprising to find a member who knows it by heart, or a congregation that actually uses it.  A few parishes may have a general vision statement they also never use, and less than one percent have a specific vision statement they are actually working toward.  For lack of a vision of where God is leading them, the other 99% will be dead or inconsequential to the Kingdom of God within 50 years.  Their denominations, if they have one, will die with them.

As a young (and naïve) pastor in the 80’s and early 90’s, I tried to implement different church growth programs in the churches I served, only to learn what God blesses with success in one place, is usually not God’s plan for any other.  I have come to realize, as others have, that just as God has a unique vision and plan for each person, so he does for each congregation.  While we cannot directly apply what works in one place to another, we can take God’s principles revealed in scripture, and use them to discern and accomplish what God calls us to do.

Throughout the biblical narrative, four principles appear repeatedly:

1. God gives people a mission to perform for him
2. God shares his vision of what he will accomplish through them, and what life will be like when they are finished working
3. He tells his plan so they will succeed
4. He disciples them, equipping them for success

Only God can bring the ultimate success, often in amazing and supernatural ways.  But he almost always uses his people as partners, allowing them to share the glory with him when together they are successful.

We see these four principles at work in the lives of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus among others, and the New Testament authors share these with us.  In Ephesians, Paul opens with God’s vision for his adopted children—Christians.  God dreams of giving them a fullness of his love, holiness and righteousness, the maturity of Christ, and unity in the faith and knowledge of God’s son.  God’s plan is for the Church to do this through its people by equipping them for works of ministry service.  Here is part of the Church’s mission for God, his vision, for us, his plan to do these things through the Church and its discipleship ministry.

Using these four principles within faith communities allows each to develop its own unique style of ministry and expression of its faith.  Goals and plans that flow from vision will be different for every church.  And this allows for a distinctive execution of the plan.  And each church is free to develop its own discipleship ministry.  This is not to say we cannot borrow successful concepts from other congregations.  But rather than trying to impose a “one-size-fits-all” approach to church health and growth, a process of discerning God’s direction in these four areas allows for individual application in each setting.

Without vision we die as people or churches, having no dream of a future, and therefore no hope.  But God has a mission for us to complete, and a vision of what our work with him will look like when finished.  He has plans for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future (Jer. 29:11).  And he commands us to make disciples of Jesus Christ, who act like him and experience The Extraordinary Life he lived and promised to us.  Seek God for these four principles and apply them to your church, and you’ll be one of the one percent of churches who survive this century.

 

Mark Gardner is a Christian Life Coach in Eaton, Ohio who specializes in helping people and churches experience The Extraordinary Life God promises us.  His web site is gardnercoaching.com, where you can also find his blog.