Recently I read an article by Philip Yancey in which he suggests three qualities to look for in a healthy church. I found his ideas both interesting and challenging. The first quality is diversity. He says, “when I walk into a new church, the more its members resemble each other, and resemble me, the more uncomfortable I feel.” Generally, we would seek out people like us but Jesus throws us out of our comfort zones.
His second quality is unity. In spite of different cultures, genders, ages, status, social class, the church is united in its core beliefs and common vision. In John 17, Jesus prayed that His church ‘should be one.’ Although there are apparently 38000 different denominations, many share more beliefs in common than they may think. It may be that their practices and traditions are different. Since we are all individuals, even within a church we may prefer different styles of worship, but our beliefs about who we worship we hold in common.
Mission was the third quality. Archbishop William Temple said, “The Church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.” It may be that your church helps the local community or maybe has a more global mission, but a church that just lives for its members won’t grow. It ceases to be light and salt in the world; Sadly, it doesn’t bring the good news of the love of God to others.
I suggest that these qualities are to some extent interdependent (if a Church is united in its focus, it will likely push for mission, and eventually it will become more diverse). Maybe you have other suggestions as to what makes a healthy church? It certainly made me think, how DUM is my church? What can I do to make it more DUM?