A fundamental Christian belief is that God is the Source of all life and being.
Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 8:6…
…yet for us there is only one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.
Here’s another way he put it in Ephesians 1:22-23…
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head (“head” means “the Source” in Greek) over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
So when a person wants to understand what makes a church healthy, He is where to look. The nature and purpose of the church is rooted in the nature and purpose of God himself.
The only healthy foundation
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (and throughout his letters to churches), he uses the image of a house or temple to communicate the nature of the church, whose purpose is to be built together for God to live by His Spirit. In chapter 3, verse 11, he says this about that house…
For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
His point: Knowing Jesus Christ is the key to everything about a church’s life together.
But this is not just knowing about Jesus Christ. Billions and billions of human beings have known about Jesus Christ. This is knowing his nature and purpose and then living by Jesus Christ. This means receiving, adopting and embracing His nature and purpose as our own and then living out of that nature and purpose like He does.
The degree to which a church knows Jesus Christ together is the degree to which it will be healthy. This is because it informs everything else about life together.
Understanding God’s nature
The first thing to understand about God’s nature is that God is not an individual. This was a part of the great mystery that God was an eternal community of Love holding the universe together. That was hidden and now has been revealed.
None of the Persons within God thinks or acts as an isolated individual. They think and act as a community.
The implications of this are deeper than we know. Much of the time individuals make choices that are best for themselves. They decide where they want to live, who they want to marry and what they want to do for a living.
But being made in the image of God means we were made to think and act in community. When that’s not the foundation of a church’s life together, we’re not imaging God.
Even when Jesus entered His earthly body, He still operated the same way as in eternity past. The Gospel of John records Jesus saying this…
…the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way. (5:18-19)
Jesus held the many-in-oneness of the eternal community of Love he was a part of even in his earthly body. The fellowship didn’t get broken. It just continued.
The main effect of the choice in the Garden of not receiving God’s kind of life was putting the individual at the center of what they did. This started fracturing relationships at every level. The first humans were no longer one. They were separate and trying to get along with each other.
Who God is
In the book The Community Life of God, author Milt Rodriguez says this about the basic nature of who God is…
The oneness of God is the unity of a community of persons who love each other and live together in harmony. They are what they are only in relationship with one another.
No above and below; no first, second, third in importance; no ruling and controlling and being ruled and controlled; no position of privilege to be maintained over against others; no question of conflict concerning who is in charge; no need to assert independence and authority of one at the expense of the others.
Now there is only fellowship and communion of equals who share all that they are and have in their communion with each other, each living with and for the others in mutual openness, self-giving love, and support; each free not from but for the others. This is a life of co-working and co-operation. This is a life of complete self-dedication to one another and a laying down of life for one another.
This is what it means to be a church as God intended.
The typical American view of community is getting together once a week to pray, sing, talk about the Scripture, etc. That’s a level of community. But the Lord definitely had deeper levels in mind when he talked about His disciples being like a healthy family.
On earth as it is in heaven
Now you may be thinking “there’s no way, we could never do that.” While it’s true that we will never do it 100% perfectly like God does it in this lifetime, God did come to reestablish His Kingdom and His image on the earth.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, it was for His Kingdom to be “on earth as it is in heaven.” While we won’t realize the fullness of this reality now, we were remade to significantly taste it and image it to the world.
Jesus prayed for his followers to be like the community He is a part of. Here’s what He said in John 17:20-23…
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
So it may seem like pie in the sky, but this is what Jesus prayed. He prayed that we would have the same kind of oneness as Him, the Father and the Spirit. If He prayed it, He meant it.
This is what healthy church looks like. It’s mirroring the same types of relationships that exist between the Persons of God.
Finding God’s purpose
The best way to discover God’s purpose is to look at the very beginning of the Scriptures (before there was sin) and then the very end of the Scriptures (after sin has been removed).
In most church contexts, the bulk of the focus of God’s purpose and plan is put on the act of salvation. This is a mistake. While it’s a necessary part of God’s purpose and plan because of the choice humanity made to rebel against God, salvation is not the totality of His purpose and plan.
The reason its a mistake is because when the focus is salvation, that’s where people tend to stop. But, God saved the world for a reason.
In the book of Ephesians, Paul was writing from a point of view outside of space and time and looking at God’s eternal purpose and plan. He writes this…
He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. (1:9-10)
Notice the mystery of His will wasn’t for Christ to be crucified. Yes, that’s a necessary part of the story. But the ultimate purpose is to bring all things together in Christ.
He goes on to say in Ephesians 3:8-11…
To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all people as to what the plan of the mystery is which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; so that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.
So God had a plan, and that plan is carried out through the church. It’s carried out after salvation. God’s people are saved FOR something.
This the groundwork of understanding healthy church life.
The importance of alignment
If there isn’t alignment on the nature and purpose of a church, there won’t be alignment (and therefore unity) in the smaller things. What we do together, how we make decisions, how we treat each other and so much more will be out of alignment. This leads to all sorts of trouble with who we are and how we should function together.
And there’s this misconception that unity is just agreeing on things. The problem is people can agree for all sorts of reasons. For example, people will agree because they’re lazy and don’t want to do the work of discernment. Or people can be people pleasers and are easily pressured into agreement even when they are discerning otherwise.
Godly unity is about cultivating God’s kind of life together. This is what makes a church healthy.
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Michael Fleming
Mike Fleming is the creator of Finding Healthy Church. Over 20 years ago, he was sparked by the frustration of failing to experience what the biblical story claimed a healthy church was like. He caught a vision and passion for seeing local churches be what they were designed by God to be. He shares what he's learning along the way so the health of local churches around the world are improved. He’s currently working on an eye-opening book that will help better understand what it means for a church to be healthy.