I’m at a conference for my denomination (The Evangelical Covenant Church) this week, and on Tuesday I went to a seminar on revitalization in the church. The presenter laid out a framework of four types of churches, and asked us to place our churches in one of these four categories. The categories are: healthy missional churches, stable churches, critical moment churches, and at-risk churches. Here are the criteria they suggested as a way to measure what kind of church you have:
• People coming to Christ
• People integrating Scripture into life
• People engaging God in worship
• People growing in Christ
• People serving with their gifts
• People loving and caring for each other
• People rallying around a compelling vision
• People trusting one another and working collaboratively
• People meeting compassion, justice, and mercy needs in their community
• People believe in the leaders and the leaders believe in the people
Healthy missional churches experience these indicators routinely, stable churches experience them occasionally, critical moment churches experience them rarely, and at-risk churches do not experience them at all. I think any effort at trying to statistically categorize something like a church community is awkward and will have omissions, but I think this method is better than most I’ve seen. I think these indicators are better than the ways we often measure health (attendance, budget, property, etc.)

I said I thought that my church, Pasadena Covenant, was a “stable church” by these standards, where most of these things happen, but not on a regular basis. Here is what they said life is like in a stable church: We feel safe and comfortable, we are self-sufficient, everything is in order organizationally, we are doing fine – why change? The presenter went on to talk about how stable churches were actually the hardest to move towards being healthy and missional, because people have become comfortable and have no sense that anything needs to change. Stable churches are alive and active, but typically lack a sense of excitement, creativity, and are more focused inwardly than outwardly. In these churches there is not a lot of risk taking, because so much is invested in the status quo and most of the energy goes towards maintaining the church as an institution.

I think there are many signs of life to celebrate at our church, but this seminar was a good reminder that it is important to talk honestly about shortcomings we might be blind to.