A healthy Church

Frank Rees Principal of Whitley has written a great article on healthy Church... I have highlighted what struck me...

A Healthy Church

For the church to be healthy, we have to know who we are and in Biblical thought that means to know whose we are.

Baptists have always explained this through the centrality of believers’ baptism. The healthy church has believers’ baptism as its central symbol. Here we know who we are and whose we are: we are believers in Jesus, obedient to his call and example, and our life is immersed in his way. We follow him, and his priorities  define what we are about.

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘You did not choose me, I chose you’ (John 15.16). Paul described the church as the body of Christ.  Jesus is the ‘head’ of the body, the one whose will and purpose directs the whole body. The healthy church is made up of people who respond to Jesus: we hear his invitation, ‘Follow me.’ We give our lives to his way and discover that with him we receive forgiveness and we become agents of his love for others.

Being a Christian and being the church  is different from belonging to an  individualist, voluntary  club. In the Jesus community of disciples, we find that we are becoming whole together. We give and receive, as we relate to him and to each other. In the New Testament this common life is called ‘communion’ or ‘fellowship’ and it is supremely expressed at the Lord’s Table.  Again the priority is important: it is not our table, but the Lord’s.  Jesus invites us to share fellowship with him. This is our life.

A healthy church is, then, a community of disciples of Jesus. We gather to worship him, in the presence and power of his Spirit. We serve him as he guides and enables us, through the gifts of his Spirit. Our purpose is to follow his example, in serving the mission of God in the world: to bring God’s creative love, healing and hope to all the nations.

A healthy church does not pretend that it can save the world: only God can save the world, but God calls us to be part of that mission. A healthy church is thus a missionary church, living out our obedience to Jesus through being good news. A healthy church is a ‘good news people’,  not just in what we say but in how we live. Faith, hope and love, peace and joy characterise our lives. This way of life is infectious. A healthy church will be a growing church, made up of growing people.

A healthy church knows who it is by, by knowing whose it is. We are a people of God, called into communion with God, through Jesus, by the power of his Spirit and also with all God’s people, past, and present and future. What a wonderful live we share! We are immersed in the life of God!

Frank Rees

July 2008