Why Are We Building Healthy Churches?

I like to think of myself as a prototypical dad (humble, I know). I tell bad jokes and talk to strangers at inopportune times. I did a great dad thing years ago: I coached my son’s flag football team. I was really good at it, or so I told myself. Before the season started, I sent out an edgy, sarcastic email to all the parents reminding them that their sons (and mine) would probably not make the NFL and so “let’s all take a deep breath and just enjoy the season!” I was enthusiastic and encouraging to the kids as well as gregarious with the parents. We even had an end-of-the-year pool party (with pizza!). It was great.

Then came the next year. I coached again, but I did none of the stuff I had the first year. No email. No party. I was still encouraging and gregarious, us dads can’t resist that. But other than that, there was none of the fun stuff from the previous year. A horrifying thought came to my mind soon after that second season ended: During that first year of coaching, I didn’t do any of that fun stuff for the kids. I did it for me. And after I had done it once, I no longer gained any pleasure from it, so I didn’t do it anymore. It never occurred to me that this new group of kids weren’t there the previous year. They had yet to enjoy all that fun. And they never did (at least not with me as their coach). My failure? I had treated those kids as pawns in my personal quest for fulfillment.

That’s a pretty ugly truth to me. And I can’t help but acknowledge that, as pastors, we face the same temptation in building healthy churches. We do all the things we are supposed to do like preach expository sermons, practice meaningful membership as well as church discipline, have biblical polity, and engage in missions and evangelism. But we do them as projects, not as passions. We treat them as ends that they aren’t instead of the means that they should be. And in the process, we feel good about our accomplishments for Jesus, but our people get trampled.

All the things listed above are good and should be done. Not as ends, though, but rather means. Means to what? A lot of things, one of which is the maturity of the people we lead. In Colossians 1:28, Paul writes, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Paul means that the maturity of the people we lead is to be one of our main goals in ministry. We teach our people in far more ways than just our sermons. We teach them when we show them what biblical polity looks like; we teach them when we practice meaningful church membership, too. But in all these lessons their maturity is the point, not our self-gratification.

The church I pastor just voted to pursue elder-led congregationalism. It took me almost seven years to patiently teach and shepherd the congregation to the point where we were ready to embrace biblical church polity. It was a box worth checking! However, there is the temptation for me to just check that box and move on to the next ecclesiological project. And if I’m not careful, I will. It is important to not only do the right thing but also to do the right thing for the right reason. Brother pastors, we must remember that the ecclesiological tasks given to us by God to accomplish are a means to the maturity of our people, they are not the goal in and of themselves, and they certainly are not for our own self-gratification.