Do you remember having to get annual physicals growing up or taking your kids to get them every year for school sports? It was just a part of life. You needed it to make sure you were healthy enough to participate. Or maybe now, like me, you can relate to going in for annual checkups to get your bloodwork done to make sure your “numbers” are all in the proper range. It’s good practice to regularly check your body’s vital signs to make sure you’re healthy. And if something is “off,” you can catch it early and do something to get back to healthy in that vital area.

The same holds true for our local congregations. That’s why in the AAC’s Anglican Revitalization Ministries (ARM) we emphasize church health instead of just church growth. The Church is the Body of Christ, as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:27 (NLT), “All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” The Church is a body, not a business. It’s an organism, not just an organization. It’s the living body of Christ, and living things, if healthy, grow as God designed them to. Just like a child will grow naturally if he or she is healthy, your local church will grow if you focus on keeping it healthy.

So how can you get your church to be healthy? The answer is by simply doing the things Jesus told the Church to do!

And what did he tell the Church to do? Although you can find the answers to that question throughout the Bible, especially Acts 2:42-47, Jesus was kind enough to summarize it for us in two key scriptures: The Great Commandment and The Great Commission.

The Great Commandment says,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39 (ESV)

The Great Commission says,

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)

In these two scriptures, we find the five vital areas that every church must put into practice if it wants to be healthy and grow (and not just do them but do them well and in a balanced way). Just as the human body has multiple vital systems that each fulfill a different function, we are only healthy when all those systems are working well and in balance together. If one of our vital systems is unhealthy, then we are unhealthy. So it is in the Body of Christ. If all five of these vital areas are working together as God designed them to, the Church will be healthy and grow. If even one vital area is not going well, you won’t see the growth you want.

But here’s some good news: every church already does all five vital areas in some fashion. Your church is already doing them (or at least knows its supposed to be doing them!). The problem is that often a congregation will be strong in one or two vitals and neglect the others. But our goal is to do all five well and in a balanced way. And just like it’s important to do annual checkups on your body’s vitals, it is important to do regular checkups on your church body’s vital signs.

So what are these five vital areas?

In ARM’s Revive workshop, we communicate them using the acrostic VITAL. They are:

Vision for Evangelism/Mission – From The Great Commission, “Go…” This means both personal evangelism and the Church having a missional strategy to non-believers in the community in which it lives.

Intentional Worship – From the Great Commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God…” This means gathering to express your love for God in worship and also keeping in mind a non-believer’s experience during every aspect of that service.

Transformation to Christlikeness (Discipleship) – From the Great Commission, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” This means to have a spiritual formation process in place that moves people from unchurched to a fully mature missional follower of Jesus.

Authentic Community (Fellowship) – From the Great Commission, “baptizing them…” This means to bring people into a genuine family of believers, where they can both belong and be loved.

Lay Mobilization (Ministry) – From The Great Commandment, “You shall love your neighbor…” This means having a plan to help every member discover who God made them to be, so they can fulfill what he made them to do for him and his Kingdom both inside and outside the Church.

Ordinary Time is a great season to pause and do a church checkup – to check your church’s vital signs. This allows you to celebrate where you’re strong and see where any of the five areas may need some improvement. Now is a great time to catch where any areas could use some attention and strengthen them, balancing them out with the areas that are going well. With this knowledge, you can make plans for the ministry road ahead in the coming school year.

Two practical suggestions to do a church checkup:

1.    Simply slow down and take the time to ask (preferably with whatever leadership team you have): How is our church doing in all five of these vital areas? Are we doing them all? If so, are we doing them well? Do they all work together to see lives being transformed into Christlikeness? If not, what can we do to address this in the Fall so our church will be healthier and grow?

2.    To do a more diagnostic checkup, you can have your church take the Revive Church Health Assessment. It is a churchwide assessment of your congregation’s health, measuring 10 areas that all fit within the five VITALs. If your church has never taken the assessment, it will give you a good baseline to work from. If you took it already, it would be wise to take it again to see if you’ve grown in any of the areas you’ve been working on or identify a new area of growth to work on.

(If you take the assessment in either case, once it’s complete, I’d love to do a free 30-minute Zoom call with you and your team to review the results and give suggestions on next steps for your congregation.)

You can access the assessment “HERE”

Taking the time to check your congregation’s vital signs will help you be healthier and, in time, grow as God designed you to! If you’d like more information about this or would like help in these areas, please contact us by visiting www.churchrevive.org and scheduling a call.