10 signs you are part of an unhealthy church (2023)

When an online magazine recently sent me an article about "5 Signs You Are Part of an Unhealthy Church," I eagerly opened it. This topic is very important to me.

I am passionate about building strong, healthy communities.

The 5 Signs of the Writer were good as far as they went. Don't argue with her. I didn't leave a comment one way or the other as an answer.

What I felt, however, was that my experience seemed to be of a different nature than theirs.

First, here are her "5 Signs You're Part of an Unhealthy Church."

1) Leadership does not have a clear vision.

2) Leadership can never be questioned.

3) You are comfortable but never challenged.

4) Members are content to be bench warmers.

5) Public relations is never planned or preached.

All of this is true. But there is so much more.

Here are 10 additional signs (evidence, clues) that the church you belong to is unhealthy.

1.prayer, if offered at all, is a formality, an afterthought, a burden.

I recently spent a long weekend with a group ofThe pastorand their wives at a retreat in Italy, I noticed something odd. By the time I got up to speak, the service -- by then half an hour long -- had seen at least five prayers. The worship leader had prayed after a few hymns, the presiding leader had prayed, and at least two other people with roles in the service had prayed. Each prayer had been spontaneous, heartfelt and a joy. I knew then that a rich time of Christian fellowship was ahead of us.

On the other hand, it pains me to remember the Sunday services where I was a guest preacher and noticed that by the time I got up to preach, not a single prayer - not a single one! - had been spoken.

There is no more accurate indicator of a Christian's spirituality or the health of a church than the vitality of our prayer life.

2. Giving comes from duty and is never a joy.

"God loves a jolly giver," says 2 Corinthians 9:7.

When David received the offering to build the original temple, he was so struck by the joy of the givers. Scripture says, "Then the people rejoiced, for they had sacrificed willingly, because with a faithful heart they had willingly sacrificed to the Lord, and King David also rejoiced greatly" (1 Chronicles 29:9).

...not reluctantly or out of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.(2 Kor. 9:7)

3. Laughter is infrequent and, when present, is forced and quickly suppressed.

Someone asked a friend of mine, "Do you think Jesus ever laughed? The Bible doesn't say he did it.” My buddy's answer is as good as it gets: “I don't know if he laughed or not. But he sure fixed me so I could!”

We are "fixated on laughing", Christian. Joy is the very atmosphere of the throne room of heaven (Psalm 16:11) and laughter is nothing but audible joy.

The preacher who thinks he must tell jokes to make his people laugh is missing the point. The difference between this kind of provoked joy and the natural joy that wells up from the hearts of happy worshipers is the difference between day and night.

4. When the church ends, everyone disperses.

I said to a pastor in a church where I had just preached, “Close your eyes and listen. By then the service had lasted over a full half hour, but his people had stayed around and visited one another.

There are few greater compliments that can be paid to a church: the members love one another and can't wait to get together. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples,” said our Lord, “that you love one another” (Johannes 13:34-35).

5. When a leader calls for volunteers, they receive few responses.

I love the little line the warrior queen Deborah uttered after defeating the Canaanites. "That the leaders in Israel have led and that the people have volunteered, O praise the Lord!" (Richter 5:2)

Leaders can lead, but when no one follows, they are just taking a stroll. It takes strong leaders with courage and vision, dedication and strength, as well as volunteers from the Lord's people who are willing to go the second mile, do a little more than before, and are committed to the success of the work.

The community, forced to rely on the same few overworked volunteers, is on life support.

6. When a conflict arises, executives ignore it, hit the panic button, or back down.

An ailing community will go to one extreme or the other: it will panic at every conflict, thinking that this will be the final deathblow, or it will be constantly plagued by conflict, like a sickly body, suffering one disease after another suffers.

Stand in awe of the sane way Jerusalem church leaders have handled the conflictAct 6that had broken out. Both leaders and members responded so quickly and reliably that outsiders were impressed.Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples greatly multiplied in Jerusalem, and very many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

George Bullard has written a book and chairs conferences, both with the intriguing title Every Church Needs a Little Conflict.

A healthy church will often have growing pains, will be regularly attacked by the enemy, and must always be ready to deal with problems from within and without. (seeActs 20:29-30)

7. Even the leaders have a poor understanding of Scripture.

A working knowledge of God's Word is like the foundation of a house; It might not be the first thing you notice, but everything about the home is influenced by this strong foundation.

My mother, now almost 96, has been going to church her whole life. However, no one ever taught her how to study God's Word. She reads her Bible and marks it, I'm happy to report. But one day she said to me, "I'll just let it stand out and read there. It always seems to work.”

Well, I'm not going to put my wonderful mother down. However, that is not a way of studying the Bible. One has to wonder what it would have been like if, decades ago, a faithful pastor had settled down with the members of our rural Baptist church and taught them to focus on one book of the Bible and read it repeatedly until those teachings were understood and incorporated integrated into life, only to move on to another book. What if he had taken the time to teach the members the great arc of Scripture so they would understand the differences in Old and New Testament doctrine, the differences in gospels and epistles, and where the different epistles are in the larger ones frame fit.

"I don't know what the Bible teaches about this," one woman told me, "but I know what I believe!"

I said, "Then you just finished the discussion. Because I honestly thought we were trying to figure out what the Bible teaches.

As someone who had never been taught the word of God but had inculcated in her the importance of standing up for her beliefs, she could not tell the difference.

Pity the church with leaders who have a similarly poor knowledge of God's Word.

8. Jesus is rarely mentioned. It's all about "God".

Those who know the Word of God cannot avoid the emphasis that is given to Jesus Christ throughout. Scripture says, "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). And: "He is the visible image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15).

As John Bisagno says, "Jesus Christ is all that God has to say about himself." Jesus said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (Johannes 14:9) and "When the Holy Spirit comes... he will testify of me" (Johannes 15:26).

I confess to being amazed at times how Christians talk about serving God, living for God, etc., while ignoring Jesus. The early believers were persecuted not because they preached about God, but because they spoke about Jesus. (Acts 4:18) Had they been silent about Jesus, there would have been no persecution.

One church I know that has had a vibrant and effective ministry for a long time has the slogan "Making much of Jesus". Not a bad mission statement.

9. No one hears of salvation, no one is saved, and the baptistery is dry.

Growing up on our farm in Alabama, we had an orchard in the backyard. On the other side of the next ridge, my grandfather had a large apple orchard. Peach trees were scattered everywhere. They all had one thing in common: healthy trees always bore delicious and plentiful fruit. healthy fruit.

If the tree was barren or the fruit was diseased, it was a sure sign that the tree was in trouble.

This is not to say that all churches that accept many new members and baptize many hundreds are automatically healthy. Unfortunately, gimmicks can be used to get people to join a church and manipulate them into getting baptized. I say to our shame that many churches resort to it instead of taking the hard road of building a healthy church.

I have chosen you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain....(Johannes 15:16).

10. Neither members nor leaders are willing to pay the price to heal the church.

The transition from deathbed to health requires sacrifice, commitment, work, and often pain. It requires the patient to make extensive changes, submit to the supervision of healthcare professionals who know more than the sick patient and what to prescribe. It will require a willingness to die to yourself.

Therefore, a truly terminally ill church would rather die than live. To be sane, they would have to abandon their self-destructive ways, retire some unsanitary leaders, and become the kind of church they haven't been in years, if at all.

Right now, I can take you to half a dozen churches that are dying and who have rejected the good advice of friends who have told them what it takes to heal. With good reason, our Lord asked the man at the pool of Bethesda, "Will you get well?" (Johannes 5:6). Not everyone does.

The good news, however, is that I know of an equal number of small, formerly dying churches that have welcomed new outside leadership and placed themselves fully in their hands. These specialists are making sweeping changes — beginning with renaming the church altogether — and none of it comes without pain.

It is good for all of us, members and leaders alike, to remember three things every day of our lives:

1. This is the Lord's Church. He died for it, I didn't.(Matthew 16:18)

2. The only question is, "What does He want to do with His church?"(Acts 9:6)

3. What I do for the church, whether good or bad, Jesus takes personally.(Acts 9:3,5;Matthew 25:40,45).

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