What makes for a healthy church? We tend to think of healthy churches as those that are undoubtedly successful. With people coming to know Christ, exponential growth, a popular lead pastor, innovative ministries, a great worship team and a solid social media presence, many churches today are clearly being blessed by God.
But success is not always the same as health. Focusing on success alone reflects easily measurable affirmations that a church is doing something right without an intentional focus or an understanding of the possible longer-term negative consequences that can occur with such a narrow outlook. Successful churches, as I have come to witness personally, are not the same as healthy ones.
An Intentional Focus
For almost 40 years as an industrial-organizational psychologist, a senior manager at Microsoft, a management professor and a consultant, I have worked with Fortune 500 companies, Christian institutions and large and small churches in some state of meltdown. In almost every case, Christian and secular alike, these organizations were successful. But that success often had the malignant side effect of masking underlying problems. Success didn’t breed success with my clients as much as it masked dysfunction.
At the beginning of any consultation, I tell my clients that dysfunction is always functional. Churches, just like businesses, often think that they can power through chaotic times, and then, when things get to some sort of normal, they can move out of survival mode to be more intentional in their leadership. The problem with that sort of thinking is that it’s hard to weed out the dysfunction because it becomes ingrained in what gets noticed and applauded.
Four years ago, I was part of a four-person team investigating the claims against Bill Hybels, former senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, of inappropriate behavior toward several women. I knew almost nothing about Hybels or Willow Creek. Besides, I also had little personal insight into what it takes to lead a megachurch. I agreed to be part of the team not because I was interested in adjudicating the actions of Bill Hybels, but because if the allegations were credible, then it was likely—as is often the case with a fallen leader—that the church itself, the staff, the elders, the culture, the reporting structure and even regular attendees likely played some enabling role in the functional dysfunction.
This deep-seated enablement is exactly what we found and noted in our report. While our findings that the allegations were credible grabbed headlines around the world, the most meaningful aspect for me was how Willow Creek’s new leadership listened to our organizational recommendations. Even though they would be less in the limelight, they would create a healthier church culture.
Since then, I have continued to consult with churches and Christian organizations, as well as teach healthy and sustainable spiritual leadership over the years to approximately 30 megachurch pastors as part of their graduate coursework at Wheaton College. While there is plenty to learn from the mistakes of others, I have been blessed to have a front-row seat to observe incredibly capable pastors who, in some cases, have taken on churches that were on the brink of failing and brought them to a place of health.
So, let’s ask the question again: What makes for a healthy church? The answer is straightforward yet profound. Churches must be intentional about wanting to be healthy. Yet, the daily pressures and cultural expectations on large and small churches alike align more with the secular world’s expectations of celebrity CEOs, athletes, actors and musicians. But it doesn’t need to be this way. While working with pastors, churches and other Christian leaders, I have come to rely on five biblical values that can lead to spiritually healthy churches when prioritized over their more worldly opposites.
- Substance Rather Than Success
Everything a church does has some importance. Rarely does a church take on a ministry, preaching series, volunteer activity or media engagement that doesn’t seem to have value in furthering God’s kingdom. But as the opportunities multiply, churches inevitably take on too much, overburdening staffers.
Mission statements are supposed to help delineate what a church focuses on, but with a pithy three-sentence structure such as “Love Jesus. Serve Others. Change the World,” they are often too encompassing—and thus too amorphous—to guide decisions about what to invest in. Without a clear vision, churches are either rooted in their past, focused only on immediate needs, or chasing after some shiny innovation that appears to be successful at other churches regardless of the context.
On the other hand, spiritual health starts with a church committed to discerning the will of God to become a Christian institution of substance. Such a church commits itself to the weightiness of its work. They think in terms of kingdom legacy, investing in ministries rather than merely funding them, understanding that the work of the ministry is just as important as the outcome. And there is holistic integrity to such investments—ministries driven by a clear, overarching small set of commitments do not occur at the expense of other ministries or people.
But all of this starts with a churchwide discernment process. Ruth Haley Barton writes in Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership about discernment as a place of deep listening and response to the Spirit of God within and among us. It is a slow communal practice that invites God to lead rather than seeing decision-making as merely a rational exercise.
That discernment process creates a vision of what the church will look like in three to five years, shaping a more focused and strategic planning process with specific goals and practices. In providing direction, such plans specify what the church will do and, equally important, what the church will not take on at this time. Such clarity helps to communicate a strong vision that—because the discernment process was comprehensive—will both motivate the church community and minimize misunderstandings by focusing the church on a smaller number of agreed-upon activities. When substance takes precedence over success, no one gets the glory except God.
- Servanthood Rather Than Star Power
Without substance, the celebrity culture drives much of what we expect from pastors. It’s not enough these days for pastors to preach well and serve their flock. As traditional churches have given way to stages and auditoriums, pastors often take on a public persona akin to being a performer. Apart from preaching, pastors are expected to have a magnetism on camera and some active social media presence for the rest of the week. But the vast majority didn’t sign up for this. When they started, they wanted to be servant leaders, making a difference in the lives of those they serve.
Pastors yearn for a sense of integrity between the backstage of their lives and the front-stage persona. The pressures to perform have a substantial personal cost when pastors cannot work from a place of deep spiritual centeredness. We are a culture enamored with the idea of strengths, yet as Christians, we know we cannot lead from our own strength. However, there is no room for self-doubt and humility for pastors who are pushed to be stars.
I am convinced that pastors have major moral failures because they can no longer be seen as failing at small things, being human, acknowledging their limitations, and being part of a grace-filled community that, in turn, ministers to them. Pastors who work from a false persona develop an external shell to protect their vulnerability. But as that shell hardens, their slow spiritual death is hidden even from themselves as they turn into the empty rock stars they never wanted to be.
A healthy board of elders encourages its pastors to minister from a place of deep authenticity, knowing that the church’s long-term health will mirror its pastoral team’s spiritual health. Boards must have the strength of character to say “no” to unnecessary expectations put on pastors. And at times, they need to protect pastors from themselves. While being accountable to their elders, pastors also need to have others in their lives who offer confidential support as well as accountability. They need people who love them enough to call out a front-stage persona that is in danger of becoming spiritually empty.
- Stewardship Rather Than Sacrifice
Healthy churches don’t just focus on the needs of their lead pastor; they also recognize that their staff deserves a workplace where they, too, can experience life more abundantly. Ministry is a call to sacrifice, and there is something to that—God calls us to do difficult things in service to his kingdom. But that call doesn’t mean we can justify toxic workplaces that consume people as they seek to serve God. To that end, healthy churches focus on stewardship rather than sacrifice: articulating and rewarding reasonable expectations while not minimizing bullying behavior.
Healthy churches don’t treat staff as the minions of the lead pastor. As with other management professors, when teaching leadership I don’t dwell on the individual characteristics of a leader. Instead, I prefer to talk about “leadership culture,” which is more about the functioning of a leadership team. Lance Witt, a former Saddleback Church pastor and founder of Replenish ministries, writes about stewarding leadership culture in Replenish: Leading From a Healthy Soul. Reflecting on the fast-paced world of Saddleback, he wrote that the often-unclear expectations crushed staff. To increase clarity, he and his leadership team created a covenant they all agreed to abide by. It included such weighty topics as praying for each other and not backing down from voicing concerns, as well as showing up on time and having fun. Minimizing interpersonal conflict by laying out agreed-upon rules of engagement, the covenant was a form of stewardship for individuals, the leadership team and the church.
Stewardship also requires church leaders to invest in their wellness “banks,” ensuring they have personal resources to draw upon when tough times come. Burnout occurs when we are drained of resources that help us cope. Taking a walk, lighting a candle or doing yoga are short-term breathers that do not replenish resources and subsequently do not minimize burnout. But spending time with loved ones, investing in relationships and doing meaningful things inside and outside of work—especially those we feel called to—can replenish us.
Pastors need to steward themselves by cultivating a rhythm of intentional spiritual practices. They need to read Scripture for their own souls and not just for sermon prep. They need to set aside time for vulnerable prayer. Extending these practices, pastors need to honor the holy rhythms of the Sabbath and the Jubilee year, prayerfully developing day-in-day-out and year-in-year-out practices and boundaries to their harried lives. It’s not uncommon for pastors in healthy churches to create and commit to a rule of life that is an intentional schedule of practices for personal spiritual formation. But it’s not just about prayer, Scripture reading and other disciplines. In Crafting a Rule of Life, Stephen A. Macchia takes a holistic approach to personal renewal, focusing on time (spiritual renewal), trust (relational renewal), temple (physical renewal), treasure (financial renewal) and talent (professional and vocational renewal).
Lastly, healthy churches have pastors who invest in healthy family relationships. Too often, those in Christian leadership must decide whether to deal with an important and timely issue at church or go home to their families. It’s hard to fault a pastor who stays late to minister to someone who has lost a loved one. But those demands happen all too frequently. Healthy churches are structured so pastors can carve out time with their families. As Peter Scazzero notes in The Emotionally Healthy Leader, pastors must be able to lead out of their marriage or singleness. They cannot overfunction as leaders at the expense of living a healthy, balanced life.
- Solitude Rather Than Seclusion
The practice of Sabbath keeping and time away from work is not meant to create lives of seclusion. Healthy churches emphasize the practice of spiritual solitude for their leaders to ward off spiraling toward isolation. Last year, Barna research group shocked many Christians when its latest survey showed that 42% of pastors had considered quitting over the past 12 months. None too surprisingly, those who thought about quitting noted the immense stress of the job, political divisions among the church body, and the impact their role was having on their family. But almost half of those who thought of quitting felt lonely and isolated.
In my 30s and 40s, most of my clients wanted to focus on HR issues and team building. But my practice took a turn in my 50s as an increasing number of executives who were my age called me for leadership coaching. That was the official term we put on the contract, but honestly, they just needed someone to talk to.
It’s lonely in the executive suite. The job is 24/7 with no real break. Leaders must not show favoritism among their team members, so they usually do not have anyone inside their organization to talk with. They can’t lose their cool in front of others, holding their tongue even as others rail at them. Moreover, they must also keep major secrets and often can’t defend themselves because of confidentiality, which inevitably accelerates the rumor mill. The pastors I have worked with have the same limitations. Added to these external pressures, pastors—feeling called to their work by God—deal with what Scazzero calls their “shadow side of doubts, insecurities, feelings of inadequacy and fears.”
Pastors need a weekly day off to practice a holy Sabbath to build margins into their lives that allow for the silence of solitude. They also need an uninterrupted day away each month for prayer, study and reflection. All pastors should have a three-month sabbatical every five years. I have heard plenty of complaints from church members that it’s unfair for pastors to have a sabbatical when they don’t have one in their jobs. Still, healthy churches recognize the unique and heavy burdens placed on pastors and their need to rest, recharge and reconnect to the meaningfulness of their calling.
The cost of not building times of solitude into the pastorate can be devastating. Tod Bolsinger makes this point explicit in his book Tempered Resilience. He writes that often when pastors are new, they give themselves over to the demands of their church without healthy boundaries for themselves and their families. Quoting the well-known family therapist Edwin H. Friedman, he notes that this enmeshment reflects “a failure of nerve.”
Bolsinger goes on to say that such an attitude toward work is unsustainable. After a few years, pastors will inevitably swing in the other direction, withdrawing into themselves. At that point, they are often worn out, making it easier to listen to internal voices telling them they deserve better, tempting them to self-medicate and push moral boundaries for short-lived relief. They still might be able to function “front stage,” but their inner lives are crumbling. When a big moral failure finally comes, people don’t recognize that their church’s unrealistic expectations played a role in their pastor’s downward spiral.
- Stretch Rather Than Stagnate
Pastoral stewardship and solitude give pastors the resilience to grow and adapt as they face challenges, but churches that focus on success are averse to change. And why wouldn’t they be? It’s a great feeling to be part of something that is working.
Churches and other Christian institutions can be susceptible to even greater rigidity when they interpret success as God’s blessings for following his will. And let’s be honest—change of any sort at church is sure to raise someone’s ire. Sometimes it’s just easier on relationships to stay with the status quo. Yet a culture that hesitates to embrace change becomes fragile and likely not agile enough to pivot when something as unpredictable as COVID-19 hits.
This risk aversion, rigidity and fragility affect staff, stifling creativity and personal development. Healthy churches honor their history and the blessings of God while recognizing the common IT mantra that all systems have a propensity for failure. Hard times will come. Healthy churches realize that the best time to take on focused change is when things are going well, buying the church time to invest in the discernment process regarding its future.
Just as healthy churches recognize the importance of spiritual growth, they invest in the professional development of their staff. Bolsinger points out that leading well is a form of spiritual formation. But pastors get very little leadership training in seminary. Instead, most pastors learn to be leaders through the public crucible of ministry mistakes—either theirs or others’. There are plenty of books and seminars on leadership. Still, in management scholarship, we have known for almost 50 years that leaders have their most meaningful leadership development opportunities at work.
Pastors of healthy churches develop their junior staff with continuous, intentional mentoring and formative feedback. These regular minor corrections minimize the likelihood of significant failures down the road. This spring, the megachurch pastors in my healthy and sustainable spiritual leadership class could write a theoretical or applied paper on leadership. Noting the dearth of on-the-job leadership training materials for churches, many created leadership development programs for their staff.
Healthy churches have a humility that is palpable when I meet with their leaders and members. They know who they are and whom they serve, investing in substance rather than concerning themselves with success. Pastors are not pressured to be stars, but can bring their whole selves to their calling. Healthy churches do not make unrealistic demands on their staff, seeking instead to help them shape sustainable roles. Pastors in healthy churches create life rhythms that provide resilience so they do not withdraw from others with disastrous consequences. Finally, healthy churches honor their past but are responsive to changing demands. They invest in staff’s spiritual and professional development to prepare for a future that will stretch them.
It’s clear that the pandemic and political turmoil of the past three years have changed churches, and for those pastors who have contemplated leaving, it doesn’t seem like these changes have been for the better. But a recent conversation with a megachurch pastor has given me hope. He told me that while many people in his congregation have left, attendance has returned to almost pre-COVID-19 levels as new families are tired of isolation and yearning for community. These folks, he said, are not necessarily Christians, and they don’t come with preconceived notions of what the church should (or shouldn’t) be.
I suspect other churches are also getting a breather from past animosities and seeing the Holy Spirit at work in the ruins of previous success. In God’s providence, this may be the perfect time for churches to invest in sustainable spiritual health.
Margaret Diddams is the editor of the Christian Scholar’s Review and the principal consultant with The Diddams Group. She has spent much of the past 40 years as a professor and academic administrator in Christian higher education.