“Which human body is more healthy – the one that can successfully complete a five kilometer run or the one with no contraindications in a battery of tests?  If a champion marathon runner’s lab test shows a high white blood cell count, is she healthy?  If the electrocardiogram of an overweight, inactive, fifty-year-old male reveals no sign of heart disease, is he healthy?  In both cases, the body exhibits signs of both health and disease.  Health is both the ability to function at an optimum level and the freedom from disease, known or unknown.”

 

(This page is an excerpt from my doctoral thesis-dissertation, “Healthy Church Growth Among Mainline Churches in the Bible Belt: A Study of Growing Congregations in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ, 1996-2001.”  The full thesis is available to borrow from my own personal library, from Corinth’s library, and from other libraries such as Hickory City, Lenoir-Rhyne University, Catawba College, Elon University, Gordon-Conwell (Charlotte), Columbia International University, and the Southern Conference.  This excerpt covers literature on the subject of church health.)

 

B.  Church health

 

1.      Systems theory finds the church

The concept of “health” as applied to the church can only be considered metaphorically.  Webster defines health as “physical and mental well-being; freedom from disease, pain, or defect; normalcy of physical and mental functions; soundness.”[1]  Health, when used in a literal sense, refers to organisms, not to institutions or organizations.

The metaphor of health is appropriate for the church, since a primary biblical metaphor for the church is “the body of Christ.”[2]  The Apostle Paul uses the body metaphor to emphasize the differentiation of its member functions leading to its fundamental interdependence, its relation of submission to the head (Christ), and its essential unity.  The New Testament does not explicitly connect the church-as-body metaphor with the concept of health or disease.

The rediscovery and refinement of the metaphor of health as a paradigm for assessing the church can be traced to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian-born biologist considered to be the founder of general systems theory (GST).  Jurich and Myers-Bowman note that as von Bertalanffy “refined the systems approach and worked with scholars from several disciplines, he developed as a major goal the unification of all the sciences.”[3]  The Society for the Advance of General Systems Theory was organized in 1954 in Berkeley, California, with the initiative of von Bertalanffy and others, and by 1958 included membership of academicians in the fields of psychiatry, engineering, anthropology, mathematics, and operations research.[4]

Miller noted in 1966 that systems ideas were by then taken for granted in many academic disciplines, even though the GST society shrank numerically in subsequent decades. [5]  Jurich and Myers-Bowman identify the basic assumptions of systems theory: holism, hierarchy, openness, self-reflexiveness, and a reality that is “constructed rather than discovered,” since knowledge has no objective existence outside the knower.[6]  The commonalities across various disciplines are significant, although they vary in their application.  Systems theory resists a linear cause-and-effect understanding of living things and human relationships, replacing that understanding with a view of reality described as chaos and complexity.[7]

Senge applies systems theory to organizations, arguing that systems thinking “integrates the disciplines.”[8]  Senge identifies five disciplines of a learning organization – systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.  Systems thinking impels the organization to understand the wholeness of its context and to continue the learning process in order to adapt to a constantly changing environment.  Every action changes the system and requires feedback.  Senge insists, “the unhealthiness of our world today is in direct proportion to our inability to see it as a whole.”[9]

Bowen applied systems thinking to family therapy.  His classic concepts “have become part of the language of family therapists and are used so automatically that there is a tendency to forget their origin.”[10]  These seminal ideas applying systems theory to family therapy include the differentiation of self scale, which is “similar to an emotional maturity scale,”[11] “fusion between intellect and emotions,”[12] and triangulation,[13] which addresses the emotional relationships among three individuals.

It is not difficult to connect this overview of the origin and emphases of systems thinking with the New Testament metaphor of the church.  Systems thinking began with biology, spread to psychiatry and sociology, and naturally has found a place in the understanding of human connectedness through organizations and families.  That circuitous route brought the application of systems thinking to where it should have begun – the church as the body of Christ.

Pattison was among the first to apply systems thinking to local church life, building from his own dual backgrounds of human behavior and theology.  He resisted the cultural trend of individualism and commented, “our culture has so focused attention on doing, that we tend to ignore our being.”[14]  Pattison did not downplay the significance of doing, but said that “the church system is a unique source for the being dimension of identity.”[15] 

The church has lost some of its socio-cultural identity, Pattison noted, and must recapture the eight essential functions of a strong system – a leadership, commitment, behavioral sanctions, organization, goals and tasks, association, behavioral taboos, and outside connections.[16]  The church must recognize and improve its unique subsystems –  proclaiming, symbolizing, moralizing, learning-growth, sustaining-maintaining, and reparative.[17]  “Each subsystem is part of the total system . . . . It is most effective when its efforts in all these areas are mutually reinforcing.”[18]

Pattison saw the pastor “as essentially a shepherd of systems,”[19] enabling the subsystems to function more effectively by a style of leadership that does not force itself on the parish.  The pastor’s leadership is instead exercised by sharing responsibility, authority, and control, and by intentionally modeling appropriate responses, setting limits for the system, and affirming the being of each member as unique.  This “frees the pastor to be a person,”[20] not trying to be perfect or attempting to solve every problem.

Friedman acknowledges a debt to Bowen as he applies systems theory to family, pastor, and congregation.[21]  Leadership for Friedman comes through self-differentiation, rather than either charisma or consensus.  “If a leader will take primary responsibility for his or her own position as ‘head’ and work to define his or her own goals and self, while staying in touch with the rest of the organism, there is a more reasonable chance that the body will follow.”[22]

Friedman’s contribution to systems thinking as applied to a Judeo-Christian religious community flows out of his observation that “all clergymen and clergywomen, irrespective of faith, are simultaneously involved in three distinct families whose emotional forces interlock:  the families within the congregation, our congregations, and our own.”[23]  He applies the same paradigm to the congregational family as he does to the nuclear family.  Six basic family concepts have relevance to the “religious work system,” as he labels the faith community – homeostasis (balance), process and content, the nonanxious presence, overfunctioning, triangles, and symptom-bearer.[24]  Once again, the resistance is to an “A-causes-B linear thinking,” replacing it with “the nature of organic systems.”  If there is a problem, it is a system-wide problem.[25]

      2.  Two streams of thought

Various writers have employed phrases such as “church health” or “healthy congregations” in the past twenty-five years, with a broad range of meanings. The literature is clearly divided into two primary camps – ecumenical and evangelical. 

Authors from the ecumenical tradition tend to borrow heavily from the sociologically-based models of systems theory.  Steinke contrasts “system thinking” with “separate parts thinking.”[26]  He develops extensively the health and illness metaphor, noting ten principles of health and disease applicable both to the human body and a congregation and adding parenthetical commentary:

§  Wholeness is not attainable.  (But it can be approximated.)

§  Illness is the necessary complement to health.  (It is all right to feel sick, feel burdened, and be down.)

§  The body has innate healing abilities.  (No one can give you – or the congregation – what you don’t already have.)

§  Agencies of disease are not causes of disease.  (All disease processes are enabled.)

§  All illness is biopsychosocial.  (Wow! Everything is connected.)

§  The subtle precedes the gross.  (Early detection is the best treatment.)

§  Every body is different.  (There’s no universal treatment for every organism – or congregation.)

§  A healthy circulatory system is the keystone of health and healing.  (Feedback systems promote health.)

§  Breathing properly is nourishing to the whole body.  (The Spirit must be active among the members of the body of Christ.)

§  The brain is the largest secreting organ of the body, the health maintenance organization (HMO) of the body.  (The mind converts ideas into chemical realities.)[27]

 

Steinke focuses his effort on keeping the congregation healthy by resisting “diseases” and “viruses” such as murmuring, anxiety, accusation, deceit, and triangulation,[28] and opening the church to the possibilities of Senge’s model of “continuous learning.”[29]  He finds his biblical motif for wholeness in the Hebrew µlv (shalom, peace), “a balance among God, human beings, and all created things.  All parts are interrelated.”[30]  The role of the leader in the healthy congregation is to rise above anxiety and reactivity to a useful concept in systems thinking – the same concept as Friedman identified – self-differentiation.[31]

Richardson applies Bowen’s Family Systems Theory (FST) to the church.  Like Steinke, Richardson identifies the leader’s primary role as one of reducing anxiety.  A key leadership skill for Richardson is observation, “stepping outside of our own subjective responses to what we ‘feel’ is happening, and learning to watch what is actually going on.”[32]  What is going on is likely to fall along two axes – togetherness vs. individuality or closeness vs. distance. 

Wisdom in congregational life, according to Richardson, implies being able to achieve a higher level of differentiation in the church and especially among the leadership.  “The higher the level of differentiation of people in a church, synagogue, or faith group, the more they can cooperate, look out for one another’s welfare, and stay in adequate emotional contact during stressful as well as calm periods.”[33]

Richardson addresses other tools for understanding and reducing anxiety in order to promote church health – triangulation, over-functioning and under-functioning, and the impact of birth order on leadership in the church.  His overriding assumption is that “emotional systems get in trouble and symptoms erupt as the result of some kind of imbalance in the system.”[34]  Four goals will make assessment productive:

§  Assessing the sources of anxiety

§  Defining symptomatic patterns

§  Estimating the basic level of differentiation

§  Planning for change in self as a leader

 

Campbell builds on the work of Senge, Friedman, and Steinke.    He borrows heavily from concepts in Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline, using the “reinforcing feedback loop” to illustrate the systemic interchange in a growing local church.  A positive worship experience leads to greater attendance, which leads to more clergy work, to clergy exhaustion, and to a less positive worship experience.[35]  Campbell develops three tools for systems application to local congregations – appreciative inquiry, congregational culture analysis, and scenario planning.  All three tools amount to providing a resource for the dialogue process, which suggests that in Campbell’s mind, a healthy congregation is one that communicates, envisions, and plans constructively.

Goodman is even more limited in her explanation of church health, describing “congregational fitness” as a healthy handling of conflict in the church.  Absence of conflict is not the goal, because “just about every authority on church conflict views low-level congregational conflict as normal and healthy.”[36]  Systems thinking clearly has an impact on her work, with emphases on accountability, responsibility, and reducing anxiety through openness to ambiguity.

Marty counters the view that the main function of all healthy churches is helping people “to overcome alienation, meaninglessness, loneliness, and boredom.”[37]  He affirms instead the importance of helping people to “move beyond the church basement, the sanctuary or the church yard, and into the public arena and a global mission.”[38]

Evangelical writers see church health quite differently than ecumenical authors.  Without the common language in the titles, one might not even realize the authors are addressing the same subject.  Drawing more directly on Scripture texts, evangelical authors define church health as faithfulness to the mission of the church as they understand it.

One of the older books with a health-conscious title is Wagner’s Your Church Can Be Healthy.  Wagner asserts that “one of the signs of good church health is growth.  If it is faithful to the Lord, and if it is in a healthy condition, he will add ‘to the church daily such as should be saved.’”[39]  Wagner saw himself in 1979 as pioneering the field of church pathology, noting seven diseases of the church that must be diagnosed and treated if the church is to be healthy:

§  Ethnikitis – a changing community

§  Old Age – an aging population

§  People-blindness – a resistance to the homogeneous principle of church growth

§  Hyper-cooperativism – an over-commitment to interdenominational and inter-congregational cooperative evangelism

§  Koinonitis – an overemphasis on internal relationships

§  Sociological strangulation – a disease of the growing church where facilities limit growth possibilities

§  Arrested spiritual development – a lack of maturity

 

Wagner updated his list in 1996, renaming “Old Age” as “Ghost-Town Disease.”  He adds two new diseases to the pathological directory:

§  St. John’s Syndrome – when church involvement is largely going through the motions

§  Hypopneumonia – a subnormal level of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit[40]

 

Other evangelical authors see church health in somewhat broader terms than Wagner, but an evangelistic focus is clearly evident.  Spader and Mayes list the characteristics of healthy churches as a commitment to biblical authority, to historic theology, and to an evangelistically focused mission statement.  “The Great Commission is the primary work of the church!”[41]  In their view, every activity in a healthy church is to be judged by its effectiveness in “winning people to the Savior, building them up in their faith, and equipping them to win and build others.”[42]

Dever’s “nine marks of a healthy church” are all related to a correct use of Scripture, such as expositional preaching, a biblical understanding of conversion and evangelism, and biblical church discipline.[43]  Macchia’s “ten characteristics of a healthy church” are more balanced, seeing Scripture as the means, not the goal.  The ten characteristics by which a congregation might measure its health from a biblical perspective include “learning and growing in community,” “a commitment to loving and caring relationships,” and “wise administration and accountability.”[44]

The ecumenical and evangelical approaches to church health offer a consistent set of contrasts.  In the evangelical perspective, health is defined as achieving goals consistent with the nature of the organism.  The ecumenical view sees health as normal functioning.  Table 2 compares a number of different features in the ecumenical and evangelical approaches to church health.

 

	Ecumenical	Evangelical
Source
Social sciences	Scripture
Value	Community	Evangelism
Focus	Process	Results
Goal	Acceptance	Conversion
Method	Reduce anxiety	Increase commitment
Leadership	Self-differentiation	Discipleship
Table 2.  Church Health Comparison: Ecumenical and Evangelical

Both views are consistent with the health metaphor, both add a critical component, but both are incomplete.  Which human body is more healthy – the one that can successfully complete a five kilometer run or the one with no contraindications in a battery of tests?  If a champion marathon runner’s lab test shows a high white blood cell count, is she healthy?  If the electrocardiogram of an overweight, inactive, fifty-year-old male reveals no sign of heart disease, is he healthy?  In both cases, the body exhibits signs of both health and disease.  Health is both the ability to function at an optimum level and the freedom from disease, known or unknown.

      3.  Balanced views

Easum and Bandy draw on the organism metaphor to examine congregational health with an inclusive approach.  They reject the polarization of “deadlocked Christendom,”[45] and use the redwood tree as their organism of choice to illustrate what a vital church looks like.  Jesus is the heartwood, indigenous worship is the fluid, and small groups and ministries are the diverse but interconnected cells.,  Every cell must be implanted with the core values, the genetic code of the organism.

Easum and Bandy’s book is about growth and health, external function and internal vitality, and transformation and organization.  The work loses some of its credibility with its fixation on imminent and rapid cultural change,[46] but its balanced view of church health and growth offers a synthesis between the evangelical and ecumenical poles.

Schwarz, a German church consultant, uses an organism metaphor to describe church health.  “Critics of the church growth movement have often emphasized the need for quality congregations,” writes Logan in the preface.  “Christian Schwarz has verified the link between church health and growth.”[47]  Schwarz conducted research by surveying 1000 churches in 32 countries on all six continents.  His research examined a matrix based on both quantitative and qualitative axes.  The quality characteristics Schwarz identifies often correspond with an average growth rate of 10 percent or more per year:

§  Empowering leadership

§  Gift-oriented ministry

§  Passionate spirituality

§  Functional structures

§  Inspiring worship service

§  Holistic small groups

§  Need-oriented evangelism

§  Loving relationships

 

Schwarz rejects “technocratic” principles of church growth in favor of “biotic” principles, based on the Greek word bioV (bios, life).  “The biggest flaw in technocratic thinking is its total neglect of growth automatisms.”[48]  Schwarz’ biotic principles are as follows:

§  Interdependence

§  Multiplication of cells

§  Energy transformation to fight viruses, or crises in churches

§  Multi-usage, or co-leadership

§  Symbiosis, or gift-oriented approach to ministry

§  Functionality, or pragmatism

 

Hundrup connects the health of the pastor to the health of the congregation.  “If a pastor becomes unhealthy and dysfunctional, then it will be difficult for the church to remain healthy.”[49]  Rediger expands on the importance of holistic health for clergy without offering data to connect the pastor’s health with the health of the congregation.  Rediger sees fitness as “intentional, interactive wellness of body, mind, and spirit.”[50]  Holistic fitness is a key to the pastor’s respect from the congregation.

      4.  Summary

The literature identifies a number of factors that may indicate church health among mainline churches in the Bible belt.  These factors will be tested in the present project with a factor survey of church members.  The most significant church health factors for testing are as follows:

Vision and planning.  Spader and Mayes say, “Clearly communicated vision is one of those far-reaching, life-giving ingredients of a ministry geared for the long haul.”[51]

Corporate self-esteem.  Steinke parallels congregational self-understanding to that of individuals.  “There are more than 350,000 congregations in America, and it is difficult to define what is normal for all.”[52]

Conflict maturity.  Steinke says, “Healthy congregations are obviously invested in the growth of people.  They are not devoted to how people failed or who is to blame.”[53]

Pastor-laity congruence.  Callahan emphasizes the importance of “a good match between the lay leadership and the pastor and staff.”[54]

Community.  Schwarz sees this factor as an expression of love in the congregation.  “Wherever there is a lack of love, further church development is severely hampered.”[55]

Spirituality.  Easum and Bandy urge the church to resist seeing theological education as its goal, but to encourage a Jesus-centered spirituality:  “Spiritual Redwoods ask:  How can this church live in relationship with Jesus?”[56]

Outreach.  Schwarz combines evangelism and social ministry in a characteristic of healthy churches he calls need-oriented evangelism:  “The key to church growth is for the local congregation to focus its evangelistic efforts on the questions and needs of non-Christians.”[57]

Serenity.  Richardson says, “When people begin to be anxious about the differences that exist in their community and their level of differentiation is relatively low, a certain predictable reactive process begins.”[58] 

The literature implies that these eight factors are important for analyzing whether or not a congregation is healthy.  This project will test the presence or absence of these factors among mainline churches in the Bible belt.