Cultivating Church HealthBalancing the purposes of your church.Rick Warren| Topics: | Change, Core values, Direction, Evaluation, Evangelism, Goals, Growth, Master plan, Multiplication, Objectives, Planning, Strategy |
| Filters: | Church board, Church staff, Discipleship, Elder, Evangelism, Pastor, Preaching, Service, Worship |
| Purpose: | Discipleship |
| References: | Matthew 28:19-20 , Acts 1:8 |
| Date Added: | July 11, 2007 |

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That's why one of the biggest programs in our church is recovery. We have five to six hundred people attend Friday night recovery meetings with you-name-it addictions. One of the most important decisions we made was not to have a counseling center. If we put a full-time therapist on our staff, the person's schedule would fill up instantly, and 99 percent of the calls would still go unmet. We couldn't keep up even if we had five full-time therapists. Instead, we've trained about fifty lay-people to do biblical counseling, along with a standard list of approved therapists we can refer to if need be.
In conclusion, a far better focal point than church growth is church health. Size is not the issue. You can be big and healthy, or big and flabby. You can be small and healthy, or small and wimpy. Big isn't better; small isn't better. Healthy is better. So I'm interested in helping churches become balanced and healthy.
If churches are healthy, growth is a natural occurrence. I don't have to command my kids to grow. If I provide them with a healthy environment, growth is automatic.
Rick Warren; Growing Your Church Through Training and Motivation; Making Ministry Healthy; pp. 123-126.