Striving for church health has some very challenging implications. In future posts I’ll look at the implications for the church as the body of Christ, and following that how striving for how we engage with the world around us. Make no mistake: the call to church health is not for the faint hearted. It is as demanding and unrelenting as it is a path toward maturity and spiritual formation.

What I want to mention now is the implication for leadership. There are lots of things that work toward church health, but if leadership is not fully supportive of and engaged in the pursuit of Scripture’s call to church health, nothing else the church does will be sustainable.

At this point the sobering reality is that for churches in my own denomination, NCD results show the area we consistently struggle in is this very area: leadership and discipleship. Is it that we don’t want to do it? Or we are not interested? Or we just don’t know how? Unsure. Maybe it’s more something that we’ve never really been skilled to do. Some will look back with longing eyes to the good old days of full on catechism process, where children commenced catechism classes at age 12 or 13 and finished at about age 18, hopefully with a profession of faith. I acknowledge that this system created some reasonable depth in understanding our confessional perspective. I also acknowledge that where this is no longer practised there has been little else to grow an appreciation for our reformed confessional heritage. An additional and more serious complication is there have been few systematic examples of intentional, coherent and effective discipleship processes.

There is little sense in belting ourselves around the head because of this. What we need to do is recognise how we pull up short, and then do better. Fellow elders and pastors: this is where we must shoulder God’s call. Paul expresses it this way: “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” (Colossians 1:28–29, NIV)

Paul was consumed with the goal of bringing the church to maturity in Christ. He placed this call before the leaders of the church in Collosse. Presenting everyone mature in Christ was the focus of every proclamation, admonition and teaching. This was the ‘heavy lifting’ ministry of heavy lifting which consumed all his energy.

Big question: is this the focus of your ministry? Are these the goals you are striving for as a pastor or as an elder? Is this the focus of your church council? Is this what the people in your church would say is the priority of your leadership?

This is such a humbling call, friends. I am so far from this goal, and the shortcomings I mentioned above are clearly there in the congregation I serve. What we are doing is making some changes this coming year. It might seem a cop out to just talk about ‘plans’ at this point. We all know what really matters is whether plans get implemented, and whether that implementation yields desired outcomes. In the next post I’ll go through some of our specific plans for 2014. For now, I’m praying our ongoing discussion and collaboration will help us become better builders of discipling culture. It would be tremendous if we could do this work together.

Q: what are your suggestions for building a better discipling culture? Leave a comment and become part of the discussion.