Walking Together Toward Thriving Churches

Sep 28

3 min read

Updated: Sep 30

Hey Pastors and Ministry Leaders,

So, last week we talked about the first of our Three Gears, Flourishing Leaders. We talked about why we put leaders first and why we care about the person behind the ministry, not simply what that person produces.

This week I want to move to our second gear: Thriving Churches.

For most of us, when we hear the words “thriving church,” our minds probably go immediately to numbers. How many people are attending? Is the church growing? How many baptisms have there been? Is giving increasing? Those things matter. We want to see churches reaching people, baptizing new believers, and growing. But numbers alone don’t tell us whether a church is thriving.

I’ve known large churches with significant areas of unhealthiness, and I’ve known small churches that were incredibly healthy and faithful to the mission God had given them. A rural church of 40 people and a suburban church of 800 people may look very different from one another, and that’s okay. We aren’t trying to make every NWBC church look the same.

Maybe a better question is: What does faithfulness and health look like for the church God has called you to be, in the community where He has placed you?

That’s really what we mean when we talk about Thriving Churches.

We believe every church has a next step. For one church that may be evangelism. For another it may be discipleship, developing leaders, prayer, hospitality, reaching its community, or dealing honestly with an area that has become unhealthy. For another it may simply be rediscovering why God placed that church in that community in the first place. The important thing is helping each church discover and take its next step.

That’s important because our desire isn’t to show up with a program and tell a church what it needs to do. One of the things we have said about who we want to be as the NWBC is that we want to have a field-based, local approach that is committed to relationally-driven ministry. In other words, we want to know our churches. We want to listen. We want to understand the community and the context. And then we want to come alongside the church as it prayerfully determines what its next step might be.

Tim Walker, our Church Health Specialist, and Zac Minton, our Evangelism Specialist, are helping lead our Thriving Churches team. That’s part of why we have been developing things like our Church Health Assessment and THRIVE process. The goal of an assessment isn’t to give a church a grade or compare it to another church. Sometimes taking a next step begins with having the courage to see where we really are. The assessment helps a church take an honest look at where it is today so it can begin asking, Where might God want us to grow? What is our next step?

We are also continuing to develop ways to help churches in areas like evangelism, discipleship, prayer, hospitality, revitalization, and other places where a church may need help taking that next step. The goal isn’t to build a bunch of NWBC programs. It is to have relationships, tools, and resources available when a church says, “We want to take a step forward. Can you help us?”

And that brings us back to our Guarantee: “We will walk with you, encouraging you and working with you to identify and take your next step for yourself, your family, and your church.”

I think those last three words really matter here: and your church.

We aren’t coming to fix your church. We aren’t coming with all the answers. And we aren’t interested in making your church look like somebody else’s church. We want to walk with you, listen, pray, ask good questions, connect you with people and resources that can help, and work with you as you take the next step God has for your church.

Because ultimately, we don’t just want churches that are surviving. We want churches that are healthy, making disciples, reaching their communities, developing leaders, and increasingly living out the mission Jesus has given them.

And here’s where these gears begin to connect. Flourishing leaders help lead thriving churches. And thriving churches make disciples, send leaders, serve their communities, plant churches, and take the Gospel beyond themselves.

That’s where we’ll go next week as we look at our third gear, Church Planting & Missions.

Lisa and I count it a privilege to serve alongside you as a family of churches on mission together.

by Faith,