Home Pastors Articles for Pastors 8 Signs of an Emotionally Healthy New Church

8 Signs of an Emotionally Healthy New Church

Is the church you’re leading emotionally healthy?

How do you tell if it is or isn’t? Is there a way to know if you’re on the path to good health or heading in the wrong direction? 

Discovering the answers to these questions is vital, especially for new churches.

For more than 65 years, the Orchard Group has planted churches. For many decades, the churches we planted were small and struggling.

But over the last 15 years, our churches have grown quickly and thrived. People repeatedly ask what changed. My standard answer is to say that when you stick around long enough (I have been with the ministry for more than 30 years), God starts to feel sorry for you!

In reality, we cannot pinpoint exactly what brought about our growth.

However, we are sure of one thing that has contributed to our turnaround. For 15 years, we simply have not hired a senior pastor unless we were convinced he or she was an excellent leader with the skills, wisdom and maturity to lead a great church.

The older I get, the more I realize just how important emotional intelligence is to strong leadership.

In his book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, author Edwin H. Friedman looks at the relational dynamics of family as a way of understanding the relational dynamics of a church family. He says the two hardest places to work in America are the family-owned business and the church.

Chances are, you’d probably agree. Like families, all churches will have emotional processes they have to work through. Friedman writes that every church has “background radiation from the big bang of the congregation’s creation.”

Don’t Miss

Discovering the source of that radiation and thoroughly dealing with it are critical to the ongoing health of your church.

Consider what he identifies as eight signs of an emotionally healthy church (from a family dynamics perspective), and use these signs to honestly assess the deficits in your church family and what you as a leader can focus on to put your church on the path toward emotional health.

1. The church will be balanced between separateness and togetherness.

It has differentiated itself and can say, “We are a part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but we are an independent church.” That kind of balance is rare in a new church.

It’s more likely to happen in a healthy, growing church with strong leadership.

1
2
3
Previous articleWe Killed Our Youth Group (and Why You Should, Too)
Next articleGod's Instruction Manual to the World
paulwilliams@churchleaders.com'
Paul Williams gave vital leadership to Orchard Group for decades, including serving as President from 1989 until 2009. At that time, Brent Storms assumed the role of President and began providing both visionary and operational leadership. Paul continued to serve as Chairman of the Board, representing Orchard Group in a variety of ways. On December 31, 2013, Paul retired quietly from Orchard Group. Although we coordinated significant celebrations for Paul’s 25th and 30th anniversaries, we want to acknowledge, once more, his enormous investment in church planting and his impact on Orchard Group. The Orchard Group board, staff and extended church planting family wish Paul and Cathy God’s best as they step into the future.