Are Christian Churches Healthy Spiritually?
In a recent survey among a nationwide sample of Protestant pastors, we asked them how well their church is performing its ministry duties in each of 10 key areas. Two insights emerged from the study. First, most churches do not have any objective or regular process for evaluating how well their ministry is faring in any given dimension of ministry. Second, among the churches that assessed their quality in an area of ministry, a majority (ranging from 53 percent to 89 percent) rated their church as doing an excellent or good job in each of the 10 dimensions examined. Are those self-assessments accurate? One way to find out would be to examine how the church is doing in the “six pillars of ministry”that is, the half-dozen aspects of church-based activity that constitute the heart of the churchs work. The pillars are well-known to all Christians: evangelism, worship, discipleship, stewardship, fellowship and service to the needy.1 Lets take a brief look at some measures of health in relat
