As director of the office of leadership and church growth for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, Edwin Jenkins speaks of Alabama’s Southern Baptist churches much like a doctor would speak of his patients. His job, among many, is to diagnose churches’ health and provide them with the tools to grow and thrive.
In light of nationwide statistics that indicate church attendance is at an all-time low, the office of leadership is using the recently implemented Church Health Review (CHR) to determine the status of Alabama’s Southern Baptist churches.
Like a yearly physical, the CHR uncovers potential problems, treats ailments and provides an overall picture of the church’s health. Unlike many similar instruments, the overall focus is positive rather than negative.
Jenkins said church members should look for what is right with the church rather than focusing on what is wrong. The CHR is a positive analysis.
“It helps churches see who they are and see where God is leading them against the backdrop of Scriptures’ declaration of a healthy church,” said Jenkins, who worked with nearly 100 leaders from across Alabama in developing the assessment.
A team of more than 100 trained consultants has been dispatched by the office of leadership and is actively working with Alabama churches to implement CHR’s principles.
The process, which is a combination of a questionnaire form and interactive dialogue, takes the average church about six weeks to complete. Since the assessments didn’t begin until 2004, churches across Alabama are just beginning to enter the process. Jenkins said he expects the CHR to have an even wider acceptance than the Celebrate Your Church (a similar, more in-depth assessment) process developed in 1999. In the following weeks, The Alabama Baptist will run a series of articles that take a closer look at five of the state’s healthiest churches.
Concerned with inadequate assessments, Jenkins began to develop what he considers a more biblical evaluation of church health. It started as Celebrate Your Church four years ago, and has since developed into the CHR assessment, which is a somewhat briefer tool. It works at two levels. First, it works as a measuring tool that more accurately gauges the health of individual churches and provides an overall view of each church.
Second, Jenkins said, “it suggests to churches the tools needed to develop into a biblically functioning community of believers committed to Jesus Christ.”
Jenkins used Acts 2:41–47 to outline the six functions of the New Testament church — worship, discipleship, ministry, evangelism, fellowship and prayer. The CHR assessment helps pastors determine if their churches are falling in line with the biblical prescriptive.
In addition to the six functions, Jenkins said the church has four primary purposes. They are spiritual growth, missions advancement, ministry involvement and outreach effectiveness.
Spiritual growth, according to Jenkins, “is the minimum requirement. A church that is experiencing spiritual growth will be making disciples while its people are being conformed to the image of Christ.”
Once growth is detected, a church can turn its attention to missions advancement. “They need to come to an awareness of who they are based on Scripture so that they can determine their calling as a church,” said Jenkins. “We have a tendency to think that every Southern Baptist church has to be like all others. While our doctrines are distinctive, our methodologies can be quite different.”
The third area is ministry involvement.
Jenkins said that when Luke wrote about the early church in Acts, the assumption was that every member of the church would be actively involved in some form of ministry. The CHR helps pastors equip the saints for ministry. “Every member should serve, so we need to help find the right place for them,” said Jenkins. “Even a shut-in can have a ministry.”
Finally, the CHR helps churches see what kind of impact they are having on their community through outreach effectiveness. “This is where we must do more than look at numbers,” said Jenkins.
“On paper, one church may seem like it’s growing much faster than another, but the potential impact area is the real indicator of health.” Jenkins said the CHR has totally reversed the way church health and growth are measured. The office of leadership has shifted its gaze from numbers and debt ratios to things less tangible such as internal health, member involvement and community outreach.
“The traditional way of looking at church health is through number assessments based on yearly baptisms, Sunday School attendance and financial standing,” said Jenkins.
However, “numbers are not always the only determinant of a healthy, growing church. They may be growing in ways that don’t show up on a statistical analysis.
“We are committed to reducing the number of declining churches, and we have been working diligently toward that,” he said. “But we’ve been going about it wrong.
“Instead of looking at increasing numbers, we are starting with planting and watering like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:6,” Jenkins said. “Then we watch God give the increase.”
Jenkins believes that if the office of leadership can help churches understand the principles of the CHR, the numbers will swell dramatically. “Nationwide, the figures say that 80 percent of churches are either at a plateau or are declining, but I think we are growing numerically in Alabama,” he said. “We are expecting to see greater results as we focus on God’s desire, God’s design and God’s direction.”
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