Resourcing For Healthy Congregations
From Church Wellness: A Best Practices Guide to Nurturing Healthy Congregations. Tom Ehrich. Church Publishing. 2008
"Wellness"in a church doesn’t mean anything as simple as 98.6 degrees on a thermometer. We can discern some signs of "wellness" in a faith community. They include:
- Growth in membership
- Vibrant mission work that makes a discernible difference in the larger community
- Members lives being transformed
- Congregation able to take risks, fail with recrimination, and learn from failure
- Transparency and confidence in dealing with conflict
- Ability to deal creatively with change
- Open communication
- Members bringing their yearnings and questions to church
- Leaders willing to be guided by outcomes
Wellness is dynamic, not a steady state that a congregation reaches and then maintains. Wellness lies in how a faith community responds to change, stress, opportunity, failure, and people’s needs and personalities.
With the new restructuring of the Moravian Church Southern Province, we adopted eight characteristics of healthy congregations to focus our work on. This work will take place in individual congregations, the Regional Council of Churches, and Board of Cooperative Ministry among other places. The Resource Center has developed a bibliography list of books around the eight characteristics that might be helpful to many of these organizations. Each characteristic is listed below and a link appears to get to a bibliography of top books that might help churches or agencies expand their knowledge of the characteristic. These books are all located for loan from the Resource Center along with many other books in various categories. The Resource Center will soon have a section focusing entirely on these eight characteristics.
Focus On a Relationship with Christ
Bringing the individual and congregation into a greater harmony with God through Jesus Christ with a new sense of faith, love and hope. Click here for the bibliography of books focusing on this characteristic
Mission
Focusing outward locally, nationally, and globally to remember, seek out, and serve our neighbors. Click here for the bibliography of books focusing on mission.
Growth
Increasing membership and attendance through intentional process. Click here for bibliography of books on growth.
Leadership
Ensuring wise direction, administration and accountability to the community. Click here for bibliography of books on leadership.
Worship
Proclaiming God’s Word through scripture, preaching, music and sacraments. Click here for bibliography of books on worship.
Cooperation
Bringing church members into greater harmony with one another to build community. Click here for bibliography of books on cooperation.
Stewardship
Effectively using individual and corporate time, talent and treasure. Click here for bibliography of books on stewardship.
Ministry
Learning and growing as individuals and community to care for ourselves and serve others. Click here for bibliography of books on ministry.
Bibliography
a. Mission
b. Leadership
c. Focus on Relationship with Christ
d. Growth
e. Worship
f. Stewardship
g. Cooperation
h. Ministry
