Three Marks of a Healthy Church

Have you ever been in a gym and noticed that there are basically three types of people there? There are the social butterflies who walk around chatting with everyone and really only ever exercise their jaws. There are the ones who lift what they always do and never push themselves or get any stronger –they just have to check “working out” off their list. And then there are always a few who are clearly pushing themselves –getting stronger as a result.

If the church were a gym, which type of person would you be? What motivates you to come to church? Is it because you just love seeing and talking to everyone? Does it fill you up for the week and make you feel good? Do you attend out of duty or desire to impress, perhaps hoping to please God or meet someone’s expectations? While some of those reasons aren’t “bad” at all, our motivation should be to be prepared, equipped, and perfected for the great work of persevering in Christ and advancing His Kingdom. Like the gym, in church, we know we're on the right track when we face challenges, experience growth, and stretch our spiritual muscles –we’re sore, seeing results, and can do new things!

In the gym, we get stronger and healthier with purposeful effort; the same applies to the church. Last week, we covered the first six verses and the call to Christian unity. In this second week of the series, we focus on verses 7-12 of Ephesians 4, where Paul shows the purposes of unity and what it produces. In doing so, we see the three marks of a strong, healthy church: built on Jesus (His victory and gifts to us), proper Biblical leadership, and equipped saints.

Join us in our new 6-week series, Vintage Church, as we work through Ephesians 4 to discover how we can truly become the church Jesus came to plant. You can follow along with this week’s sermon notes here.

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