Marks of a Healthy Church

Photo by Nacho Domínguez Argenta on Unsplash

​Back in June of this year, I wrote an article titled “Finding the Right Church,” which sought to answer the question: What constitutes a solid biblical church? The article was intended to help believers find a church which strives to be biblical in their polity, organization, and corporate worship. However, a church can be a biblical church and still not be a healthy church. One impacts the other. A church can be biblical without being healthy, but a church cannot be healthy without being biblical. Thus, if you missed my article on “Finding the Right Church,” I would recommend starting there, then reading this article.
 
So then, what does a healthy church look like? What are the marks one should look for when seeking to find a church home? There are eight signs which mark out the healthy church from the unhealthy church. 

A Love and Hunger for God’s Word
This does not mean that this is simply stated on paper, on a confessional document of some sort, but that the people genuinely want to know and be taught the deep truths of God’s Word, even when it offends them. Often the members of a particular church will say they love sitting under the serious preaching of God’s Word, where the pastor digs deep and pulls out the gems found in Scripture…until he preaches a biblical doctrine they simply don’t like and then “He’s got to go!” A healthy church is full of members who want to know God’s Word, who want to know what it says, who want to be taught what they are doing wrong, where they need to change, and what God expects of them. In the New Testament (NT) we see that the new believers “devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, emphasis added). They wanted to know everything they could about this God who would send his son into the world to die for sinners, and they wanted to know what this God demands of them. However, Paul warns Timothy, the pastor of the church in Ephesus, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). A church’s love and hunger for God’s Word can be most readily seen in how well Sunday worship and mid-week studies are attended. Grant it, we should not expect 100% attendance at these gatherings, but when there is an inordinately low attendance, when many miss church and mid-week study without valid reasons, there is cause for concern.
 
A Desire for Sound, Biblical, Theology
While this is closely related to the first mark, there is a slight difference. A desire for sound theology speaks to the degree of humility among the members. For instance, someone once said, “Most people don’t’ really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is truth.” This is what many preaching pastors deal with in many churches. I have a friend who pastors a church in another state, which is a single pastor-led church, and he has been at that church for nearly twenty-five years. About ten years into his ministry there, he attempted to move the church toward a more biblical model of plural-eldership. He spent a great deal of time preaching on the subject from the pulpit and teaching it during weekly studies. Nevertheless, he received strong resistance from the deacons and the members of the church. He eventually dropped the subject and continued on with the current form of church polity. However, when humility characterizes the church membership, they will behave more like the Bereans who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). RC Sproul once said, “If I am wrong about something, I want to be corrected. It is not loving to allow me to continue in life believing something that is not true.” A healthy church is filled with members who are willing to evaluate and re-evaluate their own theology to ensure that what they believe aligns with God’s Word.
 
Love for One Another
Again in Acts 2:42, we see the NT church described with these words: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, emphasis added). They were devoted to “the fellowship,” to each other. The Greek word for “devoted” is proskartereō and carries the meaning of ‘to persist at, to stay by; to be loyal to, to attach oneself to, or to pay persistent attention to.’ These were not believers who simply shook hands on Sunday morning as they made their way out the door. These were believers who were genuinely loyal to and committed to one another. They had genuine love and affection for each other. They exemplified the words of Christ when he said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn. 13:35). A healthy church is one that does not just come together on Sundays and Wednesday nights, but is a church that does life together, a church where the members enjoy one another’s company when they are together and miss each other when they are apart, and so they find other ways to spend time together during the week or weekends and just hang out together. However, it’s not just that they enjoy each other’s company, but it is also the way they treat each other. In a healthy church each member desires to be last and put the needs of others before themselves (Phil. 2:3-4). They interact with one another with kindness, compassion, and grace. This is because the fruit of the Spirit is growing in abundance in each of their lives (Gal. 5:22-23).
 
A Commitment to Prayer
Once again, we see that the NT church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, emphasis added). They were devoted to prayer. The mark of a healthy church is that her members love talking to God. They love praying, both privately and corporately, because they recognize the great privilege and honor it is to be able to talk to our heavenly Father, to pour out our concerns and supplications to him, knowing that he hears us and that he genuinely loves to listen to our prayers. Charles Spurgeon rightly observed “that man prays because there is something in prayer. When the Creator gives His creature the power of thirst, it is because water exists to meet its thirst. When He creates hunger, there is food to correspond to the appetite. Even so, when He inclines men to pray, it is because prayer has a corresponding blessing connected with it.”[i] Healthy believers in a healthy church understand this. They have a desire to please God and to be like Christ, their Lord and Savior. We see in scripture our Lord and Savior praying at length on numerous occasions. In Luke 6, just before Jesus chose his twelve disciples, we are told that “he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God” (v.12, emphasis added). However, healthy church members in a healthy church love to pray not only because it is a means of imitating Christ, but because they believe God’s Word and know there is real power in payer. Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (Jn. 14:13-14). “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you” (Jn. 15:16). “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (Jn. 16:23).
 
An Appreciation for Her Shepherds
When Jesus was restoring Peter by the Sea of Galilee, after Peter had denied him, three times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” And three times Peter replies, “Lord, you know I do.” And with each response from Peter, Jesus says to him, “Feed my sheep.” Peter understood that Jesus was appointing him to shepherd God’s people, to shepherd the Church. Then we see Peter writing to the elders of the church in exile saying, “I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:1-3, emphasis added). Peter was appointed by Christ to shepherd the flock of God and understood that there were other shepherds besides himself who held the responsibility of caring for and overseeing the church. And this responsibility is not given to many, but to a few. Pastors are gifts given to the Church for her benefit and edification, and not all are pastors (1 Cor. 12:29; Eph 4:11ff.). Not many are called by God to be pastors. This office carries a tremendous weight of responsibility. For this reason, the author of Hebrews writes: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Heb. 13:17). Yet, in many churches pastors are treated like employees who are to do as they are told. However, shepherds are to lead the sheep, not the sheep directing the shepherds. Healthy churches understand and appreciate the distinction in roles between the sheep and her shepherd.
 
A Biblical View of Men and Women
A healthy church can only truly be healthy when the families within the church are healthy. Today, many Bible-believing, conservative, churches are practical egalitarians as they make little distinction between the roles and responsibilities of men and women. On paper the church may espouse the differences between men and women, and the preaching pastor and elders may embrace these differences, yet they may see a situation between a husband and wife that is unbiblical and say nothing. They may see, for example, a husband who is a stay-at-home dad (on purpose), homeschooling the children, while the wife works and supports the family. They know this is wrong but say nothing for fear of losing a family, or they see parents raising their sons and daughters identically, encouraging them both to excel in sports, to pursue college and career, and to chase after the American dream, as if boys and girls (men and women) were not created by God for different purposes, and with different roles and responsibilities within the home, church, and society. These parents then wonder why their children grow up to have marital problems and why the church is such a mess? The point is that when there is gender confusion within families regarding the respective roles and responsibilities between men and women, this inevitably spills over into the church. Women become loud and demanding, desiring to be in leadership positions. Men become milksops, unwilling to serve in the church and more than happy to let the women run the church. If a church does not believe, practice, and emphasize the biblical and distinct roles of men and women within the home, church, and society…run!
 
The Practice of Biblical Corporate Worship
Many churches follow the attractional model of church worship, doing whatever works, whatever will draw people in, and whatever will keep them in. The result is that there are many churches which preach fifteen minutes sermons, hire professional unbelievers to lead their worship music, do not practice church membership (or church discipline), and many other things that are simply unbiblical. However, a healthy church is one which will look to the Scriptures alone to determine how to conduct corporate worship, and how to conduct church itself. God makes clear in both testaments of the Bible that when it comes to conducting church and church worship, churches should only do what Scripture commands and not do what Scripture forbids (Deut. 12:29-32; 1 Cor. 4:6). In other words, unless the Bible tells us to engage in a specific ministry, then it should not be done.[ii]
 
A Desire to Reach the Lost with the Gospel
A healthy church where the members have been transformed and overwhelmed by the gospel and the love of Christ is a church where the members desire to proclaim the gospel of Christ to the world and are doing so at work, at school, wherever they may be. This does not necessarily mean the church has implemented some kind of formal evangelism program, but that each member sees it as his or her personal responsibility to present the gospel to those with whom they come in contact. The Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) was not give to angels nor was it only given to pastors and evangelists but was given to all believers. A church where most of the members only talk about evangelism but never actually engage in it, where most of the members seem to care little about those who are perishing around them, is not a healthy church. A church is one in which the members want to glorify God by keeping the Two Great Commandments—loving God and loving people (Matt. 22:34-40). And loving people does not just mean loving those within the church but loving those outside the church as well.
 
These are the marks of a healthy church. If you are a part of one, count yourself greatly blessed. If you are not, you should pray for your church and share your concerns with your shepherds. If they don’t share your concerns, you should prayerfully consider whether to find a healthier local church.

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[i] Charles Spurgeon, The Power in Prayer (Whitaker House, republished 1996).
[ii] For more information on this topic, check out my book In the King’s Presence: How Christ’s Royal Majesty Enriches Corporate Worship (Abounding Grace Publishing, 2025).