What Makes a Healthy Church?

A while back Lisa and I were at one of the largest open-air flea markets in Texas on a scorching hot day. After a couple hours of watching her shop, I was ready to eat. We found a food court — really just picnic tables in the shade next to a chicken sandwich restaurant. We ordered, sat down, and started watching the parade of people rolling past with their carts.

Then something happened that I couldn’t shake.

A woman from the chicken place came out carrying samples. She walked right up to our table — and offered us samples of the food we were already eating. Then she went to the next table, and the next. Every person in the shade, already eating, getting offered samples of what they already had.

My wife looked at her and said, “All she has to do is walk 30 feet out into the heat and serve those samples to all the people who obviously haven’t eaten yet.”

I thought — that sounds like a lot of churches I know. Feeding the already fed in the shade, when there are hungry people walking right past the door.

The Holy Spirit impressed something on me that day that I wrote in my journal: the church is a table where people come to get fed. The nourishment from the meal gives us the ability to push away from the table and go do what God has called us to do. And the table should always be in a constant state of movement — people arriving, growing, moving, and going back out.

The church is a table

Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life.” That’s the food we’re serving. Not programs. Not productions. Not personality. The bread of life — the Word of God, the person of Jesus Christ. Bread is mentioned 72 times in Scripture. In the Old Testament, the shewbread in the temple represented the presence of God. Jesus and his disciples ate bread together the night before the cross. And one day we’ll sit at a forever feast at the table with the Lamb of God.

A church that’s healthy is a church that serves that bread in a creative and compelling way, and structures its life around the table — knowing exactly who’s sitting in each chair.

Chair One: The person who doesn’t know Christ yet

This is the most important chair at the table. Not because it’s the most comfortable, but because without it, none of the other chairs exist.

Chair one is occupied by people who are far from God. Maybe they say they believe in Jesus, maybe they grew up in a church — but they haven’t made the decision to follow him personally. They’re the hunks of humanity walking past the flea market in the heat, not yet knowing where to find what they’re actually hungry for.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: if your church is truly healthy, roughly a third of the people in your life and in your congregation should be people who haven’t yet crossed the line of faith. That sounds high. But think about why you’re still here — you weren’t zapped to heaven the moment you became a believer. You’re here to take as many people with you as possible.

A healthy church is always asking: who’s in chair one? Who in our lives, our neighborhood, our city, hasn’t been fed yet?

Chair Two: The brand new believer

Someone in chair one hears the gospel — that Jesus lived perfectly, died sacrificially, rose bodily, and offers eternal life — and they respond. They cross the line of faith. Now they’re in chair two.

Chair two is a playpen. It’s a baby stage. And that’s completely appropriate — you don’t expect a newborn to bench press. But you also don’t want them to stay in a playpen forever. The goal is movement. Growth. Pressing toward maturity.

Hebrews 6:1 says, “Let us press on to maturity.” Too many churches are full of UFOs — Unidentified Freeloading Observers. People who have been in chair two for twenty years. They’ve heard a thousand sermons, attended a hundred small groups, and they’re still waiting to be fed rather than learning to feed others.

Information without application is an abomination. When we preach, when we teach, we need to answer two questions: what do you need to know — and what do you need to do? Sixty-nine percent of Jesus’ words were words of application. Action. He didn’t just teach theology. He said, now go do something.

The high chair: The I Chair

Here’s a chair nobody likes to talk about. The high chair — or what I call the I Chair.

Spiritual babies sit here. Everything is about their needs. It’s not deep enough. Nobody is attending to them. The worship isn’t their style. Me. Me. Me. I. I. I. My. My. My.

I love babies — I have grandkids. But there’s a point where you have to put a pacifier in the baby’s mouth, sit them at the high chair, and turn your attention to the people who are spiritually starving at the table. The most dangerous thing a church can do is orient its entire ministry around appeasing people in the high chair while turning their backs on chair one.

Here’s the honest question every pastor and church leader has to face: who am I turning my back on to keep the babies happy?

Chair Three: The full-court follower

Chair three is where a healthy church produces the most. A full-court follower of Christ is someone who has moved through the earlier chairs and is now serving, sowing, and sharing.

Serving — finding a place in the body to actually contribute. Using your gifts, your time, your presence, not just consuming what the church produces.

Sowing — that first ten percent of everything you make belongs to the house. Chair three people are tired of picking up the meal while others just eat. They understand that the table only keeps running because someone is funding it.

Sharing — articulating your faith. Not just “living the life” as a silent witness. There’s no such thing as a silent witness. Chair three people tell their story. They don’t need a seminary degree. They just say: I was drowning and Jesus pulled me out, and here’s what’s happened since.

A church is healthy when it has roughly a third of its people in each zone — those far from God, those new to faith, and those who are fully in. That’s the table in a constant state of movement.

The question every church has to answer

Are you in the shade serving the already fed? Or are you walking out into the heat?

It’s so easy to build a church — or a life — that is entirely oriented around the comfort of people already in the building. Great music for people who already love music. Deep theology for people who already love theology. Community for people who already know how to do community. That’s not wrong — but if that’s all you are, you’ve become a restaurant that only serves its staff.

The chicken sandwich lady had everything she needed to reach hungry people. Samples. Product. Willingness. All she had to do was walk out from under the shade.

The church has the bread of life. The question is whether we’re willing to leave the shade.