Healthy Church Research Paper

Discipleship and a Healthy Church When a church is healthy it will spiritually reproduce itself. First thing comes to mind when someone hear the word healthy, is the human body. Earl and Dempsey says, “In the simplest terms, a healthy church looks like and acts like a healthy body”. A healthy body is more active, and have more energy to be active; correspondingly a healthy church is more active reproducing disciples. The intent of this paper show the goal of a healthy church is to make reproduce disciples.

A Healthy Church the Goal for Discipleship Before the church can start on the road to making disciples, the congregation must be healthy, not physically healthy but spiritually healthy. Can a person be spiritually healthy …show more content…
Every Christian has at least one "manifestation of the Spirit" (spiritual gift), 2. There are many different types of spiritual gifts, 3. Even though the body of Christ has many parts, there is only one body. 4. All parts of the body are important, not just the external (visible) but also the internal (invisible parts). 5. Just because a part is not seen, it is still a part of the body. 6 God has placed the parts in the body "just as He wanted, 7. Where would the body be if there were only one part? 8. All the parts work together to form one body”. All these parts need to be in place in order to produce disciples. If the body is unhealthy it will reproduce unhealthy disciples; but if the body is healthy it will reproduce healthy disciples. Someone who cannot reproduce disciples or bear fruit will be cut off or pruned from the body of Jesus Christ. John 15:1-2 says, “I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bearth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that bearth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit”. Elmer Towns says concerning the vines mentioned in John 15, “John uses the verb kathairei (“prunes”), literally meaning “he cleans”. The present active indicative means He is continually at work. Vinedressers often prune severely the branches that produce fruit, resulting in a more abundant harvest in the next season. The purpose clause …show more content…
The area this writer will concentrate on is the ministry God gave me under the leadership of his pastor. This ministry is department of helps; most people do not think about discipleship when they think about the helps department. Although, department of helps main job is helping others in many areas of their life, giving them the word of God and leading them to Jesus Christ is part of the department of helps. The three areas of this writer’s ministry which could be focused on more are, “The poor and “least of these” is intentionally being targeted for the gospel”, “Worship occurs at the individual level, and it is powerfully manifested when the body gathers together”, “Relational groups are multiplying new leaders and new groups”. As I stated earlier, most people do not think about discipleship when they think about the helps department. This writer was one of those people. Although, this writer was not the pastor; the pastor placed him as president of the department of helps. This writer looking at his pastor and he noticed that the pastor took responsibility for the discipleship process. In to improve the health of the church the pastor took the first step in making sure himself was spiritually healthy. So, this writer following his pastor lead; had to make sure himself was spiritually healthy, then the members the pastor placed under his