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The Church Health Assessment · The Church Renewal Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Today, matt and I will talk about how to assess the health of your church.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The first step that Flourish Coaches lead a church through is the church health assessment.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: This is a crucial stage of investigation and intentional critique of the church's past and present, designed to allow your church to identify areas of weakness and build confidently in the place where God has planted you.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Church Renewal Podcast.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with Matthew Bolling from Flourish Coaching.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Hey, jared, how are you?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I'm good.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We're still talking about why people are using, or should be considering using, transitional pastors.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: You talked about the questions that are being asked in the church health assessment.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: What are those questions?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And let's talk about them.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in that first phase of church health assessment.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: So three phases church health assessment, envisioning pastor search, that's in our transition process.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: In church health assessment we're trying to answer two questions when have we been and where are we?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: so talk about the overview the goal and the church health assessment.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Sure, what are we after?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in the church health assessment, when we so think again about going to the doctor, right, you go in, they measure your weight, your height, take your blood pressure, they do your labs, right, they're trying to give you an overall picture, sort of, of your health and the kind of doctor sort of looks you over and he goes.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: You got a big.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: If he's looking at me, he's like got a big scar in your right lower leg.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Was that at a Achilles tendon rupture?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Uh, yep, yeah, it was my first father's day.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It's pretty bad.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: You got a nasty scar on your elbow.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: What was that about?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in a car accident and I'd have surgery to move my ulnar nerve around.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Right, your knee looks.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Knee looks a little swollen.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: What was going on there?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had two surgeries there.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: The history of a person they always ask you your medical history, right, when you get started up with a new doctor, because your history and your present are both important, and so that's what we're trying to look at in church health assessment.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Where have we been, which is the question of history?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Where are we, which is the question of current health.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: You're basically saying it's necessary to stop, turn around and look backwards intentionally with eyes wide open, in order to successfully move forward?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And here's the reason why you are where you are right now as a church, for very good and understandable reasons, best to understand what those are.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And most churches are not cognizant as a church, for very good and understandable reasons Best to understand what those are.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: And most churches are not cognizant of what got them to where they are right now.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: We can tell them about where they are, but unless we help them look at their history thoughtfully, we can't help them figure out well, what got us here?
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Because that's an implicit question, right, wherever you've been, the question of history, where are you now?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Your question of present.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And there's an implicit question to be like well, how did we get here?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And how we got here is really, really important, because if what got us here contributed to us being unhealthy, then those are the kinds of things that we had to work on in the transitional period so that they're washed out of the system or washed through the system by the time we actually get to a new pastor so he inherits a church that's thoughtful, that's reflective about its history.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Right, I've had two arthroscopic knee surges on my left knee.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: When I go play racquetball I wear a brace, why I'm cognizant of my history and it looks so cool.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure it looks cool.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Everybody knows the guy wearing the new brace is serious about racquetball.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: But it's me cognizant of my history, yeah Right.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: But also I'm there playing racquetball because I want to be healthy, moving forward, cognizant of my history, so it's both Okay.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So what are some of the surprising discoveries that you've seen churches make that they were not expecting?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: That helped them to move forward?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, without violating HIPAA.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Sure, sure, yeah, exactly.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Church, hipaa, whatever that would be, chipaa maybe, oh boy, okay.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: So maybe a couple examples.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: We worked with a church several years ago where the founding pastor left.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Just before he left he had brought in a guy on staff who was there to be the next church plant and the church planter who had been there.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: An offer came along to him that he wasn't expecting and he and his wife prayed about it and they're like you know what we think.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: This is what God wants us to go do, and we're as surprised as you all are because they were because they just brought this guy in to be an assistant pastor and then send him out to plant a church.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And so the guy and his wife end up leaving and he goes into another job and now you have this assistant pastor.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That's kind of wandering in space.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And so eventually that church comes around and they end up hiring that assistant pastor to be the lead pastor of the church instead of going to plant one, and that pastor ends up having a really hard time and he ends up leaving after a period of time and the church hired us in the aftermath of that and they were having a hard time trying to just get any traction to look forward at all and we're like well, let us try and understand your history here.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So when we did, we discovered these things and we discovered that the assistant pastor is quite different than the founding pastor Not atypical, right?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: We also found out that the elders in this particular church, as they tried to deal with the aftermath of both of those pastors leaving, had said very little to the congregation, okay, and that had left the congregation very unsettled.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: And so we had to come along and say, okay, well, the reason you have a hard time going forward is because of the way that these transitions were handled and you're going to need to kind of finish them in order to go forward as a church.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And we did help them finish them so that they to go forward as a church.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: And we did help them finish them so that they could go forward as a church.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: That touches on my follow-up question to this and maybe you can flesh that out more.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is a different example.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: How have churches, as they've come to these discoveries, as they've done the analysis and realized something that they hadn't necessarily seen before the analysis, and realized something that they hadn't necessarily seen before?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: How have they used these insights to make a change, make a turn?
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And the second part of that is how painful has that process been?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I think that the how painful is it depends.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a relief for the congregation, like the church I was just talking about.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: It was a relief for that congregation for the elders to stand up in front of them and say we didn't say enough about this.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Clergy has helped us see that and they've helped us think through what we can share and we're going to share more with you about that particular circumstance actually about both of these, as I recall it, and it helped the congregation take a breath, get settled and be willing to be led forward.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: And I think that that, ultimately, is the role of elders right is to try and help lead a congregation forward.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So that particular instance it was super, super helpful for them to do that.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: And so I think that what we try and do, the way we try and understand our role, is we are there to try and equip the elders of the church to lead the church forward.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: So if they can help a church go, you know we messed this up in the past.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: So there's a circumstance right now with the church that we're helping right now, that we're trying to help them grapple with, where there was a difficult circumstance that happened about 10 years ago and it never got resolved in the minds of congregants.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: As we've worked with the leadership, we have found that the leadership has resolved it among themselves but they never did that out loud for the sake of others, just sort of let sleeping dogs lie.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah, that never works that well.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And we're coming to them and saying no, from the work that we've done in our church health assessment, this is still very live, even though you thought it was resolved.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And in our advice to them we basically said hey, what you've been willing to say to us.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: If you can find a way to say this out loud to the congregation, we think this thing could be put to bed and it would be really good if it was.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I think I know the answer to this, but I'll ask it anyway.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Have you found that in the churches where elders are able to walk in that humility of saying we messed up, we made a mistake, it was ours, we're sorry.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Here's what we're going to do to change this, and we're not asking you to trust us, but to extend us grace as we follow Jesus.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: We're asking you to follow him.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: What benefits have you seen come from that?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you gain trust with congregants.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: They already know, congregants already know that you messed up.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: When you come and you tell them that you messed up, they're like, oh good, finally You're admitting what we already knew was true, and that actually helps you gain credibility.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: It also lets you model that you own the gospel yourselves, because the gospel gives us the freedom and the space to say first of all, I'm a frail, weak, limited creature and so I must make mistakes all of the time that come with just being a creature, because of limitations of being a creature.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: And I'm a sinner and so I make mistakes all of the time.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: And the gospel gives us the freedom to not have to be perfect but to be people who are very flawed.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I marvel that God uses as crooked a stick as me to strike straight lines.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: That's an old line and that but line, but that's all of us.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I thought your wife wrote that for you.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: That's actually really good.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Juliet would completely say that.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: She would marvel, actually.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: And I think the gospel gives us the freedom to receive our limitations, that we have as creatures.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: That gives us all kinds of frailty and all kinds of faults and mistakes that aren't sinful, they just come with being a creature right, and then on top of that we're also sinners, and so the gospel gives us the space to admit how small we are and how frail we are, and that that's actually okay and that gains us credibility in the eyes of maturing Christians Now, of people that are judgmental or want to find fault or want to exercise control themselves.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: No, but we're trying to model what it looks like to believe and live out the implications of the gospel to people, and that's always worth leading in that way.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: The words of Paul definitely come to mind as you say that In my weakness he has proven strong, absolutely.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I could dive down into a rabbit hole here.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I won't because this isn't my podcast.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you this Is there a book, a resource along these lines, not just looking backwards for the assessment, but of really leaning into gospel-centered grace as a leadership that you could recommend?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, we'll look at the show notes.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Hopefully I'll get the title right when I say it here into the microphone.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: But in just the most recent years, scott Thomas, who had experiences, very difficult experiences actually, at a couple of churches that blew up Marcel in Seattle and the Journey in St Louis.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Nothing bad happened there, nothing bad at either one of those places, but he worked on the staffs of both of those churches and could see the things that were wrong and kind of walked out of those experiences forlorn as to could the gospel really make a difference in the lives of these really strong leaders.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And eventually he ended up working with Ray Ortlund in Nashville at his church, running into the church just as a congregant, and eventually wrote.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Thankfully he wrote I think it's called the Gospel-Centered Leader and if that's not the title we'll correct it.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: But it'll be the right thing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: It'll be in the show notes.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: But it's marvelous and it's what I most highly recommend for leaders to think through how do we understand and own the gospel for ourselves and then lead in light of it.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: And it's my, it is my go-to, I'm so it's one of those books that I'm so glad that he wrote it so that I don't have to, because it was a big hole in the literature that was out there.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Amen, amen to that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, turning the corner.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: How does a church know when they have answered the question?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Where are we now?
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: When they can articulate, understand and own their history and how it's contributed to the present.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, and here's the reason why that's important you are doomed as a church to repeat the past in the future if you do not wrestle with the past in the present okay, go ahead, and go ahead and say that again three times.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Fast as a church you are doomed to repeat the past in the future if you do not contemplate wrestle with the past in the present.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: That's why we want you to wrestle with the past and how it's contributed to the present, so the future might be different.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with silence and I think that sitting with that reality is really useful because it makes me think of the children of israel wandering through the wilderness.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: How many times are we going to?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I was walking through this with my kids the other day.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: We were talking about jesus in matthew 25 saying the king of heaven is like virgins that were preparing for the wedding feast and we talked about their lack of preparation to wait for the time necessary.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And we reflected back onto the children of israel while moses was up on mount sinai in exodus 32 receiving the 10 commandments, in the way that they come to aaron and say this guy, moses, who led us out of Israel.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: We don't know what's happened to him.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, make us a god.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: They got impatient, they did have a vision.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: That lack of awareness of saying yes, he led us out of Israel but you know, we don't know where this guy is now.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's a different god.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe you can throw our gold into this furnace and maybe something will pop out and you make us a god uh, kind of leads to bad things.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And then you end up wandering through the wilderness over and over and over again.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I mean going around robin hood's barn, walking around the mountain.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: My mother-in-law is is really good about reminding me, as her son-in-law thank you, janet that until we learn what God is calling us to learn, he's going to put us back into the same situation.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And it's his grace, that's his love that does that.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: That's not just his furrowed brow father saying no, get it right, do it again.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: That's him saying I'm refining you Like gold, refining the fire seven times.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to get hot, because that's what gold needs in order to remove the dross.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm making something out of you that looks more like Jesus than Jeremy.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And I have the pleasure, I have the privilege, I have the joy of surrendering to that and saying Darn it, okay, go ahead, I'm ready, maybe and I'll say please forgive me to everyone around me Maybe once you get through this next step.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Well, so we can articulate in the present where we are, why Jesus called us here.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Practical question Sure, what tools?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: What practical question?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Sure, what tools?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: What paradigms do you use?
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Can churches use to start answering those questions?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: yeah.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: So this is part of the process that we give them, so we're part of our.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: The beginning of the church health assessment process is that we ask a church historian.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: We ask it in a couple of different ways.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Basically basically give us the history of the church.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: We ask it statistically, we ask it narratively.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I ask it I did it with the church last night.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I'll just go into a meeting and I'll just say so tell me the story of this church.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And it's fascinating when you start asking that question to five different people what different stories you hear and what different perspectives you hear about the one reality of the history of that church from the Lord's perspective.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: We also do this later in the church health assessment process where we interview people later on in the process because very commonly we hear about their experiences in the history of the church that they bring up on their own more indirectly.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That helps us get an overall kind of composite picture of the history of the church.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Do you find in general that most churches are open to doing that kind of introspection?
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I think it's a big.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: It depends, I think, that if they are humbled in the present and they're saying we really got to work on things here before we go for another pastor, we really got to work on things here before we go for another pastor because we've had a hard history, those churches yes, the churches that don't want to look back, are the ones that don't really want to deal with their pain.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: They just want to shove it under the carpet and never talk about it again and assume that it can just be better without reflecting on it.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: And those are the churches that typically don't end up hiring us, to be honest with you, because they just want to go forward without reflecting on the past.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: But unfortunately that's very sad because they're doomed to repeat the past.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't make jokes about that Because I've watched it happen.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and tragic is probably too heavy a word to use, but it's deeply saddening.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Because there's so much possible when a believer or when a church leadership or when a congregation is willing to put themselves into the hand of their loving father and receive the discipline that absolutely is unpleasant for the season but has been given in love.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: That requires humility, but that also requires a deepening trust in the grace that we've received that the writer of Hebrews talks about when he says we can approach the throne boldly to receive grace in time of need and help.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which I mean when you get to be our ages.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: If you don't recognize, you need help.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe invest in mirrors.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: A lot of them Talk to your wife or your kids, or you know the driver next to you on the road who's honking at you.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: It's not to say hi, right, just saying.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Just saying All right.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Well, let's leave it there for now.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Sounds good.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: We'll come back and hit this later.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you all for coming by.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: We will be talking to you very soon.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy.
• 19:07
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• 19:10
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• 19:16
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• 19:23
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• 19:35
  Speaker 1: All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: The Church Renewal Podcast was produced by me, jeremy Seferati, in association with with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.