Rating Your Church...

Been thinking for a few days about a CT article by Leith Anderson called "7 Ways to Rate Your Church: How to measure your church's ministry.” It was a well-intentioned and fairly sensible list of characteristics of churches people, and specifically unchurched people, tend to find attractive. The article is a reprint from 1999, so it is a few years old.

The list is as follows, with excerpts of the summaries taken directly from the article:

1. Sensing the presence of God
Experiencing the supernatural dwarfs everything else as people rate a church's atmosphere.
2. Others-centered
The others-centered church talks little about its programs or its people unless that is truly helpful to the newcomer.
3. Understandable terminology
Blessed are those churches where everyone can understand what is being communicated!
4. People who look like me
Seeing one person who looks and dresses "like me" up on the platform or ushering or pictured in church publicity can communicate an open and inviting atmosphere.
5. Healthy problem handling
What makes a healthy church is not the absence of problems. It's how problems are handled.
6. Accessibility
High ratings go to churches that are "barrier free" in every sense of the term.
7. Sense of expectancy
Most healthy churches are hopeful churches.

Of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this list. It is fairly common-sense stuff. I have nothing against Leith Anderson and attended his church a few times years ago. But I have to wonder, isn’t there something missing from this list? Notice that none of the seven items have anything in them directly related to biblical or theological concepts. Sure, sensing the presence of God is a religious element, but not specifically Christian. Being others-centered recalls a biblical principle, but lots of non-believers accept a form of the golden rule.

It seems to me, prior to the megachurch era, few if any of these items would have occurred to anyone seeking to “rate” a church. Granted, Anderson is probably assuming from the outset that Christians know enough to consider biblical orthodoxy before evaluating the seven points he stresses. And it is definitely true that many churches can be theologically correct while being cold and dead to the world around them.

Such an assumption seems ill advised these days. But rather than just being critical, I would suggest an addendum to such a list, one that accounts for some things perhaps more critical. So here’s my list:

1. Cross Centered
Does your church begin and end its ministry with a focus on the central event of human history, the death of Christ for the salvation of the world?
2. Biblical
Does your church take scripture seriously? Is scripture read aloud, understood to be the living voice of God? Is there a sense that God condescended to use human language to communicate things to us that we dare not ignore, revise, edit, or distort?
3. Orthodox
Is your church committed to those essentials of the faith that have been held by the vast majority of Christians for most of twenty centuries? Does the Trinity matter? The incarnation? The virgin birth? Does your church take seriously the clear understanding of whom God is?
4. Confession
In deference to the emphasis of being friendly to the unchurched and avoiding the negative, I have to ask, is there opportunity for us as human beings to face up to our failings? Is there opportunity to see ourselves against the measuring rod of God’s moral standards? Is there opportunity to see our need?
5. Redemption
Perhaps this reiterates point one, but is there real opportunity to connect with the personal meaning of redemption? In some churches steeped in revivalism and personal decision, this has taken the form of an altar call, but in most of Christian history this opportunity for renewal of the New Covenant takes place at the Lord’s Table. Does worship allow the worshiper to walk away with a renewed conscience and a sense of being forgiven?
6. Hope
Does the final reality of the church service leave people with a sense of hope, refreshing, purpose for the future? Is the good news really good news?
7. Ecumenism
I do NOT mean here ecumenical in the sense of the World Council of Churches, where no distinctions can any longer be made between Christianity and paganism. Rather, I mean non-sectarian. Is it possible to affirm essential Christian doctrine as expressed in Nicea and Chalcedon and accept those from other perspectives who also hold to those definitions?

Lists always have their limitations. I could add a few more items, so could you, but you get the point. Is it not possible to be sensitive to the concerns of the seeker and be theologically sound and thorough at the same time? I believe that the tendency to quantify, measure, program and perhaps even manipulate God is a hyper-modern trait the evangelical church has thoroughly embraced. We are too often in love with what seems to work in the short term and are unaware of what long-term ramifications might be. I just want to call attention to what is often forgotten in the process.