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The healthy church sees its role as transformational: helping God to transform the lives of God’s beloved. And then helping them to transform their families, neighborhoods and workplaces, and daring to dream of transforming entire communities. The unhealthy church, by contrast, places ultimate value on sameness, consistency, not challenging people, and not making waves in the community.

That is why measurements matter. Not to fill boxes on a spreadsheet or official church report, but to avoid hurting people, to know when a program needs refreshing, to see growth as it is happening so that you can support it, or to see early signs of decline so that you can take action. Without metrics, leaders are flying blind.

When I first developed my best practices guide to Church Wellness, I called this section “Young Adult Ministry.” Now I title it “Younger Adult Ministry.”

It is unrealistic to think that a congregation whose average age is over 60 will be able to appeal effectively to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are the generations too far apart, but the church expectations of the 60+ set are shaped by congregation, facility, ordained leadership, denomination and Sunday worship, whereas so-called Millennials pursue a hunger for God that takes different forms.

Surely, the time has come for local churches and national denominations to take a much more liberal and compassionate view and celebrate all healthy sexual relationships that have been developed between married or unmarried adult couples who are committed to living within loving monogamous relationships? Churches now need to go beyond the pretence of the turning of a blind eye to any long term supportive, loving unmarried co-habiting relationships and openly acknowledge that these are healthy relationships to be celebrated rather than to be condemned.

The healthy church has a fundamental orientation: outward.

Leaders don’t ask, “What do our members want?” Instead, they ask, “What does the world around us need?”

Leaders understand that a missional mindset is the heart of all church development. New constituents, for example, are rarely attracted by better and better worship. They want to know what a congregation stands for and what it is doing in the world for others.

A close reading of Matthew’s gospel reveals that a literal understanding of Jesus’s story obscures its deep Jewish roots. John Shelby Spong joins Art Remillard to discuss his new book, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000, and he is the author of several books to include Why Christianity Must Change or Die and his autobiography Here I Stand.

Voting is liturgical. It’s a ritual expression of love for others when we vote for candidates and for ballot propositions that help to assure the welfare of our vulnerable fellow citizens. Our votes are forms of tithes or offerings that deserve blessing or dedication in worship. By lifting up voting in worship, we take it to heart and commit ourselves to participate. With voter turnout in a steep decline in recent years, congregations are needed more than ever to make a difference. The time to plan election-related events in our churches is now!

  [We continue a look at the basics of church wellness. This week: Stewardship Development.] Stewardship Development is perhaps the most complicated and overlooked ministry of the church. Two reasons for this: it’s easier and safer to …

The path to spiritual development isn’t all that complicated. It’s the motivation to walk that path which tends to stymie people.

Most church communications speak to the wrong audience.

They speak to insiders. Newsletters, whether online or printed, function as bulletin boards announcing events to members. Blogs help the pastor sell programs and convey inside-the-walls news to members. Lay councils use communications to pass along financial news and fund-raising appeals to members.

To move forward, congregations need to address these challenges and recruit, train and support leaders who can function effectively in a context marked by volatility, unpredictability, complexity and ambiguity. This will mean working in partnership with the clergy, and not in opposition to them, and accepting their need for training and accountability.

Like any organization, churches tend to depend on effective leadership. Without effective leaders, churches are unable to make necessary decisions, to deal with changing situations, to hire effective staff, to allocate resources, to deal with conflict, and to prevent bullies from hurting constituents.

  [In “Forward to the Basics,” we are taking a fresh look at best practices in the critical areas of church life. This week: Membership Development.] Any church can grow. Any church can have a lively community. …

Since the very beginning, Xavier Rudd’s ability to connect with people has been his most powerful gift. The more he has toured the world, the more hearts he has touched and the more of the world he has put back into his music.

In this profound work, bestselling author and the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today. Pulling back the layers of misunderstanding created over the centuries by Gentile ignorance of things Jewish, he reveals how a literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from the original intent of the Jewish authors of the gospels that it has become an act of heresy.

Forget going “back to the basics.” Time never goes backward. Instead, let’s go “forward to the basics.”

Specifically, let’s spend the next few weeks grounding ourselves in the basic “best practices” that, if implemented, will help your congregation to become healthy, to grow in mission, ministry and membership, and to do God’s desired work of transforming lives.

Since its foundation, nearly a century ago, the United Church of Canada has famously been a broad-minded Christian denomination. Its goal at the outset was to unite the many strands of liberal Protestant practice under the same roof. And through the years it’s been widely seen as an open-minded and pluralistic institution. But now, one United Church minister in Ontario, is forcing the church to re-examine the limits of that approach…

Can a living, vital and real faith that is true to the experience of the past, while dismissing the explanations of the past, be born anew in this generation? I believe it can and so to engage this task I issue this call to the Christian world to transform its holy words of yesterday into believable words of today. If we fail in this task there is little reason to think that Christianity, as presently understood and constituted, will survive this century.