Essential Characteristics of Great FaithSoaring Churches
The Synergy of Good Faith, Good Fellowship, Good Works, Good News
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Essential Characteristics of Great FaithSoaring Churches
Recent Articles George wrote for The Baptist Paper
Essential Characteeristics of Great FaithSoaring Churches
Four essential characteristics of FaithSoaring Churches are Good Faith, Good Fellowship, Good Works, and Good News. All four characteristics must be present in congregations, or they are incomplete, myopic, and lack sufficient spiritual and strategic vitality and vibrancy. They also must interact in a way that creates a synergy that is greater than the impact of these individual characteristics. Only when this synergy is present will congregations move from being good enough to being significantly great.
My desire is to understand what characterizes congregations when they are functioning with great spiritual and strategic surrender to God’s empowering vision. Two sources – one secular and one religious – impact my thinking beyond my core Christian and biblical convictions.
Management guru Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't (HarperBusiness, 2001), suggests many organizations are good. Functioning in a great manner, however, eludes many organizations.
David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons in their book, Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You're Irrelevant and Extreme (Baker Books, 2017), challenge Christians to live out a good faith. They also share what they believe constitutes good faith practice.
The exceptional synergy of Good Faith, Good Fellowship, Good Works, and Good News results in Great FaithSoaring Churches with a generous presence of spiritual and strategic vitality and vibrancy.
Defining the Four Goods
Good Faith is about the spiritual quest of congregations as they worship the Triune God, and help people engage in a Christ-centered, faith-based lifestyle. People run the spiritual race of continually maturing discipleship involving spiritual formation, leadership development, and missional engagement. Disciplemaking is the key idea for this perspective about Good Faith.
Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” Luke 9:23-25 from The Message
Good Fellowship is about the quest for community within congregations as they help people move from face familiarity with others to meaningful relationships and ultimately true friendships within a loving Christ-like congregational fellowship.
They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved. Acts 2:42-47 from The Message
Good Works is about the Great Commandment quest of congregations as they lovingly and compassionately engage with people. The people engaged are literally and figuratively hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned, both within the congregational context and globally. I offer Mark 12:28-31 as a scriptural reference point. Luke 4:18-19 or Matthew 25:31-46 also speak to this idea.
One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?” Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.” Mark 12:28-31 from The Message
Good News is about the Great Commission quest of congregations in a ministry of reconciliation. They seek to introduce people to the unconditional love of God through Jesus Christ with the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit so that people might be reconciled to God.
Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 from The Message
Churches Must Commit to FaithSoaring
Achieving the synergy of Good Faith, Good Fellowship, Good Works, and Good News is a sacrificial commitment. The failure to achieve the synergy of these four can be unintentional or intentional. In every case the failure to achieve the synergy of these four means a congregation is missing essential characteristics to be vital and vibrant—much less FaithSoaring.
It is not necessary for a FaithSoaring Church to have an exact balance of each of these characteristics. Imbalance does show the uniqueness characteristic of congregations. Yet, congregations must have a generous presence of each characteristic to achieve the synergy needed to soar with faith.
Each of these characteristics are good. With appropriate synergy they can result in a great church. Each is sufficiently good that some churches want to focus on one or two to the exclusion of the others. Doing so may create a radical imbalance and even the absence of one or two of the essential characteristics. Such churches are incomplete – even dysfunctional.
Questions for Dialogue
This raises the following four questions. What happens when Good Faith is over emphasized? What happens when Good Fellowship is over emphasized? What happens when Good Works is over emphasized? What happens when Good News is over emphasized?
The four parallel questions are these. What happens when Good Faith is under emphasized? What happens when Good Fellowship is under emphasized? What happens when Good Works is under emphasized? What happens when Good News is under emphasized?
Where is the Good in your congregation? How well does your congregation approach the status of Great? How do you determine this?