Event focuses on healthy congregations

United Methodist News Service
HOUSTON—Faith formation, disciple making and social witness lay foundations for healthy congregations.
That’s what speakers told United Methodist leaders at a four-day conference in Houston on building strong churches.
About 1,300 local church and conference leaders from across the United States—including 21 from Southwest Texas—met Jan. 27-30 to learn more about creating and maintaining healthy congregations.
“As conference leaders, we are responsible for helping build healthy local churches that are truly making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” said the Rev. Karen Greenwaldt, top executive at the General Board of Discipleship.
“Sadly, however, some of our churches aren’t so healthy. We want our churches to be growing, vital and relevant to the needs of the community they serve. And we want conference leaders to have the best collection of resources to build these healthy churches.”
The underlying principle of the event was the “belief that, to be a great leader, we must be spiritually grounded and able to provide effective leadership,” Greenwaldt said.
Greenwaldt’s agency, based in Nashville, Tenn., organized the event, “Healthy Churches Transforming the World.”
A healthy church “is not just simply about being either dead or alive but being a community with vitality and vigor,” wrote Marcia McFee, conference worship leader from Oakland, Calif.
Participants used four “vital signs”—breathing, pulse, blood pressure and temperature—as symbols of vitality while seeking deeper meaning for their lives and their churches.
Eighty-four workshops focused on such topics as stewardship, discipleship/evangelism, conference/church life, communication, racial-ethnic ministries, spiritual leadership, and social witness and mission.
During the event, participants discussed in depth how a healthy church should look and act as well as how they could strengthen the health of their local congregations. The conference emphasized that the health of a congregation isn’t about size or number of members but about faith formation, disciple making and social witness.
Bishop Gregory Palmer of the Iowa Episcopal Area encouraged the audience to find harmony between self-piety and social activism.
“Do not think for a minute that God gives you a choice between one or the other,” Palmer said. “We are called to strive for both.”
Palmer stressed that the church shouldn’t have “worship wars” but that all types of worship services should be full of authentic praise.
The Rev. Leslie Griffiths, dean of the Wesley Chapel in London, addressed social justice. He described how he could see the cemetery where Susanna Wesley, mother of Methodism’s founders, John and Charles Wesley, is buried.
This proximity, he said, is a reminder of the need for continuing Wesley’s work on education and social justice.
“When I am asked why I am a Methodist, without hesitation I reply that the combination of the belief in a personal God and working toward social justice is utterly intoxicating,” Griffiths said.
During the gathering, volunteers from the event bought more than 300 sack lunches at a local McDonald’s and delivered them to homeless people. Volunteers invited the people they met to the conference’s banquet that evening. About 100 guests participated in the evening meal and worship.
The “Healthy Churches” conference was the successor of jurisdictional training events that had been conducted every four years by the General Council on Ministries. It was dissolved by the 2004 General Conference.