What is a healthy culture?

Churches and organizations that flourish don't flourish by accident

Photo by Harry Miller on Unsplash

I was on a drive last week from our home in Fort Worth to Tyler, Texas, where I visited with a friend. On the way, along the highway somewhere, I saw a church whose sign read, “a healthy church” as a kind of tagline. It made me think for a moment. I’ve seen all kinds of church taglines: “a welcoming church”, “a friendly church”, “a New Testament church”, etc. But this was the first time in four decades of randomly passing church signs that I saw “healthy church.”

My first thought was that this is a good aspiration. Churches can and should be all kinds of things—faithful, biblical, friendly, alive—but “healthy” really matters. My second thought was that by putting this on their sign, this church was both making promises and making commitments. Gluing those letters onto the wood frame won’t make that church healthy. Healthy cultures, in churches, in organizations, in families, take ongoing and intentional effort.