FROM THE EDITOR
Terry C. Muck
January 1, 1983
How can you tell if your church is healthy? Plenty of church experts have ready answers to that question. And many of those answers can be useful if it's understood they apply only in certain conditions. But too often the easy-answer folks get carried away and claim their one-dimensional yardsticks can be applied across the board. Of course, such overgeneralizations aren't restricted to churchmen. It's a common failing of theorists in any discipline. For example, economist K. E. Phillips, after examining the economic history of the modern Western world, noted that whenever inflation was high, unemployment was low, and whenever inflation was low, unemployment was high. This pattern was so persistent that in 1958 Phillips proclaimed it a law of economics. Thus, in the 1970s when unemployment rose to high levels, the theorists claimed that if inflation were allowed to drift upward, the unemployment rate would fall as a consequence. Unfortunately, for the first time in history it didn't. And the combination of high inflation and high unemployment gave us a serious economic crisis. Needless to say, the church is not an economic system. But throughout history, those who have attempted to attribute church health to one or two isolated factors have met a similar fate: -When doctrinal rigidity was thought to be the key to church health in the thirteenth century, the Inquisition was the scandalous result. -When Peter Waldo, in 1184, decided a return to the poverty of the New Testament church was the key, he and his followers were excommunicated. -And when the Donatists of the fourth century held up absolute moral purity for every believer as central, a passionate rift threatened to tear the North African church apart. We took note of these ...
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