Evaluating the Health of the Cell Church (Part Two)

by Rob Campbell

www.cypresscreekchurch.com

This is part two of a three part posting on “Evaluating the Health of the Cell Church.”   Please see last week’s blog post and make sure to read the excellent comments.

Here’s part two:

We do not deny that these are valuable pieces of growth  (see last week’s post). 

We do see the need for keeping these kind of statistics, but we choose to look at a different set of qualities to measure health.

What a Healthy Cell really looks like:

• Atmosphere of edification and encouragement.
Is this group consistently edifying and encouraging each other? How?
• Accountability brought on by transparency and vulnerability.
Is this group regularly transparent and vulnerable?  Does that transparency lead to increased accountability?
• Growing relationships among members and deepening relationship with Jesus evident by increased personal growth. 
Has the majority of this group experienced personal growth over the last six months? What does that look like?
• Willingness on the part of cell members to teach each other from personal life experience and a willingness to be taught by others
Is this group teachable?  Do they regularly learn from each other? How?
• Everyone feels welcomed.
How is this group welcoming people?
• Mindset of serving the community among members.
What specific way is this group serving the community?
• Leaders who are active listeners, careful facilitators, and true lovers of people. 
Do you see this leader talking less than the group, asking probing questions, loving people unconditionally? How is this love demonstrated?

Comments?

8 thoughts on “Evaluating the Health of the Cell Church (Part Two)

  • I would add :
    – Do they pray for each other ?
    – Does everyone reproduces himself in his role : worship, cell leader, etc ?
    – Does everyone is willing to make disciples ?

  • I would like to suggest the following for feedback. Most are based on Karen Hurston’s book on Yoido and the work of Neil Cole. They are more directed at cell members but answers could be quantifed and totaled for cells and districts.

    How many chapters of the bible did you read last week? (John 8:31)
    How many unchurched persons did cell leaders visit with (on their turf or in their homes) last week?
    How many unchurched persons visited the cell meeting this week?

    In the cell’s own self evaluation, you would ask for sharing of more information because the details are important.

  • As a missionary church-planter (in Germany) I have been a huge fan of Neil Cole’s work and the development of a heart for God in fellowship and from the Word. I appreciated the “bait” of part one with the challenge of part two.

    Out of recent painful experience I believe there is still another dimension missing. There are so many who are engaged in the activities, doing the disciplines, yet remain emotionally immature. I have been impressed by the biblically insightful and personally transparent, practical orientation of Paul Scazzero’s, “The Emotionally Healthy Church: a strategy for discipleship that actually changes lives.” (http://www.amazon.com/Emotionally-Healthy-Church-Peter-Scazzero/dp/0310246547) and “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality”. The first is written from / for the perspective of the leader. The second is from/for individuals.

    Some of his measures include – ability to go below the surface (similar to “transparency”, but more), ability to process personal (family of origin) history, ability to work through grief and loss, living out of brokenness and weakness, ability to accept limits as gifts from God, etc. These things impact directly how free one is to resolve conflict, be a healing presence, incarnate the love of Christ.

    Underlying much of what I see in both the thread and the comments are things that quickly become forms of shame. It is neither healthy nor Christlike to be engaged in “promoting spiritual growth” by means of guilt/shame. Yet we go there so very naturally and subtly. I speak from experience.

  • Amen. Scazzero’s book looks like a good resource. In my own life more secular books by M. Scott Peck and Stephen Covey have helped me to articulate for myself how I could become a better, more healthy person.

    The interesting thing for me is how difficult it is to organize my life to ensure time to read the scripture each week by chapters. The subtlety of this question is that I have to learn some self discipline in order to read more than one or two chapters and I have to learn some humility and strength of will to honestly report what I’ve read – 1 or 2 or 12 or 28 – to others.

    Some churches, such as Dale Galloway’s New Hope in Portland, won’t let people into leadership roles until they are tithers. Becoming a consistent, regular tither was a very large maturity process in my life. Whenever I’ve been burnt in trusting a leader who was not ready, the first and most obvious clue was their ongoing inability to have self-control in financial matters. Another regular feature was the submission of weekly written reports. These little duties in little ways taught self-discipline and the ability to fulfill commitments.

    Hopefully nothing like this will be used to shame anyone, but little things have the potential to teach us little lessons in maturity, and like exercise the accumulating value comes from frequent repetition of little tasks which in themselves are not difficult for anyone.

  • My Dear Brothers!

    Without going into many details of my past, I have been looking into this type of discussion for long time. Great Comments from Rob.

    I also think that this discussion should go outside of church on the topics of open mindness, service,knowledge,sucsession,continuity..?

    1. We have heros of the New Testement Church who live among us taking action developing deciples in this most unprecedented system crisis. We can not build the Church through mutiplication without realization that all personal development courses came from the Bible.Please look at our church website in section School of Ministry http://www.aliconline.org on that matter. May be it’s the time for Church in America learn from naturalized citizens of this great country just as other countries copied everything from America Evil & Good for the last 60 years.

    2. Questions we may want to ask others believers & non-believers alike:
    Who impacted your life the most & you continue to use that manual daily?
    Do you need to go the out-of-area sourse to be helped on any matter(including financial, retail, exc) or can you find that person of integrity & knowledge in your own back yard at the church or outside of the church & edify that person if it’s believer or Bring that person to Christ if it’s non-Believer.

    3. I see a lot of people in the Church make enourmous mistakes with their finances following advises of their relatives or friends without looking at complete financial pciture approach from the independent prospective

    4. People in cells may want to share positive shopping experiences with each other to save money & give more to the Body of Christ.

    5. Helping other people of faith & care to make money & find jobs can be another part of cellgroups.

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