The Habits of Highly Effective Churches

  • The Habits of Highly Effective Churches

    About the Author

    George Barna (b. 1955) graduated summa cum laude from Boston College, and earned two master’s degrees from Rutgers University and a doctorate from Dallas Baptist University. In 1984 he founded the Barna Research Group, a research company specializing in Christian churches and church-related groups. He publishes a bimonthly newsletter, The Barna Report

    About the Book

    The Habits of Highly Effective Churches, published in 1999 by Regal Books, California, is a product of a concerted and extensive survey. The book discusses how you can influence your church to be highly efficient. Its objective “is to describe how several thousand churches … have learned to think and act strategically, holding fast to their theological beliefs and related values, so that they could become effective agents of Christian ministry.” (p. 15). Barna has written this book as a reference text in church growth, personal and corporate spirituality, and church health. 

    Barna sets out by noting the six pillars of church-effectiveness, these are the markers of effective churches – worship, evangelism, Christian education, community among the believers, stewardship, and serving the needy. He points out harmful habits that breed regression in church growth, while emphasizing four cogent elements that make a habit desirable: Intentional Behavior, Strategic Behavior, Productive Behavior, and Biblical Behavior. Barna observes that every highly effective church cultivate habits that depict these elements. 

    The book proceeds by reporting the research findings that prove that all highly effective churches have nine habits, they: rely upon strategic leadership, organize to facilitate highly effective ministry, emphasize developing significant relationships within the congregation, invest themselves in genuine worship, engage in strategic evangelism, get involved in systematic theological growth, utilize holistic stewardship practices, serve the needy people in the community, and equip families to minister to themselves. In fact, the subsequent chapters of the book pick up these habits one after the other, explaining them in detailed and elaborate ways. 

    Barna asserts that “understanding these nine principles of ministry and adapting them to the unique vision and resource base God has given you will enable your church to become highly effective, too.” (p. 25). He concludes that, though being a highly effective church is not easy, yet, it is not impossible. 

    This book of nine chapters and 194 pages, is a litmus test for church health, and a guide for church growth. The exceptional character of The Habits of Highly Effective Churches is rooted in the fact that it is not a bunch of theoretical quotations collated from here and there. The rudiments of church health advanced here are practical, workable, measured, and empirical conclusions that have been studied by observing a plethora of churches across diverse denominations. 

    If ever any frontline pastor, evangelist, church administrator, intending pastor, missionary, or any gospel worker intends to see their church blossom from ineffectiveness to effectiveness, the principles in his church growth manual are highly recommended. For thriving churches, a carefully study of the habits Barna has researched will thrill you with the possibility of increased growth. Simply put, your growing church can still grow. 

    At such a time as this, when there is an urgent need for healthy, growing, and transforming churches, I recommend, without reservation, The Habits of Highly Effective Churches


    Reviewed by John Okpechi. 


     
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