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We live in a smallish city in South Carolina. In many ways it is exactly what you would expect from

On any given Sunday morning, one-third of the attenders at Malvern Hill are 18 years old or younger. We are a medium sized church on the edge of a small city. Currently, we average around 300 in worship, and you can almost guarantee that if we have 300 in worship this Sunday, 100 of them will be 18 or under. There are unique challenges that come with being a church filled with young people–primarily that those who are 18 and under do not normally tithe– but there are of course incredible blessings. Young people bring life and joy and they are the present and the future of the church.

Is your church healthy? Does it have a foundation that can lead to growth and faithfulness? Are there healthy practices and commitments within your church that interact with other practices and commitments to lead to organizational health and faithfulness? These five components are essential for a healthy church:

Jesus is enough to carry and sustain the worn-out souls of your hearers. They come to the altar of God’s word week in and week out to be refreshed and encouraged. You have been given the gift of preaching for the edifying—the building up—of your local church. They come in beat-down and tired. The worries of financial strife, the struggles of wayward children, the back-biting of a secular workplace, and the thorns and thistles of sinful creation all work in a sort of unholy symphony to burden God’s image-bearers. Given the opportunity, this unholy symphony will actually drown out the siren call of Calvary.

Plant your roots. After nearly twenty years of vocational ministry, I can say that little is as beneficial to the

Discipleship is hard and it is time-consuming. The results of discipleship are often discovered over years, not weeks and months, but discipleship is not an option for followers of Jesus, it is an expectation. It is the Great Commission. We have to speak up for intentional discipleship and create pathways for disciples to grow. We have to make discipleship an expectation of attenders and a part of the core DNA of our churches. We have to speak out against the idols in our culture that keep us from discipling and being discipled and we have to stand on the solid truths of God’s Word, even when it isn’t popular.

Mark 10: 46-52 Bartimaeus had blind faith. Even as voices around him tried to silence his cries, his trust in

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The teens and young adults into whom you invest need to know that high school and college are hard. But they also need to know that life is going to get more complex and challenging. We must encourage them to learn to cope with life today so that they can find success in life tomorrow. If 10 pushups are so hard and discouraging that you never try to do pushups again, you’ll never get to 100. But, if someone comes alongside you who can do 50 pushups and acknowledges your struggle and encourages you to try again tomorrow, you might just meet your goal.