October 21, 2025 • 17 mins
What really makes a church healthy? 🎯 In this episode of the Hopeful Heretic Podcast (HHP), Pastor Chris Franke from HFF Church in Oklahoma City dives into Part 1 of a two-part series exploring what the Bible actually says about a healthy church.
Drawing from Matthew 28, Acts 2, and 1 Corinthians 3, this teaching cuts through the noise of modern church culture — beyond fog machines, donuts, and Instagram hype — to uncover the true biblical foundations of a Christ-centered community.
You’ll discover: 1️⃣ Why Jesus must be the foundation of every church (1 Corinthians 3:11) 2️⃣ The role of biblical authority and sound doctrine (2 Timothy 3:16) 3️⃣ The power of authentic community that practices real discipleship (Acts 2:42)
Because if we don’t know what makes a church healthy, how can we know if we’re in one?
Join the conversation, drop a comment, and share your thoughts on what defines a truly healthy church. We may be right, we may be heretical — but that’s for you to decide.
👉 Subscribe for Part 2 next week as we continue this deep dive into biblical church health and discipleship. 🌐 For more podcasts, blogs, and resources visit https://hff.church
#HealthyChurch #ChurchHealth #HopefulHereticPodcast #HFFChurch #PastorChrisFranke #BiblicalTeaching #Discipleship #SoundDoctrine #AuthenticCommunity #Acts2Church #JesusIsTheFoundation #ChurchLeadership #FaithPodcast #BibleStudy #ChristianPodcast #OklahomaCityChurch #KingdomInAction #ChurchFamily #SpiritualGrowth #Matthew28 #1Corinthians3 #Acts2 #ChristianFaith #ChurchLife #ChristCentered
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- Recently, I was invited to a Bible study
and the question was asked, what makes a healthy church?
I was kind of shocked that no one could answer this question.
And so today we're gonna have part one
of what makes a healthy church inspired by three texts,
Matthew 28, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 3.
(00:24):
Welcome to the HHP Podcast.
My name is Chris Franke and I am the senior pastor
of HFF Church in Oklahoma City.
Join me and others from around the country
as we talk all things Bible, church and family.
We may be right, we may be heretical,
but that's for you to decide.
Drop a like, a share, a comment, subscribe
(00:46):
and let's get to it.
Today I wanna look at part one of two part series
on what makes a healthy church.
Because I need to ask a real honest question.
If you don't know what makes a church truly healthy,
then how do you know whether or not that church
is profitable or harmful to your spiritual walk?
(01:10):
Let alone if you're a parent or you're a spouse
and you're entrusted with the spiritual oversight
of your family.
If you don't know what makes a healthy church,
what makes them truly healthy,
then how do you know that you're in a place
that's gonna lead you towards Christ?
(01:32):
How do you know that you're in a place
that's not leading you into a cult?
How do you know that you're not in a place
that's just a support group that's gonna keep you spiraling
in the cycles you're in?
Because ultimately today it's become more popular
for people to go to a church that they consider
to be successful or popular or one that they can follow
(01:55):
on Instagram.
But a healthy church is the kind of church
that Jesus would actually recognize as his bride.
And some people will say, actually it's fairly common
and has been common for a long time.
This is defined by the type of worship music you play,
(02:16):
by the atmosphere that's there.
But those are all superficial things.
Jesus can fall and the Holy Spirit can fall upon you,
the Spirit of Jesus in that place
if there's a fog machine or if there's not a fog machine,
if there's donuts in the lobby
or if there's not donuts in the lobby.
(02:36):
So a lot of the superficial things that we see people argue
about today is really their personal preference,
but it has no bearing on whether the church is healthy or not
or whether Jesus using the word of God
actually would recognize that church
as a church he would consider his own.
And so we're gonna look at somewhere between five
(02:59):
to seven bullet points of what the Bible says
about a healthy church.
And again, you can find this in many denominations,
you can find this in churches that look very different
from one another.
And so all of the things that people like to talk
about today, they're literally nonsense
(03:20):
and how we discern whether it is a healthy biblical church.
So again, we're not talking about donuts,
we're not gonna talk about fog machines
or non fog machines or my favorite,
the pastor has a band bun.
If that's what you're worried about,
then you're not interested in finding out
whether Jesus is there or not,
(03:41):
you're more interested in knowing whether you like
how the hairstyle of a person is.
All of that's irrelevant.
Number one, one of the most important things
to know whether a church is healthy or not.
Do they have a Christ centered foundation?
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 311,
(04:01):
that the foundation of every healthy church
has to be Jesus.
It says that no one can lay any foundation
other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If the foundation of the church is one element of Jesus,
well, we're a Holy Spirit church
(04:23):
or we're a Torah based church or we're a Sabbath based church.
If the identity and the foundation of the church
is one element of Christ, but not Christ as a whole,
be careful, Christ as a whole is the foundation
of every healthy church.
(04:43):
If the church is built on a person's personality,
upon our preferences, on a political stance,
it's already sick and it's become an echo chamber
for damaged people who aren't looking for a healthy church.
They're not looking to meet Jesus,
they're looking for a support group.
When Jesus is the foundation,
(05:03):
worship becomes about His glory, not about a performance.
The teaching aligns with His word,
not with the trends of the world.
And the leadership models His humility,
not acts of self-enrichment.
If Jesus is the center of our gatherings,
then it's a healthy church.
So I ask you, when you look at a church,
(05:25):
is Jesus the center of their gatherings?
Or is it just a name that's used
to prop up somebody else's own agendas?
Is Jesus the authority by which they do the character
in the nature of all things?
Or is He just a name they use to justify their character
and their names?
Number two, biblical authority and sound doctrine.
(05:50):
Everybody argues on the internet today.
You know, the invention of TikTok and Reels
and all that type of stuff.
You have internet ministries who are like,
did you know this word?
Did you know this word?
Did you know this word?
Hebrew and Greek and all these things.
Biblical authority and sound doctrine
are the number two most important thing of a healthy church.
(06:14):
Second Timothy 3.16 reminds us that all scripture
is God-breathed and useful for the teaching,
rebuking and correcting and training in righteousness.
A healthy church doesn't need to twist the scripture
to fit their culture.
It needs to stand on the scripture
to transform the culture.
(06:36):
It doesn't just preach some twisted new revelation.
It highlights the fact that the Bible
is full of simple revelations.
What good does it do for you to understand
some fourth level intimacy of the text
when you can't do the literal?
What good does it do to memorize all the verses of the Bible
(06:59):
but then do nothing in the practice?
We can't just quote the Bible.
The Bible tells us we must live it.
And this is where all churches for centuries
have wrestled between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
We need both of them.
We need both orthodoxy, which is right belief,
(07:19):
and orthopraxy, which is right practice.
And every church thinks they have that.
And so we have to understand that the word of God
is the authority for what?
Right belief and right practice.
This means teachings that are faithful,
(07:40):
convicting and transformative, practical,
but most importantly, they're teaching you
from the word of God, not from a book of a different author,
not from some self help, not from, you know,
all of those things can be used in theology.
They can be used to understand things,
(08:01):
but we're teaching from the word of God.
So do we teach people in a church
to love and study the Bible,
or do we keep them dependent upon the sermons
or the Bible studies they hear?
Because ultimately that's the difference
between a church that's healthy,
that's trying to empower disciples
and people to be learned in the word of God
(08:23):
versus people who are making people dependent and isolated
so that they are dependent upon a man or a woman
to give them the word of God.
Remember, 21 of the 27 books
that are written in the New Testament
were written to communities.
The Torah, the 10 commandments given to communities.
(08:44):
The church is supposed to be a healthy place
by which we practice the commands,
practice the orthopraxy,
learn how to have right practice,
and we wrestle with orthodoxy, what is right belief.
And so the church is important.
Once we get picked off and we go to other places,
you can fall into all kinds of strange doctrine
(09:07):
and lacking in sound doctrine.
And when you are in a church
where the leadership of the church
is out for their own selfish gain,
you can find the same thing,
where they will twist the scriptures
and they will try to use it for their practice,
for their glorification, for their manipulation
versus the empowerment of the people in the church.
Remember, the kingdom of God is always about multiplication
(09:29):
and you are always multiplying something.
You're either multiplying what the Bible says is good fruit
or you're multiplying what is bad fruit.
Number three, authentic community.
Every church has a community.
They do, otherwise they wouldn't have a church.
The doors would be shut, they'd have an online ministry.
Online ministries traditionally don't have to worry
(09:50):
about fostering community through the ups and downs
of what is traditionally known as pastoral offices.
When you foster authentic community,
that means you have to sit in the mud with people
who have anxiety, they have broken relationships,
they have broken homes.
Guess what?
They're just like every other person,
(10:10):
including most likely the pastor,
even though the pastor at some point of time
was able to overcome that because hopefully the older,
elders were teaching the younger.
We also see a lot now where the pastors are not being taught
by elders or by olders or there's no accountability.
And so those are not authentic communities,
but they are communities.
(10:33):
And so being in an unhealthy community is dangerous.
Being in an authentic community can also be dangerous.
Why?
Because being in an authentic community means
that you're going to be confronted with changing your life,
changing your practices, changing your beliefs
(10:53):
and getting on mission with Jesus and the word of God
as the outline of God.
In Acts 2 42, we read,
"They devoted themselves to the apostles teachings,
"to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."
This is what a healthy church would look like in practice.
(11:14):
It's not a crowd of people who come through the door
and just watch and run out.
That's not, you're being entertained at that point in time.
You are not engaging,
you are not attempting to participate in the community.
You are basically a spectator in the community.
(11:34):
God wants a family on mission.
He wants a family on mission where people are known,
loved, corrected.
That's where I lose people, corrected.
And also celebrated.
Where conflict is handled biblically,
not ignored or not weaponized against people.
(11:56):
A community where every person and every gift
and every voice matters,
but must be done in a healthy way.
If someone were to leave your church today,
would anybody in your church notice?
Would anybody reach out to them?
Would anybody think, well, that's not my ministry?
Or would they reach out to them because it was their family?
(12:21):
This is one of the greatest struggles I've had
in the years of being a pastor is that people
wanna stay isolated in their box.
People wanna stay isolated in a place
where they don't wanna open themselves up for hurt
or fear or any of these things.
And so they see when somebody is leaving the church
(12:43):
or somebody is moving on,
and not people leave churches all the time,
and it's not always necessarily divisive,
and it's not always necessarily wrong.
They're searching for the right community for the season
of life they're in.
No church is a one size fit all community.
I don't care what church it is,
and I don't care how much the Holy Spirit
(13:03):
is operating in that church.
It doesn't mean that every person in that community
needs to be tied to that church.
That's not the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is to go out, sent ones,
to go to all corners of all earths to reach all places.
And sometimes people need different things.
So not everybody who leaves a church
(13:26):
leaves on unbiblical standing.
Sometimes they leave because it wasn't the field
and it was a stopping point for the next mission.
That's not rejection.
We saw that in Matthew when Jesus first sends out
the apprentices.
He tells them to dust off their feet
and to move on to the next mission.
You cannot take the rejection to the next mission field.
(13:49):
Because sometimes the rejection you feel
is nothing more than a seed planted
for somebody else to come in
and do the miracle in their life.
And so rejection shouldn't cause us
to be angry with people or to be hurt by these people.
It should cause us to dust off our feet.
(14:09):
And remember, they're still our family.
This is what a healthy church looks like.
I know this is unheard of and I know this is very hard
because a lot of people when they leave a church,
people feel like they have been rejected by those people
and they feel like their relationship has been harmed.
And so a lot of times they will react negatively
(14:32):
because of that.
But remember, when you were in good standing with them,
they were in good standing with you.
They were a part of your family.
And when they moved on to some other family,
they're still part of your family.
And this is the first three things,
first three bullet points of what makes a healthy church.
(14:56):
If you don't know what makes a healthy church,
then you have no idea what the Bible says
about the community that God created
and the vehicle God created for the gospel
to go forth to the ends of the earth,
to utilize discipleship and to utilize spiritual growth
and to make families have heritage and inheritance,
(15:17):
not just financially, but also spiritually.
You have to understand what the Bible says
about healthy churches.
Otherwise, you're going to constantly end up in places
that might be healthy,
but you won't even know what you're looking for
because a lot of our culture has taught us
to look for things we like, not what we need.
(15:42):
And in the end, God doesn't really care what you like.
God is not out there as a genie
trying to give you what you want.
God's job is to try to help you by supplying what you need.
Sometimes we need a kick in the butt.
Sometimes we need a loving father
to wrap his arms around us.
(16:03):
Sometimes we need all extremes on all sides.
God is trying to get us to grow as communities
to plant other communities, to further the gospel
for one simple mission,
to combat the plans of the adversary,
which is to seek, kill and destroy every person
(16:26):
that the adversary can to keep them separated from God
until his time is up.
If you are separated from the family of God
because you don't know what constitutes a healthy church
and you're just looking between Marco's Pizza and Pizza Hut
because you're trying to get your preference of pizza
(16:46):
in a spiritual way, you are going to get picked off
and you're gonna help others get picked off too.
Next week, we'll look at the second half of the bullet points
of what defines a healthy church.
I believe in my heart, there are many, many, many, many,
many healthy churches out there,
(17:07):
but not every healthy church is going to be
where the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus
needs you right now, and that's okay.
And that includes my church,
is that not every person who walks through the door
of my church at HFF is supposed to be there,
and that's okay.
(17:27):
But we do need to get them into healthy churches
where they can thrive.
- If this podcast has blessed you,
please consider supporting by visiting our website
and making a donation.
For more resources, blogs, podcasts,
please visit us at hff.church.
Looking for a church home?
(17:48):
Join us for Saturday Church in OKC every Saturday morning,
starting at 10.30.
you
- Recently, I was invited to a Bible study
and the question was asked, what makes a healthy church?
I was kind of shocked that no one could answer this question.
And so today we're gonna have part one
of what makes a healthy church inspired by three texts,
Matthew 28, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 3.
(00:24):
Welcome to the HHP Podcast.
My name is Chris Franke and I am the senior pastor
of HFF Church in Oklahoma City.
Join me and others from around the country
as we talk all things Bible, church and family.
We may be right, we may be heretical,
but that's for you to decide.
Drop a like, a share, a comment, subscribe
(00:46):
and let's get to it.
Today I wanna look at part one of two part series
on what makes a healthy church.
Because I need to ask a real honest question.
If you don't know what makes a church truly healthy,
then how do you know whether or not that church
is profitable or harmful to your spiritual walk?
(01:10):
Let alone if you're a parent or you're a spouse
and you're entrusted with the spiritual oversight
of your family.
If you don't know what makes a healthy church,
what makes them truly healthy,
then how do you know that you're in a place
that's gonna lead you towards Christ?
(01:32):
How do you know that you're in a place
that's not leading you into a cult?
How do you know that you're not in a place
that's just a support group that's gonna keep you spiraling
in the cycles you're in?
Because ultimately today it's become more popular
for people to go to a church that they consider
to be successful or popular or one that they can follow
(01:55):
on Instagram.
But a healthy church is the kind of church
that Jesus would actually recognize as his bride.
And some people will say, actually it's fairly common
and has been common for a long time.
This is defined by the type of worship music you play,
(02:16):
by the atmosphere that's there.
But those are all superficial things.
Jesus can fall and the Holy Spirit can fall upon you,
the Spirit of Jesus in that place
if there's a fog machine or if there's not a fog machine,
if there's donuts in the lobby
or if there's not donuts in the lobby.
(02:36):
So a lot of the superficial things that we see people argue
about today is really their personal preference,
but it has no bearing on whether the church is healthy or not
or whether Jesus using the word of God
actually would recognize that church
as a church he would consider his own.
And so we're gonna look at somewhere between five
(02:59):
to seven bullet points of what the Bible says
about a healthy church.
And again, you can find this in many denominations,
you can find this in churches that look very different
from one another.
And so all of the things that people like to talk
about today, they're literally nonsense
(03:20):
and how we discern whether it is a healthy biblical church.
So again, we're not talking about donuts,
we're not gonna talk about fog machines
or non fog machines or my favorite,
the pastor has a band bun.
If that's what you're worried about,
then you're not interested in finding out
whether Jesus is there or not,
(03:41):
you're more interested in knowing whether you like
how the hairstyle of a person is.
All of that's irrelevant.
Number one, one of the most important things
to know whether a church is healthy or not.
Do they have a Christ centered foundation?
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 311,
(04:01):
that the foundation of every healthy church
has to be Jesus.
It says that no one can lay any foundation
other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If the foundation of the church is one element of Jesus,
well, we're a Holy Spirit church
(04:23):
or we're a Torah based church or we're a Sabbath based church.
If the identity and the foundation of the church
is one element of Christ, but not Christ as a whole,
be careful, Christ as a whole is the foundation
of every healthy church.
(04:43):
If the church is built on a person's personality,
upon our preferences, on a political stance,
it's already sick and it's become an echo chamber
for damaged people who aren't looking for a healthy church.
They're not looking to meet Jesus,
they're looking for a support group.
When Jesus is the foundation,
(05:03):
worship becomes about His glory, not about a performance.
The teaching aligns with His word,
not with the trends of the world.
And the leadership models His humility,
not acts of self-enrichment.
If Jesus is the center of our gatherings,
then it's a healthy church.
So I ask you, when you look at a church,
(05:25):
is Jesus the center of their gatherings?
Or is it just a name that's used
to prop up somebody else's own agendas?
Is Jesus the authority by which they do the character
in the nature of all things?
Or is He just a name they use to justify their character
and their names?
Number two, biblical authority and sound doctrine.
(05:50):
Everybody argues on the internet today.
You know, the invention of TikTok and Reels
and all that type of stuff.
You have internet ministries who are like,
did you know this word?
Did you know this word?
Did you know this word?
Hebrew and Greek and all these things.
Biblical authority and sound doctrine
are the number two most important thing of a healthy church.
(06:14):
Second Timothy 3.16 reminds us that all scripture
is God-breathed and useful for the teaching,
rebuking and correcting and training in righteousness.
A healthy church doesn't need to twist the scripture
to fit their culture.
It needs to stand on the scripture
to transform the culture.
(06:36):
It doesn't just preach some twisted new revelation.
It highlights the fact that the Bible
is full of simple revelations.
What good does it do for you to understand
some fourth level intimacy of the text
when you can't do the literal?
What good does it do to memorize all the verses of the Bible
(06:59):
but then do nothing in the practice?
We can't just quote the Bible.
The Bible tells us we must live it.
And this is where all churches for centuries
have wrestled between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
We need both of them.
We need both orthodoxy, which is right belief,
(07:19):
and orthopraxy, which is right practice.
And every church thinks they have that.
And so we have to understand that the word of God
is the authority for what?
Right belief and right practice.
This means teachings that are faithful,
(07:40):
convicting and transformative, practical,
but most importantly, they're teaching you
from the word of God, not from a book of a different author,
not from some self help, not from, you know,
all of those things can be used in theology.
They can be used to understand things,
(08:01):
but we're teaching from the word of God.
So do we teach people in a church
to love and study the Bible,
or do we keep them dependent upon the sermons
or the Bible studies they hear?
Because ultimately that's the difference
between a church that's healthy,
that's trying to empower disciples
and people to be learned in the word of God
(08:23):
versus people who are making people dependent and isolated
so that they are dependent upon a man or a woman
to give them the word of God.
Remember, 21 of the 27 books
that are written in the New Testament
were written to communities.
The Torah, the 10 commandments given to communities.
(08:44):
The church is supposed to be a healthy place
by which we practice the commands,
practice the orthopraxy,
learn how to have right practice,
and we wrestle with orthodoxy, what is right belief.
And so the church is important.
Once we get picked off and we go to other places,
you can fall into all kinds of strange doctrine
(09:07):
and lacking in sound doctrine.
And when you are in a church
where the leadership of the church
is out for their own selfish gain,
you can find the same thing,
where they will twist the scriptures
and they will try to use it for their practice,
for their glorification, for their manipulation
versus the empowerment of the people in the church.
Remember, the kingdom of God is always about multiplication
(09:29):
and you are always multiplying something.
You're either multiplying what the Bible says is good fruit
or you're multiplying what is bad fruit.
Number three, authentic community.
Every church has a community.
They do, otherwise they wouldn't have a church.
The doors would be shut, they'd have an online ministry.
Online ministries traditionally don't have to worry
(09:50):
about fostering community through the ups and downs
of what is traditionally known as pastoral offices.
When you foster authentic community,
that means you have to sit in the mud with people
who have anxiety, they have broken relationships,
they have broken homes.
Guess what?
They're just like every other person,
(10:10):
including most likely the pastor,
even though the pastor at some point of time
was able to overcome that because hopefully the older,
elders were teaching the younger.
We also see a lot now where the pastors are not being taught
by elders or by olders or there's no accountability.
And so those are not authentic communities,
but they are communities.
(10:33):
And so being in an unhealthy community is dangerous.
Being in an authentic community can also be dangerous.
Why?
Because being in an authentic community means
that you're going to be confronted with changing your life,
changing your practices, changing your beliefs
(10:53):
and getting on mission with Jesus and the word of God
as the outline of God.
In Acts 2 42, we read,
"They devoted themselves to the apostles teachings,
"to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."
This is what a healthy church would look like in practice.
(11:14):
It's not a crowd of people who come through the door
and just watch and run out.
That's not, you're being entertained at that point in time.
You are not engaging,
you are not attempting to participate in the community.
You are basically a spectator in the community.
(11:34):
God wants a family on mission.
He wants a family on mission where people are known,
loved, corrected.
That's where I lose people, corrected.
And also celebrated.
Where conflict is handled biblically,
not ignored or not weaponized against people.
(11:56):
A community where every person and every gift
and every voice matters,
but must be done in a healthy way.
If someone were to leave your church today,
would anybody in your church notice?
Would anybody reach out to them?
Would anybody think, well, that's not my ministry?
Or would they reach out to them because it was their family?
(12:21):
This is one of the greatest struggles I've had
in the years of being a pastor is that people
wanna stay isolated in their box.
People wanna stay isolated in a place
where they don't wanna open themselves up for hurt
or fear or any of these things.
And so they see when somebody is leaving the church
(12:43):
or somebody is moving on,
and not people leave churches all the time,
and it's not always necessarily divisive,
and it's not always necessarily wrong.
They're searching for the right community for the season
of life they're in.
No church is a one size fit all community.
I don't care what church it is,
and I don't care how much the Holy Spirit
(13:03):
is operating in that church.
It doesn't mean that every person in that community
needs to be tied to that church.
That's not the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is to go out, sent ones,
to go to all corners of all earths to reach all places.
And sometimes people need different things.
So not everybody who leaves a church
(13:26):
leaves on unbiblical standing.
Sometimes they leave because it wasn't the field
and it was a stopping point for the next mission.
That's not rejection.
We saw that in Matthew when Jesus first sends out
the apprentices.
He tells them to dust off their feet
and to move on to the next mission.
You cannot take the rejection to the next mission field.
(13:49):
Because sometimes the rejection you feel
is nothing more than a seed planted
for somebody else to come in
and do the miracle in their life.
And so rejection shouldn't cause us
to be angry with people or to be hurt by these people.
It should cause us to dust off our feet.
(14:09):
And remember, they're still our family.
This is what a healthy church looks like.
I know this is unheard of and I know this is very hard
because a lot of people when they leave a church,
people feel like they have been rejected by those people
and they feel like their relationship has been harmed.
And so a lot of times they will react negatively
(14:32):
because of that.
But remember, when you were in good standing with them,
they were in good standing with you.
They were a part of your family.
And when they moved on to some other family,
they're still part of your family.
And this is the first three things,
first three bullet points of what makes a healthy church.
(14:56):
If you don't know what makes a healthy church,
then you have no idea what the Bible says
about the community that God created
and the vehicle God created for the gospel
to go forth to the ends of the earth,
to utilize discipleship and to utilize spiritual growth
and to make families have heritage and inheritance,
(15:17):
not just financially, but also spiritually.
You have to understand what the Bible says
about healthy churches.
Otherwise, you're going to constantly end up in places
that might be healthy,
but you won't even know what you're looking for
because a lot of our culture has taught us
to look for things we like, not what we need.
(15:42):
And in the end, God doesn't really care what you like.
God is not out there as a genie
trying to give you what you want.
God's job is to try to help you by supplying what you need.
Sometimes we need a kick in the butt.
Sometimes we need a loving father
to wrap his arms around us.
(16:03):
Sometimes we need all extremes on all sides.
God is trying to get us to grow as communities
to plant other communities, to further the gospel
for one simple mission,
to combat the plans of the adversary,
which is to seek, kill and destroy every person
(16:26):
that the adversary can to keep them separated from God
until his time is up.
If you are separated from the family of God
because you don't know what constitutes a healthy church
and you're just looking between Marco's Pizza and Pizza Hut
because you're trying to get your preference of pizza
(16:46):
in a spiritual way, you are going to get picked off
and you're gonna help others get picked off too.
Next week, we'll look at the second half of the bullet points
of what defines a healthy church.
I believe in my heart, there are many, many, many, many,
many healthy churches out there,
(17:07):
but not every healthy church is going to be
where the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus
needs you right now, and that's okay.
And that includes my church,
is that not every person who walks through the door
of my church at HFF is supposed to be there,
and that's okay.
(17:27):
But we do need to get them into healthy churches
where they can thrive.
- If this podcast has blessed you,
please consider supporting by visiting our website
and making a donation.
For more resources, blogs, podcasts,
please visit us at hff.church.
Looking for a church home?
(17:48):
Join us for Saturday Church in OKC every Saturday morning,
starting at 10.30.
you
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