I visit a chiropractor occasionally to get my spine readjusted. When the spine is aligned, everything else physically seems better, smoother, and more efficient. The more aligned I am in terms of my body, the healthier I feel.

The word healthy gets tossed around a lot these days when describing churches. Some leaders define health by quantity. I get it—healthy organisms grow. Some leaders define health by quality. Their argument is you can draw a crowd by giving out free Taco Bell, which is unhealthy on multiple levels! The truth is, there are large churches that are healthy, and small churches that are healthy; large churches that are unhealthy and small churches that are unhealthy.

I’d like to suggest another barometer for a church’s health: Alignment. For a church to be healthy, it has to be aligned. And in my view, aligned in five key areas:

Vision

Vision is a clear picture of a measurable and time-constrained destination. Josh Linkner:   “If you’ve ever completed a puzzle, you’ll remember the importance of the box cover.  By having a clear picture of the desired end-state, you’re able to figure out where the pieces go.  Without that box cover picture, the task becomes exponentially more difficult.” The same is true of your church.  Without a vision, people run wild. Resources are wasted. And you never know if you’ve arrived at your destination.

Strategy

It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s another to have a workable strategy to achieve it. Strategy simply is the approach used to reach the vision. Strategy decides what you will and won’t do in pursuit of the time-constrained destination. It answers the questions: How will we get there? What capabilities and resources do we have currently that we can leverage? What capabilities and resources do we need to add?

Systems

“Systems” is a fancy word for processes. Systems support the strategy. They provide the railroad tracks for your church’s strategy to run on. Systems include items such as recruiting, training, evaluation/accountability, communication, guest services, safety etc.

Skillsets

Jim Collins in his classic book Good to Great writes about getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats on the bus. Square pegs in round holes throw off an organization’s alignment. Ask yourself – do I have the right players on my team, and are they functioning in the right positions? The right players share your core values, they get you, they possess capability, and bring passion to their role. “Kenaniah the head Levite was in charge of the singing; that was his responsibility because he was skillful at it.” 1 Chronicles 15:22 (NIV). Churches that accept mediocrity and refuse to deal with skillset issues get out of alignment.

Culture

Jeff Harlow writes: “A church’s culture is the natural way they do things. It is observable through its behaviors; over time these behaviors become routine and develop into traditions.” Your biggest challenge in getting your church aligned will often be cultural. A toxic culture will get you out of alignment faster than any of the previous four areas. Someone has said: “Culture eats vision for lunch.” Cultural alignment takes time and patience and skill. And a leader must deposit a lot into the relational bank prior to taking on the challenge of cultural change.

Is your church aligned? Does it need a chiropractor? I think almost every church has some area where misalignment exists. And to get aligned, it’s likely you’ll need a fresh set of eyes… someone from the outside… to help you. Converge Coaching helps churches get aligned. We do organizational chiropractic work.

One last thought: Anointing and calling won’t make up for misalignment… but when you combine anointing and calling with alignment… it is a powerful combination.