Healthy Churches

In Willow Creek/Cell Church circles there is a mnemonic around of the five points of healthy churches. It goes:

All involved
Becoming disciples
Creating community
Doing evangelism
Encountering God

Trying to remember it puts me in mind of the wonderful Boris Johnson's comment that trying to remember the Conservative's election pledges he was terrified of calling for more hospitals and cleaner policemen.

The trouble with the five points is that the A B C D E don't all stand for the word you need to remember. So it is all well and good remembering B for becoming but what should you become? Creating likewise. Doing something but I'm blowed if I can remember what.

A few years ago CPAS, for whom I worked, had three Es which were about enabling something and effective something else and one other which has completely gone.

These are not mnemonics but ways for people who remember things without thinking about them to remember things. They appeal to acute systematising men - men who passed exams by remembering things not understanding them. I am a bit like that but obviously not so extreme. (Or just tired?)

So in our Annual Parochial Church Meeting last night (not as dull as it sounds) I used the opportunity to try and get this particular ABCDE to work for me and for what it is worth try this:

We are looking for: C/EDGE

Communities on the EDGE. An EDGEy community takes the following things seriously:

Everybody involved
Disciples developed
God encountered
Evangelism done

Now I'll probably remember that (because I thought of it) but it might help you. Lemeno.