“Vital Signs”
You’d expect vitality from a church that has Heart in the middle of its name. So how do you measure a heart’s vitality? We speak of vital signs – Body temperature. Pulse rate. Respiration rate. Blood pressure. But how do you measure a church’s vitality? Can’t stick a thermometer into Heart of the Rockies. Can’t put a blood pressure cuff around your upper arm and two fingers on your wrist to check your heart. How do you measure a congregation’s vitality? One way is to measure worship attendance, budget, baptisms, new members. But I think those numbers are but fruits of much deeper sources of vitality. If the deeper vital signs are there, all the numbers will take care of themselves.
So, what are those vital signs?