Healthy Church Magazine is a quarterly magazine written by church leaders for church leaders (at every level of the church, not just the senior leader) in traditional and emerging churches. It is a magazine designed to help you improve the health and growth potential of your local church.

Subscribers: to download the latest issue of the magazine click here

Each Issue of the magazine contains:

Stories of best practice in improving the health of a local church

• Valuable resources like the complete resource “Becoming an Empowering Leader” contained in Issue 4. Further resources have been published since then Evangelism in the Small Church, Structures that Work!, and Effective Small Group Ministry.
• Reflective articles relating to healthy churches and organisations working towards improving the health of local churches
• Information and articles on Natural Church Development

Resource Directory

We are also beginning to build a Resource Directory of

• Organisations
• Books
• Resources
• People
• Consultants and Coaches

which are working well with local churches. Do you have something you can add? It will be published in a variety of forms in the magazine, on CD and on the Web as it builds into a useful tool, but it will only happen as people from local churches tell us what is working well. This is not a theoretical document but it will be a record of what has worked somewhere!

Subscribing to HealthyChurch.mag.uk

Healthy Church Magazine is available quarterly in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn each year.

An annual subscription costs £15.00 delivered to your Inbox by email.

Use the Resources Section of this web site to order and pay for an annual subscription by credit card, or to purchase any of the issues. Alternatively you can request a sample on our contact page.

Some articles are available freely on this site as Acrobat® files for you to download or read — in particular the series on Need-orientated Evangelism. More may become available in the future so it is worth revisiting this site.

Book Reviews

Each copy of the magazine contains reviews of books and resources relevant to improving church health. In the future we will be posting reviews on this page too, so it is worth returning to look.

We need more books reviewed and so our current list is now available here as an Excel® spreadsheet. (When you click on this link you will be given the option to open or save the file. Choose to save it then you can open and review the contents.) If you are having problems or need a hard copy, you can contact me to receive the book. If you are ready to review a book please contact me also and I will send it to you. Unfortunately there is no payment for your work, although you can keep the book if you want to. The latest books are clearly marked in yellow.

If you have never reviewed a book before you might want to download the guidelines here.

Issue 1 : May 2003
Theme: Looking Back, looking forward
Special Features: Natural Church Development, the Small Church Network and Church Planting

Issue 2 : January 2004
Theme: What is a healthy church?
Special Features: Natural Church Development, the Small Church Network and Building Bridges of Hope

Issue 3 : April 2004
Theme: Church Health the Natural Way
Special Features: Natural Church Development, Getting the Church to be a Real Body and Need-orientated Evangelism

Issue 4 : July to September 2004
Theme: Becoming an Empowering Leader
Special Feature: A complete 28-page Healthy Church Resource is included entitled “Becoming an Empowering Leader” written by David Spriggs

Issue 5 : October to December 2004
Theme: Healthy Things Grow!
Special Features: The transition from growth to health, A Church Health Check, Need-orientated Evangelism, The Small Church and its Mission, Why I Stopped Going to Church!

Issue 6 : January to March 2005
Theme: Resources for Healthy Churches
Special Features: Signs and Blunders Indicating Growth, Resources for Healthy Churches, How Long should the Vicar Stay?, Passionate Spirituality and Church Growth, Global Mission, Natural Church Development in the Salvation Army, The Biblical Basis for Need-orientated Evangelism, Being a Small Church.

Issue 7 : April to July 2005
Theme: Reaching People - The Small Church Way
Special Feature: A complete Healthy Church Resource written by Dan Yarnell.

Issue 8 : July to September 2005
Theme: Mission Accompaniment
Special Features: Accompaniment for Mission, Ten Tips for Coaches, Keeping Company with Christ, Reaching Goals through Coaching, Catching the Call of God, Building Bridges of Hope, Nine Essential Competencies for Quality Coaching, Today's Local Mission Field, The Diploma in Mission Accompaniment.

Issue 9 : April to June 2006
Theme: The Papers from the Mission21 Conference
Special Features: The Mission21 Conference held in Sheffield in March 2006 was designed to encourage, equip church panting and fresh expressions of church. A wide variety of valuable papers were given and each one is included in this most valuable Issue.

Issue 10 : Summer 2006
Theme: Structures that Work!
Special Features: This complete workbook and guide to improving the structure of your local church was written by Philip Walker. It contains many "For You to Do" sections and concludes with 8 pages of very useful worksheets for many aspects of working on the structures of the church.

Issue 11 : Autumn 2006
Theme: What is a Healthy Church?
Special Features: What is a Healthy Church, Growing Healthy Congregations, Is a Wealthy Church a Healthy Church, Healthy Leadership in a Healthy Church, Good Leadership is Vital, Preparing for NCD, Mission Accompaniment with Relevant Questions, Need Orientated Evangelism, What is a Holistic Small Group?

Issue 12 : March 2007
Theme: Managing CHange in Your Church
Special Features: Change is here to stay, Why do we Need change, When a Church is Dying, How Church Leaders Paralyse Growth, How do Changes Happen?, Good Advice for Change-Makers, Measuring Your Church's Attitude, Managing Change in Your Church, Developing a Dynamic Church.

Issue 13 : May 2007
Theme: Effective Small Group Ministry
Special Features: This complete workbook and guide to improving the small group ministry in your church was written by Philip Walker. It looks at the Biblical Basis for Small Groups, the History of Small Groups, Holistic Small Groups are Effective, and many more aspects of the subject. It also includes Discussion Questions and Worksheet ideas.

Issue 14 : Autumn 2007
Theme: The Journey to Health and Growth
Special Features: A Developing Church Naturally (the story of Ilkeston Christian Centre), the National NCD Transformation Process, Where and Why Churches are Growing in England, Meeting Needs, The Barnabas Principle, and Jesus Builds His Church.