Encourager LIFE is not designed to measure success by attendance, budgets, programs, buildings, or popularity. Instead, it helps church leaders consider how their congregation is flourishing and where opportunities for greater health may exist.
LIFE focuses on four dimensions of church flourishing: Leadership, Influence, Formation, and Engagement. Most churches demonstrate all four to some degree, while one or two may be especially visible in a congregation’s present season.
The goal of LIFE is not to place churches into rigid categories or compare one congregation with another. It is designed to help leaders recognize strengths, understand opportunities, and identify faithful next steps.
All assessment tools are informational only. A profile does not define a church’s value, identity, or calling. Every local church belongs to Christ and has a meaningful place within His mission.
Explore the Encourager LIFE Profiles
Each profile includes church characteristics, common strengths, growth opportunities, biblical examples, recommended next steps, and flourishing insights.
Leadership Church
Strong vision, leadership development, strategic direction, and equipping people for ministry and mission.
IInfluence Church
Strong gospel impact, community engagement, outreach, hospitality, and Kingdom presence.
FFormation Church
Strong discipleship, biblical formation, spiritual practices, prayer, and Christlike maturity.
EEngagement Church
Strong relationships, participation, hospitality, belonging, and shared community life.
L/IMultiplying Church
Vision and mission combine to create leadership multiplication, outreach momentum, and Kingdom expansion.
L/FDisciple-Making Church
Leadership and formation combine to develop mature disciples and emerging leaders.
L/EMobilizing Church
Leadership and engagement combine to activate people for service, ministry, and shared mission.
I/FSending Church
Formation and influence combine to equip disciples who live as faithful witnesses in the world.
I/ENeighboring Church
Influence and engagement combine to create welcoming communities that serve and bless their neighbors.
F/ESpiritual Family Church
Formation and engagement combine to create deep discipleship, belonging, care, and shared spiritual growth.
LIFEFlourishing Church
Leadership, influence, formation, and engagement are meaningfully integrated into a healthy expression of church flourishing.
+Emerging Church
A church clarifying its identity, strengthening its foundations, and discovering its unique LIFE expression.
Before You Begin
A Church Is More Than Its Numbers
Church leaders often feel pressure to evaluate health through visible measurements such as attendance, giving, programs, facilities, or growth. Those measurements can provide useful information, but they cannot tell the whole story.
A small congregation may demonstrate deep faithfulness, strong relationships, meaningful discipleship, and significant community influence. A growing congregation may still need greater attention to formation, leadership development, or shared participation.
Encourager LIFE invites leaders to ask a different question:
Where has God already given grace to our church, and where may He be inviting us to grow?
Pause Before Discovery
Notice What God Is Already Doing
Before beginning with weaknesses or problems, take time to notice the signs of grace already present within your congregation.
Where are people serving faithfully? Where are relationships growing? Where are disciples becoming more like Jesus? Where is your church blessing its community? Where are new leaders being equipped?
The LIFE Framework
Four Dimensions of Church Flourishing
Encourager LIFE looks at Leadership, Influence, Formation, and Engagement together. Each dimension contributes something important to the health and mission of a local church.
Leadership
Equipping people and providing faithful direction.
Leadership includes vision, decision-making, developing leaders, equipping people for ministry, clarifying direction, and establishing structures that support the mission of the church.
Healthy leadership does not simply accomplish ministry. It helps other people discover how they can participate.
Influence
Living as a gospel presence beyond the congregation.
Influence includes outreach, hospitality, evangelistic presence, community relationships, generosity, service, and the ways a church blesses the people and places around it.
Healthy influence helps the church move beyond an inward focus and participate meaningfully in God’s mission.
Formation
Helping people become increasingly like Jesus.
Formation includes Scripture, prayer, discipleship, spiritual practices, mentoring, theological depth, and intentional pathways that help people mature in Christ.
Healthy formation moves beyond transferring information and seeks the transformation of the whole person.
Engagement
Creating a community where people belong and participate.
Engagement includes relationships, hospitality, belonging, pastoral care, small groups, shared ministry, and opportunities for people to participate meaningfully in church life.
Healthy engagement helps people move from simply attending a church toward becoming active participants in the Body of Christ.
Healthy Integration
Every Strength Needs the Others
Leadership without formation can create activity without spiritual depth.
Influence without healthy leadership can create ministry that is difficult to sustain.
Formation without engagement can become private growth without meaningful shared life.
Engagement without influence can create a caring community that rarely looks beyond itself.
The goal is not perfect balance. Churches move through seasons, and one dimension may naturally receive greater attention at different times. LIFE simply helps leaders notice the larger picture.
Understanding Your Profile
Your Church May Reflect More Than One Strength
Encourager LIFE identifies primary and secondary profile patterns because congregations are rarely defined by one characteristic alone.
A Disciple-Making Church combines Leadership and Formation. A Neighboring Church reflects both Influence and Engagement. A Spiritual Family Church brings Formation and Engagement together.
These profiles describe patterns that may be visible today. They are not permanent labels. Congregations change as leaders, people, ministries, community needs, and seasons change.
Resist Comparison
Your Church Does Not Need to Become Someone Else’s Church
Church leaders can easily compare another congregation’s visible strengths with their own church’s weaknesses.
A Formation Church may admire the outward momentum of a Multiplying Church. An Emerging Church may feel inadequate beside a larger, established congregation. A highly relational church may wish it had another church’s systems or leadership structure.
The goal is not to become the church down the road. The goal is to become increasingly faithful with the people, gifts, opportunities, and mission God has entrusted to your congregation.
Use Your Results Wisely
What LIFE Can—and Cannot—Tell You
LIFE Can Help You
- Recognize areas of strength and fruitfulness.
- Identify dimensions that may need greater attention.
- Provide language for healthy leadership conversations.
- Consider leadership, mission, discipleship, and community together.
- Identify realistic next steps and helpful resources.
LIFE Cannot
- Determine your church’s worth or faithfulness in God’s eyes.
- Replace prayer, Scripture, pastoral discernment, or wise leadership.
- Diagnose every organizational or spiritual challenge.
- Guarantee attendance growth or numerical success.
- Declare one church profile spiritually superior to another.
Remember Whose Church It Is
The Church Belongs to Jesus
“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” Matthew 16:18
Church leaders carry real responsibility, but the church ultimately belongs to Christ.
LIFE can help leaders pay attention to patterns of health and opportunity, but the results should never become a source of pride, shame, anxiety, or control.
Healthy leadership receives the congregation as something entrusted by Jesus and seeks to serve His people faithfully.
Preparing for Discovery
How to Approach the LIFE Assessment
Answer for Today
Consider the church as it actually functions now rather than a stronger season from the past.
Avoid the Ideal Answer
Choose what is genuinely true rather than what you believe a healthy church should be doing.
Think About the Whole Church
Do not base answers only on one ministry, leader, group, or recent event.
Separate Activity From Health
A busy calendar does not necessarily indicate a flourishing congregation. Consider the fruit behind the activity.
Remain Curious
Allow the results to begin a conversation rather than treating them as a final diagnosis.
Pray for Wisdom
Ask God to reveal both strengths and opportunities without pride, defensiveness, or discouragement.
Receiving Your Results
Turn the Profile Into a Healthy Leadership Conversation
Begin by giving thanks for the strengths the assessment identifies. Those strengths represent people, ministries, relationships, habits, and practices that God may already be using.
Then pay attention to areas that may need greater intentionality. Rather than treating a lower dimension as a failure, consider it an invitation to prayer, conversation, and discernment.
If possible, discuss the results with other trusted leaders. Different perspectives can help prevent one person’s assumptions from becoming the church’s entire interpretation.
Finally, resist the urge to address everything. Look for one faithful next step.
Leadership Reflection
Consider These Questions
- What is one area of our church for which I am especially thankful?
- Which of the four LIFE dimensions seems most visible in our congregation today?
- Where might our church need greater balance or intentionality?
- Am I prepared to receive results that may challenge some of my assumptions about our church?
Take a Moment
Invite Jesus Into the Discovery
Before taking the assessment, pause and remember that the congregation belongs to Jesus.
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your Church and for the people You have entrusted to our care. Help us see our congregation clearly and gratefully. Keep us from comparison, pride, defensiveness, and discouragement. Show us where You have already given grace and where You may be inviting greater health. Give us wisdom to strengthen leaders, bless our community, form disciples, and cultivate meaningful participation in the life of the church. Remind us that this is Your Church, and lead us toward the next faithful step You have for us. Amen.
Ready to Continue?
Begin Your Encourager LIFE Discovery
You have now considered the purpose of church flourishing, explored Leadership, Influence, Formation, and Engagement, and prepared to receive your church’s results thoughtfully.
The assessment takes approximately 10–15 minutes and will identify your church’s LIFE profile and provide practical insights for continued health and faithfulness.