Paul, the first Church Health Consultant?

I did not think I could be a consultant and a minister. My college degree focused on consulting, business strategy, and process. I left most of that behind when I became a youth pastor and began my official church work in the traditional manner. Ministry, after all, is a deeply spiritual thing whereas business is purely temporal. Or so I thought at the time. God has been waking me up to many such misconceptions recently. Along the way He has shown me that I can use my skills for analysis and my heart for His Kingdom in order to minister to His bride... The Church.

My own bride was the first one who reminded me that in many ways Paul was the first church health consultant. We talk often about Paul as a missionary because of his church planting efforts, but in reality he spent more time as a church consultant than he did as a church planter. An overview of Paul's life reveals that his heart was not just focused on starting new works, but on keeping past works healthy. There are several things I am learning from his example, each of them likely to pop up as individual posts later.

1. Healthy people, not just More people. Paul's letter to the churches and the visits we read about in Acts deal with issues of health, not just admonitions to reach more people. Certainly Paul is concerned with evangelism; it is his stated life's purpose. He also knows that sickness within a church will kill any evangelistic work they may attempt. Healthy parents produce healthy children; sick parents produce sick children, and sick children are likely to die prematurely.
2. Do not Burden the hurting churches. Most churches who need consulting cannot afford the consultant. I believe the worker is worth his wages. I also believe this is an area where those who have resources can minister to those who do not. Just as the church as a whole ministered to Jerusalem during its physical famine, it may be time for the church as a whole to minister to hurting members during our spiritual famine.
3. Don't plant on top of someone else's work. Paul planted new works where other work did not exist. If a previous work did exist he was likely to move on to another area or strengthen the existing work. I think this sheds some interesting light on our modern church planting strategy. It seems that church planting is best done among unreached people groups... and that is not the way the American model seems to be unfolding at the moment.
4. Bring others along in the process. Paul generally travelled with a group. That was for very practical reasons during his time period. It also allowed leadership development to happen on a level that is impossible to replicate through lecture and letter.

I have been reading many books during this transition in my calling. Most of them have to do with church health and revitalization. They offer a call to return to mission and vision; to focus on people outside of your own walls with a heart for evangelism. I agree with those calls, and yet it strikes me as odd that none of these books mention church health ministry as an evangelistic or missional activity. Our first and best example of a missionary was heavily involved in church health consulting.

I must have received a dozen offers to plant a new church in numerous places around the US and Canada these last twelve months. It seems that there is no shortage of funds available for those willing to pick up, move, and begin a new work for God. That is a good thing. I wonder, though, why we are not being just as enthusiastic about training and sending a new generation of missionaries who help correct and strengthen the local churches that already exist. Paul seemed to think church health was a worthy endeavor, and the fact that God led him to record that work for us to read and remember makes me think God believes it is worthwhile as well.