I don't think I ever understood the term "vital" until I was in the ICU having narrowly avoided a stroke at 39.

I was standing in my room and the charge doctor was trying to explain how serious it all was. I say standing because I was trying to stretch out a gnarly leg cramp due to a potassium imbalance as part of the treatment. I had no concern for the heart issues at that moment. I focused on how bad the cramping was.

The doctor told me, "Mr. Brooks, your vital signs are still not at any point of stability, so I really don't care about your cramps right now. We will continue to give you the medicine."

Vitals do not mean healthy.

Five years down the line, I was chatting with a colleague's wife over burgers. She's a biologist and was explaining this thing called biological stability. Her take was simple but pretty eye-opening. "Just because something's stable in the biological sense," she said, "doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy." Turns out an organism will keep collapse until it hits that point of stability. But that doesn't mean it's safe from harm.

I was about 3 weeks into my new job as a Congregational Vitality Strategist in the Louisiana Conference of the UMC. I was asking questions about our strategy. I was beginning to suspect that Vitality was a great goal, but there needed to be a few before it. This conversation pretty much sealed the deal and threw me into several months of research.

The "Call to Action" report in 2011 brought vitality as a goal for churches into the mainstream, at least in the UMC. In this report, conducted at the national level, it was estimated only 15 -20% of UMC congregations met the qualifications of the term "high vitality". The findings weren't taken seriously, and the term stuck around without conversations about moving toward vitality. In my opinion, it was a classic case of naming an output goal without ever thinking through the necessary input goals.

​The focused indicators named were attendance, growth, and engagement.

You might not be United Methodist, but I think this work is valuable to every type of Church in American.

Fast forward to 2025, and the work we have done in Louisiana over the last two years, Naming a few specific input areas matter.

• Member Care and Relationships
• Objective Metric Measurements
• Financial Health
• Ministry Opportunities
• New Member Integration
• Evangelism
• Measured Congregational Engagement

You might be thinking, "Where are the traditional activities of the local church like discipleship, mission, and age-focused activities?" I believe they are more important than ever before, but simply being busy doesn't equate to being vital!

I'll discuss these input areas more in the future. But, I think the best groundwork for that work is an understanding of "The Vitality Matrix."

Rather than just aiming for vitality and hoping you hit it, I've expanded this idea of vitality into four different stages a church might be in.

Unsustainable
​The congregation is shrinking rapidly over the last few years. The current ministry is unsustainable, and several factors are weakening our health, ultimately leading to organizational collapse.

Stable
​Congregation has faced decline, but has now reached a stable plateau, free from immediate threats. We've tackled past instability, resolving key issues or strategically downsizing to curb further decline.

Vital
​The local congregation is thriving, with steady, if modest, growth. We're poised for even more expansion, and with a strong foundation in place, we can confidently make bold decisions, unlocking a fresh era of vitality and development.

Sustainable
​The congregation's strong foundation of leaders makes informed, strategic decisions for a bright future. By replicating effective ministry models, we've created a surplus, enabling us to invest in innovative initiatives that reach new, diverse groups.

To expand this, we've taken these broad definitions in the vitality matrix and added specific examples of how a church might experience each of the 7 input areas (listed above) into the vitality matrix. They give congregations a way to specifically measure each area. It is also helpful to understand that a local congregation might exist in many areas across the vitality matrix at the same time. It could be in financial sustainability, but congregational engagement is unstable. No two churches are the same, and to give a broad brushstroke identifier to the congregation is not just unfair but unhelpful.

In the next few weeks, I am going to unpack each of these seven inputs and how they relate to the vitality matrix. If this is helpful, please feel free to forward this email to your leadership at your local church. If you are reading this online, make sure to subscribe in order to get the updates.

See you next email.

Chad