What does a church really need? We often think first about attendance, programs, finances, buildings, leadership, music, outreach, or organization. Those things may matter, but when Paul prays for the church in Ephesians 3:14–21, he goes much deeper.

Paul prays for believers to be strengthened by the Spirit in the inner person. He prays that Christ would increasingly make Himself at home in their hearts, that they would be rooted and grounded in love, that together they would grasp the immeasurable dimensions of Christ’s love, and that they would be filled with all the fullness of God. That is Paul’s picture of a healthy church.

A church can have a full calendar and still be spiritually weak. It can have excellent music and still be shallow in love. It can have impressive facilities and still lack the character of Christ. It can be well organized and yet desperately need a deeper work of the Spirit. We can easily confuse the things that support the church with the things that actually make the church healthy and enable it to bring God glory.

Then comes the encouragement: this kind of church is not beyond God’s power. He is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” The church’s greatest need is not merely something God can give us. It is something God wants to make of us.

Perhaps before asking, “How can we grow our church?” we should ask, “What kind of church does God want us to be?”