Church Life Cycle Health

Our new reports take your trend data and creates a narrative of your church health. We use the well researched work of Unstuck - a church health organisation that describe various cycles of church health over a life cycle. Every church moves through various stages of a life cycle over time as described in the following picture.

You can read a comprehensive guide to Unstuck's work on this here.

Leaders need to understand every stage, not just the one they’re in now, because churches often get stuck. Knowing what’s ahead helps you lead wisely and avoid decline.

The stages are:

1. Launch – New church, lots of energy, few rules, tight money, strong leadership needed.
2. Momentum Growth – Exciting growth, creativity, vision forming, making space for more people.
3. Strategic Growth – Systems, structure, teams, and clear discipleship path are built.
4. Sustained Health – Long-term growth, unity, fruitfulness, generosity, multiplication.
5. Maintenance – Growth stalls, inward focus increases, vision fades.
6. Preservation – Decline accelerates, fear of change, focus on keeping things as they were.
7. Life Support – Crisis stage; major relaunch or closure is needed.

A church at or beyond sustained health must consider how they pivot to see continued growth and begin a new curve. Otherwise the default movement will be towards decline.

The reports we produce make an estimation of where you church might be in its life cycle. This is not a simple exercise as different metrics might suggest various stages. The report will give reasoning for why your church may be in a particular stage as well as suggestions for focus to move on from that stage.

The estimation might not be correct of course. But we hope it makes for healthy discussion that unites your leadership team and prompts genuine, God-centered discussion on leading your church ahead.

During the beta launch of these reports we also desire your feedback.