A healthy church, like any healthy living thing, is always defined by the nature, quality and behaviors of the relationships. As Wendell Berry said in a classic address titled “Health Is Membership,” “I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.”3 Indeed, even the Trinity is best understood as a relationship of distinct persons who share one essence.
