A church can fall into a place of finding its corporate center around attitudes and behaviors that are adversarial, condescending and damaging to the community around it. Doing so can even provide an impetus for numerical growth as the church attracts new members and strengthens ties with current members out of shared fears, pride and deception. In the Consumption Phase, a church is the furthest it can be from accomplishing positive consequence as it actually makes a negative difference in the people living around it, in sharp contrast with Jesus's command to love our neighbors.

Churches can very easily find themselves gathering and forming around good things that are simply not Jesus. Even after a good start, a church can slowly turn to other influences in place of Jesus - even good things. Churches can begin to form consumers instead of disciples, finding consolation and strength from their relationships with each other, from enjoyable meetings and programs and from a sense of feeling good about themselves because of being a part of a "Christian church" instead of helping each other to grow closer to Jesus as the source of their individual and common life.

Healthy churches begin in the Coming Home Phase when Jesus walks into a group of people's lives and draws them home to Him, giving them new spiritual life that grows as they walk together. Older churches can arrive at this phase during times of spiritual renewal in which Jesus leads them as a spiritual family into conviction of sin, repentance and a deeper experience of His presence and life as a result. Very healthy churches are able to continually guide new believers into coming home alongside older believers who are growing through the compassion, care and consequence phases.

Today Western culture is falling away from a common experience of "Christendom" or of society orbiting around Christianity as its center and, as a result, all churches are having to follow Jesus into new ways of “doing church” that involve turning outward to engage their communities. Churches are in the Compassion Phase when they find themselves in a corporate place of humility and a deep conviction or desire to learn to love Jesus more deeply, to love one another in a richer way and to go out together to reach the lost as individuals and corporately.

Churches in the Care Phase are growing together into continual interactions with God’s Presence, His Words and His love. Their love for each other deepens as they follow Jesus out into learning to love their neighbors - the people that God has carefully placed around them. The church’s identity as a “sent” people influences every aspect of their individual and corporate lives. Their efforts to reach out are characterized by a good deal of hits and misses and of apparent failure but in ways that contribute to their continual learning to love people and minister to people more effectively.

The Consequence Phase is a culmination of individuals within the church reaching a level of effectiveness in reaching their neighbors and transforming their community. Consequential churches learn ways to scale their impact to touch more lives, more neighborhoods and to reach their city in innovative, increasingly effective ways. These congregations and the individuals within them are highly dependent on the power and direction of the Holy Spirit and are watching the Spirit impact lives in ways that are exponential and explosive, powered by grace more than human technique.