Important
The Transforming Churches Process will commence on 1st October 2010 – follow this link for more information
What is NCD?
For too long the Church has appeared to be interested mainly in numerical growth (or decline in too many cases), but the most important aspect of church life has been downplayed — the health of the local church. At last, there is a means of determining the health of every local church through the Natural Church Development process. In the natural world healthy organisms grow and the same is true in God’s Kingdom, so we concentrate on improving the health of a local church as the basis of growth. We do not ignore the pressing need for numerical increase, although we recognise that it is God alone who gives the increase.
The NCD process examines eight important characteristics to discover the strengths and weakness thus enabling church leaders and members to concentrate on the lowest characteristic before another survey is undertaken to see what has changed.
The advantages are that the NCD process:
- concentrates on health rather than growth
- is International but from a European base
- discovers what the active churchgoers feel about the church
- through carefully researched and revised analysis, compares the church with others in the community
- enables the concentration of the church to be in one area and not on many different things
- gives the opportunity to analyse the church again one year later to see the progress
- provides resources and advisory help to churches going through the process
The Origins of Natural Church Development
The process began with a worldwide analysis in 1994-5 of 1000 churches from all theological backgrounds. It examined static, growing and declining churches. Over the last few years more work has been done and now a revised survey is available using the Internet for analysis.
The Institute for Natural Church Development International, based in Germany under the leadership of Christian Schwarz, undertook this worldwide research to determine if there were principles producing healthy church growth independent of:
- denomination or theology
- country or culture
- leadership style
- size
- ministry model
The key question was: 'Which church growth principles are true, regardless of culture and theological persuasion?
The quality characteristics: a framework for healthy growthThe research revealed a framework of eight quality characteristics that were operating in healthy, growing churches. All were present and none could be missing. They were:
- Empowering Leadership
- Gift-based Ministry
- Passionate Spirituality
- Effective Structures
- Inspiring Worship Services
- Holistic Small Groups
- Need-orientated Evangelism
- Loving Relationships