NCD - Natural Church Development
‘Natural Church Development’ is a programme for local church life and health that was developed in Germany by Christian Schwarz (see his ‘Natural Church Development Handbook’) and adopted, in the late 1990’s, by the then British Church Growth Association. It was helpful to CBC in the first decade of the C21st and again, recently, in our assessment of the kind of ministry help we now need to help take CBC forward.
NCD’s key strengths – and value for Calverton – lay in the following features:
- NCD is based on the results of a survey of thousands of situationally different kinds of churches worldwide which identified what seemed to be the key growth-promoting factors for local churches of all types and sizes - relatively regardless of historical, political and geographical context. (Just as, e.g. all human beings need, certain essentials - food, air, sleep, space, etc., regardless of nationality, age or status – simply to maintain their physical survival as human beings.)
- NCD concentrates on quality rather than quantity and on spiritual health rather than numerical strength. In each of its 8 identified ‘Quality Characteristic’ areas (see below) it focuses on the importance of both human effort (doing what only we can do) and divine action (God doing what only God can do). A key parable for this was working together is Mark 4:26-29. We sow, we harvest – God does the growing. Neither, without the other, gets the job done.
- NCD takes seriously what Jesus meant by ‘church’ – that is, a group of allsorts ‘called out’ (ek-klesia) to help each other work with Jesus under the Spirit’s empowerment. And that, NCD discovered, needs to happen in each of what it identified as the 8 key component areas of healthy church life and growth. Here, for example, is the simplest way for a church to begin to ‘get real’ about its own condition.
- This is the questionnaire CBC utilized for its ‘Vision Day’ last September. (I won’t disclose the ‘scores’ but just say that we wouldn’t be where we are now had we not taken them seriously!)
Church Health Check
1. Enabling Leadership
How well do your leaders encourage and develop leadership in others? SCORE (circle which) 1 2 3 4 5
2. Gift-related Member-ministry
How well are people encouraged to do what they are gifted for - rather than just do what needs to be done?
SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
3. Enthusiastic Spiritual Life
How evident is it that yours is a Church where prayer and spiritual life are enjoyed rather than merely ‘practised’?
SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
4. Purposeful Structures
Does the Church insist that every activity should serve a Christ-honouring and mission-related purpose? SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
5. Inspiring Worship Together
How uplifting is it (normally) when the whole church gathers for worship? SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
6. Disciple-building Groups
How well are people nurtured as disciples (shown how to worship, learn, care, serve, and witness) through small groups? SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
7. People-Sensitive Outreach
How good is the church in relating its message to the needs of contacts and ‘outsiders’? SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
8. Loving Relationships
How well does the church practise the ‘love one another’ command – to the point of sacrifice? SCORE 1 2 3 4 5
The ‘development’ that NCD wants to promote is best seen in its ‘classic’ illustration of ‘The Barrel’ – with its eight ‘Quality Characteristic’ vertical staves (see above).:
The NCD research shows that all eight are essential for the health and vitality of any church community. But the research also revealed that the growth potential of any church at any one time is limited by the length of its shortest stave – its least-well developed or even shrinking component. There is a need to act on this promptly!
Which is why a regular review of church life is vital since over time – even from year to year – the relative length of the 8 staves can change – for a variety of reasons – spiritual, demographic, financial, etc., Which is why ‘vigilance’ or ‘oversight’ (‘epi-skopos’) is so important for the appointed Leadership to exercise - not sufficient simply to ‘do things right’ but rather to ‘do the right things! An annual appraisal or health check (at around the Church Anniversary?) will help us to keep faith with Jesus and listen together to “what the Spirit is saying to the church” (as in Jesus’ appraisal of the 7 Revelation churches in chapters 2 and 3).
Just two further comments. Each of the Quality Characteristics comprise both a noun (a human activity – what we need to do – e.g. exercise Leadership), and an adjective (which underlines what only God can supply, e.g. the gift of enabling and encouraging others). Like the parable in Mark 4, church development in all its aspects is a joint venture – Jesus can grow an amazing crop but only (to repeat what we’ve said earlier) . . . only when we agree do what only we can do . . . so that he can then do what only He can do!
Furthermore, NCD is a very appropriate tool for a Baptist church like CBC with its ‘congregational’ (consensual) decision-making and its predominantly local leadership. Part of the task of all those elected and appointed for leadership must be to maintain oversight of the whole ‘Barrel’ (so to speak!) and – like the horizontal bands that hold the 8 upright staves together – be committed to maintaining the unity around all the diversity. Otherwise, we will leak – which would be bad news especially for a Baptist church! Blest be the ties that bind!