Coaching and Consulting...

                          ...equipping churches for healthy growth

"I (Paul) planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow"    (I Cor. 3:6)

About Us

What Is NCD?

An Overview

Implementing NCD

NCD Survey

NCD Seminars

Schedule A NCD Consult

Sunday School & Discipleship Training

Book Store

Articles

Links

Step 1 Prepare

 

Acquaint yourself with NCD principles by reading the book, Natural Church Development. Extensive research world-wide found that healthy, growing churches seem to share eight quality characteristics. These characteristics are: Empowering Leadership, Gift-Based Ministry, Passionate Spirituality, Effective Structures, Inspiring Worship Service, Holistic Small Groups, Need-Oriented Evangelism, and Loving Relationships.  The pastor gains commitment from key leaders—Church Health Team recruited and receives initial training—Prayer Intercessors mobilized.

Introduce NCD principles to your church leaders by distributing The ABC's of Natural Church Development booklet. This booklet is designed to convey the key concepts of Natural Church Development in an informative and easy reading style. This resource is ideal for use in congregations who are implementing the Natural Church Development Survey and world like to inform key leaders in the church of the principles of the book quickly and economically. Topics include the "eight essential quality characteristics", "all-by-itself" principle, and the concept of the "minimum factor".

Step 2 Diagnose

The second step is to conduct an NCD Survey to identify your minimum factor. We provide one survey for the pastor and thirty surveys for actively involved lay people in your church. The completed surveys are returned to me for processing. The church receives a report identifying their minimum factor and a copy of the Implementation Guide to Natural Church Development and The ABC's of Natural Church Development.

Who should take the survey? The pastor decides who fits these categories:

• Actively involved at the very center of church life
• Have a regular task or responsibility in the church
• Member of a small group in the church (Bible study group, discipleship group, ministry team, etc.)

Your church may want to consider doing a survey every 12 months to track your progress and determine if your minimum factor has changed. Minimum factor - is the lowest score out of the Eight Quality Characteristics that were determined from your NCD Survey.

Step 3 Plan

Next in the process is to develop a strategy to raise the quality of your minimum factor by using the Implementation Guide to Natural Church Development, Releasing Your Church's Potential, and other resources.

Every church is unmistakably unique. Instead of projecting the experiences of a few successful model churches on every church, Natural Church Development helps you discover and develop the God-given, unique nature of your church. Instead of trying to "produce" the church with human efforts, Natural Church Development focuses on unlocking the potential that God has already put into every church. Every church has its own DNA!

Step 4 Implement

Healthy churches are growing churches. God places within the genetic code of every congregation the potential for authentic church development. Translating this potential into reality requires careful implementation of appropriate change dynamics. You will learn how to design and implement effective change strategies to develop a healthy, thriving church.

Step 5 Evaluate

After a year it's time to monitor your progress with an annual church health check-up by completing another NCD survey. Since churches are "living organisms" and not "static organizations," over time you can see how your church is progressing in each area.  Generally, a congregation will then be able to continue using the NCD process without the help of a coach.

Empowering the Church can show you how Natural Church Development is a powerful process for assessing the health strengths and weaknesses of your church, then developing and implementing an action plan for improving church health by removing limiting factors.

To find out how your church can be involved in Natural Church Development, Contact Thomas Broadhead or call 770.918.5105, Conyers, GA.