I haven't blogged about this yet. But St. John voted to go through the Natural Church Development Process a good while back. We had someone come introduce the process to us. One of the things you do is get 30 people together and the Pastor do a survey on the church. We did our survey right before the Annual Conference meeting in June, so we waited until afterwards to send it in to get it scored. Then I was gone on vacation. So last Sunday we had a meeting with our Coach to go over our results. I also began a sermon series on Natural Church Development and the 8 Characteristics. Our meeting was well attended, and we had a good discussion on our strengths and our weak point. Now the leaders are sitting with the results and praying over it and what step to take next. I have also set aside Fridays as a day of prayer for the church with the sanctuary open to come by and pray, I have also provided prayer guides to give us focus.
The more I read about the process the more I learn, the more empowering it is.
So I am praying that whatever I am doing that is blockage to God's natural Growth forces, will be removed. And I am praying for God's growth forces to be released in our church. It is interesting, several of the leaders have already come forward with some creative ideas of steps to take to work on our weak point. And I am encouraging them to do them. Even before we got the results, we were already beginning to address some things we realized were missing in the church.
If you want to know more about Natural Church Development, you can go here. I am very proud of our leaders for being willing to go through the process, and how they are handling things so far. Change is hard as you know.
6 comments:
how long lead-in did you have before the congregation went forward with this? I went to a briefing on Saturday and it looks like it could work for our church too, but I thoroughly discouraged at the moment, expecting most of the areas will be very low at the outset.
Peace,
David
David, we began talking about this in 2006 int eh fall with the Pastor Parish Committee. I then had a Coach come introduce it, I think it was around late Nov. At that time the District was beginning a program for churches called Healthy Church Initiative that combined NCD with some of what Paul Borden has been doing. But one of the guys who was a co-leader stepped down. The church Admin council decided to be part of the program, but it has been on hold. We have gone ahead with the Natural Church Development. We got the surveys at the end of Feb. I began putting the team together and asking people to do the surveys. However the response was limited. So the Admin council discussed it and decided to set a date on which to do the survey and they decided they would be the Leaders. We did the surveys at the end of May.
I wasn't sure what our scores would be either, and it was a pleasant surprise. We have bathed this in prayer from the very beginning.
David, I'll pray for you and your church about going forward with this. Like I said, the more I have read, the more empowered and encouraged I am.
I am so fascinated with this...will be watching@!
Our church just decided to go with this. I'll have to keep track of your progress with ours.
We did the survey 2 years ago, then didn't implement anything. As elders, we're finally convincing the pastor to take another look at the materials. He's concerned that he can't find any "testimonials" of churches that have seen the fruit of their efforts. "How do we know that the claims are good, if no one ever talks about it?"
Did you get any info like that from your consultant? Have you talked with anyone else who has used NCD?
Looking forward to seeing how your experience plays out :)
Why don't you contact Michael and Sharryn on Dannevirke, New Zealand?
mj-sp-mca@xtra.co.nz
They have a great NCD story
Blessings
Neil Adams
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