Natural Church Development

[tall73]

I am just curious to see how many of your churches are using the Natural Church Development Survey process?

For those who don't know what it is, it is a way to guage your church in 8 key areas. It has been used with thousands of churches across the world. The initial research identified the 8 areas that correlated with growth and church health.

The idea is you

a. take the survey to see where you are at as a church
b. get your results, and analyze them, pray over them, etc.
c. form task groups to formulate and then carry out action plans.
d. Begin the cycle again with a new survey to see how you are doing.

The 8 areas are as follows:

Empowering Leadership
Gift-Oriented Ministry
Passionate Spirituality
Functional Structures
Inspiring Worship Service
Holistic Small Groups
Need-oriented Evangelism
Loving Relationships

The test gives various questions of the 30 most involved members of your church...or as many as you have if your church has less than this. It then breaks them down multiple ways to see how you are doing. The questions are not just opinion, some of them are quite specific about actions. For instance, one question asks how many church members did you invite to your home the last month. The idea is to guage what is happening, not what people want or hope is happening.

Now it may seem sterile and clinical, but it is a good place for a church that already knows they need to turn things around, but need to convince somee people. And it is helpful for knowing what is working so you can use it to help your weaknesses.

Of course, it is just a survey. It won't do anything if you don't come before God in prayer and act in ways that He reveals. But we have found it helpful so far in helping people realize the need for change.

 

[SassySDA]

I am just curious to see how many of your churches are using the Natural Church Development Survey process?

For those who don't know what it is, it is a way to guage your church in 8 key areas. It has been used with thousands of churches across the world. The initial research identified the 8 areas that correlated with growth and church health.

The idea is you

a. take the survey to see where you are at as a church
b. get your results, and analyze them, pray over them, etc.
c. form task groups to formulate and then carry out action plans.
d. Begin the cycle again with a new survey to see how you are doing.

The 8 areas are as follows:

Empowering Leadership
Gift-Oriented Ministry
Passionate Spirituality
Functional Structures
Inspiring Worship Service
Holistic Small Groups
Need-oriented Evangelism
Loving Relationships

The test gives various questions of the 30 most involved members of your church...or as many as you have if your church has less than this. It then breaks them down multiple ways to see how you are doing. The questions are not just opinion, some of them are quite specific about actions. For instance, one question asks how many church members did you invite to your home the last month. The idea is to guage what is happening, not what people want or hope is happening.

Now it may seem sterile and clinical, but it is a good place for a church that already knows they need to turn things around, but need to convince somee people. And it is helpful for knowing what is working so you can use it to help your weaknesses.

Of course, it is just a survey. It won't do anything if you don't come before God in prayer and act in ways that He reveals. But we have found it helpful so far in helping people realize the need for change.

Yes, our church is looking at this now, as I type this.

 

[tall73]

We just finished our second survey in my largest church, and got our results back. The next step is to form the second round of strategy/planning groups.

We had some improvement which is good. I will see if I get around to posting our results!

 

[Cliff2]

I am just curious to see how many of your churches are using the Natural Church Development Survey process?

For those who don't know what it is, it is a way to guage your church in 8 key areas. It has been used with thousands of churches across the world. The initial research identified the 8 areas that correlated with growth and church health.

The idea is you

a. take the survey to see where you are at as a church
b. get your results, and analyze them, pray over them, etc.
c. form task groups to formulate and then carry out action plans.
d. Begin the cycle again with a new survey to see how you are doing.

The 8 areas are as follows:

Empowering Leadership
Gift-Oriented Ministry
Passionate Spirituality
Functional Structures
Inspiring Worship Service
Holistic Small Groups
Need-oriented Evangelism
Loving Relationships

The test gives various questions of the 30 most involved members of your church...or as many as you have if your church has less than this. It then breaks them down multiple ways to see how you are doing. The questions are not just opinion, some of them are quite specific about actions. For instance, one question asks how many church members did you invite to your home the last month. The idea is to guage what is happening, not what people want or hope is happening.

Now it may seem sterile and clinical, but it is a good place for a church that already knows they need to turn things around, but need to convince somee people. And it is helpful for knowing what is working so you can use it to help your weaknesses.

Of course, it is just a survey. It won't do anything if you don't come before God in prayer and act in ways that He reveals. But we have found it helpful so far in helping people realize the need for change.

Is it possible for you to post a survey form here so those of us who do not or have heard of it may like to try it out and see where our Church is at.


Sounds like a good idea to me.

Unless a person knows what type of sickness they have it is hard to treat. The same goes with our spiritual health. We need to know wher we stand as individuals and as a Church.

 

[tall73]

Cliff,

That is exactly right. We did the survey the first time because we knew we were dying. We frankly didn't know where to start. So we got the elders together and for months were trying to think of how to change the church.

We read a good book on the subject, "How to Change your Church Without Killing It."

Although we found some don't like to read. So one of our elders picked up audio presentations by the authors at a seminar.

Then when we did the survey it gave us some definite areas to address first.


As I compared our old survey with our new one I was quite excited with what I saw. And that is good because recent events have not been that positive in our church. Our recent evangelistic meetings were poorly attended, though we did pick up a new Bible study interest, and do have a couple of families that are interested in joining at the moment. So all is not bad. But it is good to see some long term quality improvements.

Here were the results:

{Average is 50. Most churches (75%) fall between 35 and 50. The others either score over 65 or under. So while our scores are not fantastic now by any stretch of the imagination, they are a definite improvement! The makers of the survey found that quality definitely corresponded to growth in most cases. For churches with 65 in all areas there was growth in the church 100 percent of the time. }

------------------------------------------September 2002................. July of 2005

Empowering Leadership........................ 36 .......................41
Gift-Oriented Ministry............................ 28........................44
Passionate Spirituality.......................... 32 .......................43
Functional Structures ...........................39....................... 52
Inspiring Worship Service ......................30....................... 45
Holistic Small Groups ..........................22 ........................55
Need-Oriented Evangelism ...................28........................ 65
Loving Relationships............................ 26 .......................33

I was glad to see we went up in every area. I hope that we can continue to improve. The next step for us is to have committees set up to wrestle with the results and make plans to improve our new Minimum Factor--Loving Relationships.

As to posting the survey..sorry, I would like to, but I am sure that is a violation of some copyright laws.

If anyone is seriously interested in taking the survey or finding out about it, I can post the web site and perhaps even send a copy of a powerpoint that describes the research, etc.

 

[Seraph1m]

Tall, did your church receive this survey come through your local conference? How long ago was it when you first received it?

 

[tall73]

No, it is not sponsored by the conference. It is something you buy. NADEI can run it for you, or you can go directly with the original creators of the survey at Churchsmart.

 

[Seraph1m]

No, it is not sponsored by the conference. It is something you buy. NADEI can run it for you, or you can go directly with the original creators of the survey at Churchsmart.

Ahhh OK. We have heard of this program.