Things to Celebrate, and Things to Work On

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."  (Isaiah 43:19)

Back in June, our church used a diagnostic tool - a survey instrument created by an organization called Natural Church Development - that is designed to assess a congregation's overall level of health and to help a church have a better understanding of its particular strengths, as well as areas it needs to work to improve.  Te results are now in - and we're sharing them with you!  These results have already been shared with the congregation at a special forum on October 24; the purpose of this article is to bring those of you who weren't able to be present for that meeting up to speed.  What we have learned from this process is going to significantly affect how we focus our time and energy and resources in the coming year, so it is vitally important that everybody make an effort to educate themselves about the process and its implications.

Natural Church Development originated in Europe about twenty years ago.  The original founder of the movement was disturbed by the decline of Christianity in Europe and began a major research effort to study congregations that were growing rather than shrinking, with the purpose of trying to determine the salient characteristics that appear to be common in congregations that are growing.  The initial study involved 1000 churches in 32 different countries; now, twenty years later, research has been conducted on 45,000 churches in 70 countries around the globe.  The Natural Church Development Institute has identified through its research eight characteristics that are routinely found to be strengths in any congregation that is growing, regardless of denomination, culture, or country.  Those eight characteristics are:

• Empowering Leadership: are church leaders focused on equipping members for ministry?
• Gift-Based Ministry: are tasks in your church distributed according to the criterion of gifting?
• Passionate Spirituality: is the spiritual life of the church members characterized by passion?
• Effective Structures:  do the structures of your church contribute to growth?
• Inspiring Worship Service: are your worship services an inspiring experience for the members?
• Holistic Small Groups: do the small groups address the life issues of their members?
• Need-Oriented Evangelism: are the outreach activities related to the needs of those you are trying to reach?
• Loving Relationships:  are the relationships of the members characterized by love?

The Natural Church Development Institute has developed a diagnostic tool that congregations can use to assess how they are doing in each of those eight different areas.  A score of "50" represents a perfectly average score, meaning that half the churches would score higher than 50 (on any one of those eight characteristics) and half the churches would score lower than 50.  Anything from 35 to 65 is considered the "normal" range, and 68.2% of all churches would score in that range in any of the eight characteristics.  Scores are plotted on a bell curve, so that there are fewer and fewer churches the farther away from 50 you go in either direction.  As we have processed our results, we have discovered several things worth celebrating:

• Five of our eight scores are above average.
• One of our scores is higher than 65 (above the "normal" range).
• The average of our eight scores is 52, which makes our congregation a slightly-better-than-average congregation, overall, when compared with all other predominantly white churches in the United States.  Most churches, when they begin the NCD process, tend to score about ten points lower than what we scored, on average, so we have already been commended for the relative strength of our church's life and witness.

We also have discerned that there are several areas of concern that we need to pay attention to:

• Three of our scores are below average.
• One score is so low that it is almost outside the normal range.
• There is a very large gap (29 points) between our highest score and our lowest score.  That represents a concern because areas of weakness in the life of a congregation can have an adverse effect on areas of strength.  On the other hand, areas of strength can be used to bolster up areas of weakness, which is what we want to do.

How the NCD process works is that once a church has its results, the church then takes a good, hard look at itself, particularly its greatest area of weakness, and really tries to understand why that is a weakness in the congregation.  What is really going on in the church as a whole or in the lives of its members that is making that show up as an area of weakness?  Once a church has a good understanding of what is really going on - and we should be careful not to jump too quickly to snap conclusions and a desire for a "quick fix" - then the church needs to figure out what to do to make improvements in that area in the life of the church.  That will have the greatest possible positive effect on the life of the congregation as a whole.  Once a church has a really good understanding of why its weakness is its weakness, then the church develops an action plan that will strive to make significant improvements to the area of weakness.  Then, once the action plan is being implemented, the church reviews its overall progress and makes plans to take a new survey, to see where the church needs to focus its energy next.

Churches that go through this process several years in a row tend to find, on average, that:

• the overall quality of the church improves by 6 points;
• the church's growth rate increases by an average of 51% (so, for example, a church that typically brings in 10 new people per year would bring in 15 new people per year, and a church that typically brings in 200 new people per year would bring in 300 new people per year);
• fewer people join the church by transferring membership from other churches and more people join the church who have little or no prior church background; and
• the work load of participating members decreases significantly as more people are willing to take on responsibilities and the workload is spread around more.

Here are our scores:

• 66: Gift-Based Ministry (our strongest area)
• 57: Loving Relationships
• 56: Empowering Leadership
• 56: Holistic Small Groups
• 52: Effective Structures
• 46: Inspiring Worship Service
• 44: Need-Oriented Evangellism
• 37: Passionate Spirituality (our weakest area)

The fact that Passionate Spirituality is currently our weakest area is really not very surprising.  For "mainline Protestants" - Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, and all those other denominations like ours that were really strong back in the 1950s and 1960s but have been declining pretty steadily since about 1965 - Passionate Spirituality is often the weakest factor.  This make us a very typical Presbyterian congregation!  (Though remember, we did score, overall, above average!)  Passionate Spirituality has to do with questions like these:

• How are church members integrating their faith into all areas of their lives?
• How do we promote faith in our people so they believe firmly that God will work even more powerfully in our church in the coming years?
• In what ways do people in our church spend personal time connecting to God during the week?
• What opportunities do we provide for people to learn how to use the Bible as a guidebook for life?
• What indications do we have that people read the Bible on their own?  How are they integrating what they read into their everyday lives?
• What opportunities (in worship or in groups) are given for people to talk about God's work in their lives?
• What are we doing to move religion from being a private matter to a commonly accepted topic with other believers?
• What are we doing to help people grow in their relationships with Christ?

Our next step is to hold a series of Focus Groups where we will gather as many members and friends of the congregation as we possibly can into small group settings of no more than about eight people.  We will be asking each of you for your opinion as to what's going on that is causing Passionate Spirituality to show up for us as our weakest area (so low, in fact, that we're practically at the bottom of the "normal" range).  This is the step in the process where we're really trying to understand our results, so that we will be able to create a truly effective action plan.  In order to really understand our results, we need your input.  We need to know why you think Passionate Spirituality is showing up as our weakest area.  These Focus Groups will be held on different days and at different times throughout the week over the course of November and the first part of December, and many of them will be held in members' homes.  We truly want to hear from you.  What you say matters to us.  We are asking you to participate in only one group meeting - this is not an ongoing commitment.  You will have an opportunity in the near future to sign up to participate in one of these Focus Groups.  The Focus Groups will each be led by two members of our Natural Church Development Implementation Team (Rex Hauser, Maggie Knust, Suzanne Lang, Joan Meinke, and Barb Tornholm).  Please sign up when the sign-up sheets are posted!

We invite your prayers and your support as we go through this process.  We are taking a good, hard look in the mirror, and we will be doing some difficult work to create a stronger, healthier, more spiritually vibrant church that will benefit you and everyone else who wanders through our doors.

Peace and blessings,

Bill