Natural Church Development at Immanuel

Team Chair: Dave Reimann
Council Liaison: Nancy Hartford

Our church has begun a process of reflection and renewal using a program called Natural Church Development (NCD). We want to provide you with some background and an update on our activities regarding Natural Church Development.

Immanuel's Natural Church Development Team
Our Natural Church Development Team is comprised of chair Dave Reimann, Bob Badertscher, Pastor Erick, Jennifer Timm, and Connie Young. Bruce Belanger from Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos serves as our coach.

History of Natural Church Development
What makes a healthy church? In an attempt to answer that question, Christian Schwarz decided to conduct a survey about a decade ago. He surveyed over 1000 churches in 32 countries on 5 continents in 18 languages. Churches surveyed included large and small, growing and declining, and prominent and marginalized denominations. What he discovered forms the basis of the Natural Church Development process.

Principles of Natural Church Development
The underlying paradigm of Natural Church Development is the church is an organic entity and functions with a foundation of life giving and sustaining biotic principles. Using these life-giving practices allows the church body to function better and provide for increased ministry capacity. The key biblical passages that form a foundation for Natural Church Development are Mark 2:26-29, I Corinthians 3:6, and Matthew 6:28. This process has now been used by thousands of churches worldwide, of all denominations, languages, and cultures.

Natural Church Development process identifies eight Quality Characteristics that measure the health of a church.

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

Congregations' worship attendance can be correlated to improving the health of the eight quality characteristics. Note these characteristics all contain an action oriented adjective to help describe them. For example, it is not sufficient to have relationships, they must be loving relationships.

The weakest area is called the minimal factor. It is often a soft spot that has not received enough attention and indicates the area likely doing the most to limit healthy growth. To increase capacity of a barrel, it is necessary to increase the size of the minimum stave, not the highest one. Focusing attention on strengthening our minimal factor is likely to produce the greatest return on investment in improving our church's health.

Immanuel's Review
How do we rate? In November 2006, about thirty key leaders from the congregation plus Pastor Erick took a survey and a congregational profile was generated for each of the eight quality characteristics. The survey helps us identify the church's strengths and weaknesses and invites us to explore, "How can our strengths to address our weaknesses?" Results indicate we are strongest in the areas of Gifts Oriented Ministry, Empowering Leadership, and Functional Structures. The survey results indicated our minimal factor is Passionate Spirituality.

Assessment

In early 2008, we plan to conduct the survey again to assess our progress. We will report our findings back to the congregation during the spring of 2008. The survey results indicated our minimal factor is Holistic Small Groups. The NCD process is a way for congregations to continually monitor their effectiveness, making special efforts to improve any minimal factors. By employing this process in an ongoing manner, we can keep improving our church.

Please feel free to contact any of the NCD team members for more information. Thank you for your support in this process!