Transforming Churches:
A Nationwide NCD Process

TRANSFORMING THE NATION

Rainbow with gold at the endImagine what would happen in your church if you all became more enthusiastic about Jesus? If you enjoyed reading the Bible more, found prayer more inspiring, got more involved in sharing the gospel with friends and neighbours? Imagine the relationships both inside and outside of the church would be characterised by a higher degree of love? Imagine you experienced the presence of God more tangible and powerfully when you gather to worship? Imagine that as a natural consequence more people would be drawn into the fellowship of the church and they themselves experience all this?

Now imagine this happened not just in your church, but in every church in your area? Do you think it would make a difference in the surrounding community? In people’s lives? What if it did not just happen in your area, but in thousands of churches throughout the country? Do you think it would have an effect on our country, maybe even transform it?

It might sound like a nice, though somewhat naive dream, but experience from thousands of churches have shown that when a church consistently implements the principles found in Natural Church Development (NCD) the above scenario begins to happen. These churches also begin to

* Provide a healthier environment in which people can grow toward God and each other
* Connect with their community in increasingly natural ways
* Have a greater proportion of conversion growth compared to transfer growth
* Experience more manageable workloads amongst the leaders and lay workers
* Are considerably more inclined to plant other healthy churches

Add to this that after implementing these principles for just 31 months these churches experience an average increase in their growth rate of 51% and it begins to sound worth looking at, right?

The really good news is that these churches are not super or mega churches, are not led by extraordinarily gifted leaders, but are normal, local churches, with the same challenges and limitations as most other churches, and yet they are slowly, but surely being transformed themselves through seeing people inside and outside of the church transformed.

Based on these experiences NCD-UK is launching what is termed a Transforming Churches: a Nationwide NCD Process in the spring of next year and denominations and local churches all over the UK are invited to participate in the process. The goal is to see a multitude of churches grow in quality and experience the growth that come “all by itself”, to empower denominations and church groups to continually implement these principles and ultimately to see transformation in communities all over the Christian Schwarz NCD Internationalcountry.

The process will initially run over 18 months, with 3 2-day training seminars during this period. Here church leaders will be trained by Christian Schwarz and Christoph Schalk of NCD International in the implementation of NCD principles in the local church. In between the seminars the actual process will happen as leaders go back and implement the principles in their churches.
Christoph Schalk NCD International

NCD has helped individual denominations and groups to go through similar processes, but with the Transforming Churches: A Nationwide NCD Process the vision is to see many denominations and churches from different traditions joining together in the process and in that way create the basis for a much higher impact on the nation.

Neither nations or denominations will be transformed in 18 months, but the participating churches can expect to begin to experience some of the effects outlined above and as the process is continued and multiplied more and more churches will grow more and more in quality, and as a natural consequence see more and more people come to faith in Jesus Christ and into the fellowship of the local church.

This is what it is all about. It is not about some slick marketing gimmick, the newest management technique, or the latest imported church fad. Transforming Churches: A Nationwide NCD Process is all about making more and better disciples in more and better church, as Jesus commanded us, and doing it the way God intended: Through healthy, vibrant local churches reaching out into their local community with the gospel.

Imagine what could happen if your church joined the process!

Why don’t you? It is not a naive dream; it could be reality – even where you are.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.