Assessing the Quality of a Church's Health
In order to assess one’s physical well-being it is necessary to undergo a battery of diagnostic tests, some more intrusive than others. When your doctor presents the results you either breathe a sigh of relief or ask “what’s next?” In both events you have a clear picture of the state of your health
Diagnostic procedures are important in many areas of our lives. Our cars, our computers and our relationships can benefit from such efforts. So can our churches. Assuming that things will continue to run smoothly without a bit of preventive maintenance from time to time is a recipe for rude awakenings.
How do you measure the attitudes, feelings and perceptions of the key influencers in your church?
How do you discover the elephant in the room in a healthy and meaningful way?
How do you discover little issues before they become huge problems?
People’s real attitudes, feelings and perspectives are hard to determine at times, especially in a church. So what kind of diagnostic tool gets below the surface to uncover what people are thinking and expecting in your community of faith?
The best tool for doing this is a Natural Church Development Survey, .an on-going global research project conducted by Christian Schwarz. The best booklet summarizing the NCD process is The ABC's of Natural Church Development.
Christian Schwarz developed this tool at his own expense, using approved methods from social science. The research followed stringent scientific procedures assuring the accuracy of the results. Worldwide, 72,984 surveys have been taken over a period of 13 years in 64 countries, on five continents. Two thirds of those surveys were done in the United States.
The research results continue to confirm what many leaders have known intuitively -- healthy churches are growing churches, making more and better disciples in loving obedience to Christ. Eight essential qualities were identified, which can be measured quantitatively:
Empowering leadership
Gift-oriented ministry
Passionate spirituality
Effective structures
Inspiring worship
Holistic small groups
Need-oriented evangelism
Loving relationships
. At anytime in the life of a church it will have a weak quality / system that needs to be addressed, fixed or developed further. By means of a self-diagnostic survey taken by the 30 key influencers in the church, NCD helps the leadership recognize that system which needs to be targeted for improvement Knowing what the congregation is really thinking about the health of its systems is invaluable information for a pastor and his leadership team.
It is widely recommended that a church adopt the concept of a church health rhythm wherein underlying attitudes, feelings and expectations are address on an annual basis by working the Natural Church Development process in your church. In fact, taking the survey and actively addressing the results will lead to church growth.
We at Converge MidAtlantic would love to assist your church on this journey to health and missional fruitfulness.