The Institute of Evangelism

Every Church an Evangelizing Community!

Good Idea is our online magazine where you’ll find inspiration, tips, ideas, and stories of how God is working in other churches. Every month we offer one good idea to help churches grow in sharing the faith.

Good Idea!

Interview with Father Harold Nahabadian

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EG: In your opinion, what attracts people to SMM?

HN: Well, there are a number of things. The neighbourhood has changed in recent years, so we have people who are simply seeking out a church. Usually one of the partners is an Anglican, and so they search out SMM. One group of people comes once a month to the Folk Mass, which is an upbeat, informal style of worship, with some creativity in the liturgy, and that’s what attracts them. Then we have the Solemn Masses, most of them still in traditional language. People who are attracted to that tradition like a meditative service, and appreciate the music that the choir offers, both plainsong and polyphonic. In addition, they often prefer the Catholic understanding of the faith, the sacraments and the liturgy.

EG: Can you say a little more about how the Catholic tradition–the liturgy, the meditative services, the focus on the sacraments–is attractive for people?

HN: A lot of people are searching for a place where the faith is lived and preached in its mystery. The people who come to the Solemn Mass are often people who want the fullness of the Christian faith preached, as the Church has received it over the centuries, not just one party, and not just one take on it. 

The people who come to the Mass are often attracted by the music, first of all. But it’s not just that. One lady brought her friend, and afterwards asked, “How did you like the music?” She replied “I don’t know, I was just watching the liturgy. I just didn’t hear the music. I’ll have to come back next week and listen to the music.”

People are also drawn by the silence, the mystery, and the sense of being connected with the Church of the past, that we are not doing something new. Our liturgy reminds us of the whole history of the Church, starting with the music, but also including the liturgy, which is basically traditional, although we try to keep it up to date.

EG: How do you think of SMM as “doing evangelism”?

HN: As Christians, we are called to do evangelism. And my impression, right now, is that evangelism means inviting people to share in the liturgy, and to share one’s faith when that’s appropriate. Flyers at the door and advertising in the media may also be a bit of a help. But it seems as though the real evangelism is done person-to-person.

Every parish has its own culture. We have visitors here every Sunday. Some come and are blown away by the music, but there are others (who of course say nothing!) who think, “I can’t stand this. This is too much!” and leave. Now, one could say, “How can we change in order to be more open to all people?” But if we change, what becomes of the gift we offer to the Church and the society by doing what we do? Inevitably, what we do here, whether it’s Catholic liturgy or music, whether it’s the preaching or the community, all of that limits the people to whom we can appeal. 

We need therefore to realize our limitations, but we also need to push the boundaries all the time. In particular, we need to push our people to include others who don’t otherwise fit. In the 19 years I’ve been here, I keep on saying, “Look, when visitors come down for the coffee hour, they don’t come for the coffee, they come for conversation. And if you leave a visitor standing or sitting by themselves, then we’re not doing our job.” And you would be surprised how many times you find a visitor by themselves.

Now there are a few people who make it their ministry. There’s an elderly lady in her late 80’s whose ministry is to go around and say hello to the visitors. Yet there are other people, who are much younger, who just talk to their friends and can’t be bothered talking to strangers. Those limitations force us to look at ourselves and the kind of witness we can be. We realize we can’t be all things to all people, but we sure have got to try to include newcomers in our community.

EG: Where do we need to begin in evangelism?

HN: Well, the statistic in the U.S. is that 70% of new Anglicans are people who were invited by another Anglican to attend church. But we often find it difficult to do so, because of our English heritage. The Church of England was a church that encompassed everybody in the kingdom. You didn’t have to do evangelism, because they were already members of the church. And if they weren’t there, well, that was on their heads! That mentality still persists in some Anglican churches.

Part of Anglican tradition is also to tolerate differences of opinion. We have within us that feeling, “I have no right to impose my beliefs on somebody else.” But the point of evangelism is offering what is important to you, and sharing it with people who need it, or who seem to need it. 

Anglicans always tend to be reticent. A few have told me that they don’t even tell people at work that they go to church. And so we need to encourage people to be more forthright. Maybe we need not so much to “do evangelism” in the first place as to help people own their faith, and to get beyond seeing it as simply “going to church,” so that it becomes a living faith that influences not only their Sunday life but their whole life.

New Life, New Priorities

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One Anglican congregation recently used the occasion of full union with a Lutheran congregation to use the resources and energy thus freed up to begin reaching out to its neighbourhood.

 The Church of St Stephen and St Bede is a fully amalgamated Anglican and Lutheran congregation located in a 1950’s vintage suburb of Winnipeg. Having shared a building since 1970, and been joined for the main Sunday worship service since 1996, the two congregations moved to full union in the spring of 2002. One of the driving forces behind the amalgamation had to do with enhancing our ability to do ministry and evangelism. In our “parallel congregations in shared worship” format, we had tied up an enormous amount of time and energy in administrative infrastructure (14 people on vestry, 12 on the St Stephen’s Lutheran council, and another 10 on a joint board, all for a community that gathered roughly 100 people to worship on an average Sunday). With amalgamation came the promise of a much simplified board structure, freeing all of that other energy for hands-on ministry.

One of the key challenges has been to learn that evangelism is not about increased attendance and offering income, but rather about proclamation of the gospel and the deepening of the life of this manifestation of the Body of Christ. That is, or at least should be, self-evident, yet smaller church communities easily slip into a “we need new members” mindset . . . particularly when the $80,000 roofing estimate arrives in the mail. On that kind of day, the question of how we can be more relevant to the needs of people in our ever-changing neighborhood is one I’d rather we didn’t even ask!

Starting points for outreach

The more important question, however, is how we can be agents of change and (in the best sense) growth in our own backyard neighborhood. Put another way, how can we dissolve the walls of this church building so that this Christian community has a real and tangible presence in the wider community? Among our starting points have been the following:

  • New signage, enhanced landscaping, and a general physical facelift, all signaling that we are serious about our place in the neighborhood. No dandelion pastures, crooked mailboxes or cryptic signs (HE BAS 1st and 3rd, LBW HC 2nd and 4th) here, thank you very much.
  • We reinvented our traditional church picnic, moving it out of the local park and on to our front street. With a block party permit in hand, we threw a community street festival and invited the neighbors to a day of food, live music, street dancing, games and activities. We served over 300 people from our barbeque grill that day!
  • For five years now, we have been present and visible on Halloween, with candy for the kids and hot coffee for the chilled parents. For any who are anxious about the occult or pagan roots of Halloween, remember that it was the early Celtic Christians who first claimed the night back from the pagan cult, transforming Samhain night into All Hallow’s Eve.
  • On one of the last evenings of Advent, we invited the neighbors out for an evening of “Carols and Cocoa” in our parish hall. Yes, it meant sliding from Advent to Christmas a few days early (a bit of a compromise for a parish with some fairly catholic roots), but it was all framed as a fun and open way to begin to engage our neighbors in the deeper celebrations that would follow on Christmas Eve.
  • On the day of the most recent provincial election, we stationed hosts in our building to offer a welcome to voters and general hospitality to the polling staff.
  • We have presented an occasional series of concerts and coffee houses, featuring high calibre Christian musicians in a relaxed and intimate setting. Our goal has not been to turn any profit from such events, but rather to fill our building with people who might otherwise never come through the doors. At our last such event, held this past June, we had to scramble to squeeze every available chair into the hall to accommodate the crowd.

All of this, of course, is really pre-evangelism. These all provide points of contact with our living, breathing church community, as well as opportunities for our own members to invite their friends and neighbours to non-threatening, visitor-friendly events. We have managed to set a tone of hospitality, giving a taste of what we believe is a vibrant and creative parish community, opening the way for further contact and conversation. 

The work of evangelism is a deeper and ongoing project, which has to do with making room for people to participate in worship, prayer, education, Christian formation and the life of the community. The all-but-indispensable key for this work? A personal invitation from an active parishioner. All of the strategies, tactics, and good ideas in the world cannot replace that simple reality.

Evangelism and Liturgy – ‘Just as I am’, John Wesley and the Anglo-Catholic Eucharist

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It was fifteen years ago, in the Senior Common Room at Wycliffe College. A group of graduate students, all raised in evangelical Protestant communities, were discussing the phenomenon of the evangelistic ‘altar call’. ‘Oh, an altar call!’ chimed in our ‘cradle Anglican’ colleague as he rounded the corner to join our conversation. ‘That would be when you are called forward to receive communion, wouldn’t it?’ We chuckled: we knew an ‘altar call’ was an invitation at an evangelistic rally ‘to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour.’ But we also instantly sensed the logic of our friend’s genuine, if theoretical, response. 

A glance at ‘Just as I am’, the favourite hymn of the world-famous Billy Graham evangelistic missions, only heightens the potential connection between Holy Communion and conversion. Throughout the twentieth century, this Charlotte Elliott hymn has appeared in The English Hymnal, the most anglo-catholic of Anglican hymnbooks, and its successors, as a communion hymn. But does the hymn have evangelistic overtones in anglo-catholic liturgy? And if it does is there then a connection between anglo-catholic liturgy and evangelism?

The answer to these questions is ‘yes.’ The connection is neither accidental nor whimsical. Yet it certainly isn’t the case that Anglo-Catholics are ‘liturgical’ and other sorts of Anglicans (or other sorts of Christians) are not. Any repeated pattern of worship (and all worship does have a pattern) deserves to be called ‘liturgy’-so thank God for the variety of Christian liturgies around the world today! Nor can Anglo-Catholics boast that crowds of completely ‘unchurched’ visitors, having experienced worship amongst them, are likely to ‘accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour’ at the conclusion of the service. But if evangelism is the means by which seekers encounter the resurrected Lord and are converted, then anglo-catholic liturgy is unabashedly evangelistic, and ought to be taken seriously as such along with other forms of evangelism.

The shape of anglo-catholic worship illustrates this clearly. The most significant preoccupation of anglo-catholic liturgy is the service of Eucharist, still called by some the ‘mass’. Though morning and evening prayer are said, the Eucharist is always the principal service of worship on Sunday, and is observed several times mid-week-in some places daily. The Eucharist is the normal way in which the congregation first gathers to begin life together-whether a Bible study or a retreat or a day of building maintenance is to follow. Moreover, sermons delivered during every Eucharist are to be ‘eucharistic’ in the sense that they are to lead the assembled to the central eucharistic act which follows, the re-enactment of the last supper. The setting aside of space and people for this act of worship with incense and water, the blaze of candles, the ringing of bells during the eucharistic prayer-these heighten the experience of worshippers created in the image of God (not as disembodied minds, but as sensing beings), but they are nothing without the eucharistic act itself.

Both traditional and modern rites are in use in various anglo-catholic liturgies. What is significant in all cases is the divine summons to respond to Jesus’ words of pure grace about the offering up of himself, his body and blood, for us. It is these words that fall on the ears of worshippers whenever they gather together. It is in relation to this centre that all sacrificial actions seen ‘at the altar’ and all sacrificial words heard there must be understood. Whatever those present offer up is only possible because of divine grace and divine initiative in the call to conversion. And the invitation is to offer up (in an echo of St. Paul’s words in Romans 12.1) ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’ whether during or after the eucharistic act, whether in these words or in others.

It might be noted here that John Wesley, the famed Anglican priest-evangelist of the eighteenth century, was devoted to the eucharist throughout his life, to a degree that alarmed other Anglicans and made him laughable at Oxford as an adherent to the old High Church traditions of his day. At a time when the Eucharist was offered in many places only three times a year, Wesley celebrated it or participated in it at least weekly, and in high seasons of church life it was often a daily part of his life. He also understood the notion of the divine invitation of God’s sacrificial grace and the human sacrificial response as central to the whole eucharistic liturgy. Long before, during and after his central conversion experience of 24 May 1738 Wesley remained a devoted and frequent communicant.

This brings us back to the nature of evangelism in relation to liturgy. It is well known that most of Wesley’s famous evangelistic preaching and the consequent conversion experiences did not take place during any liturgy but in the fields and marketplaces of central England. He quite consciously, though at first reluctantly, preached in these places to the wholly ‘unchurched’-and there were easily as many in his day as there are in our day. A number of Anglican rectors soon found to their surprise, however, that all or most of their communicants were Wesley’s converts. And Wesley did not cease from preaching to those who were already, in one way or another, a part of parish life, and hence able to feel the converting power of the Eucharist. This is perhaps why a disproportionate number of hymns by Charles Wesley (John’s brother and fellow priest-evangelist) have made their way into the Holy Communion section of the anglo-catholic New English Hymnal (1986).

The anglo-catholic Eucharist that so shapes the life of a number of modern communities has certainly moved on beyond Wesley’s experience of it. But these communities have this in common with Wesley’s convictions. They understand the Eucharist as the primary call to conversion for those who are there to experience it. Anecdotal evidence suggests a large number of ‘cradle Anglicans’, long absent from active faith and parish life, have experienced the converting power of the Eucharist and responded by offering up themselves to God in a life of faith. 

But there is something else. In the anglo-catholic Eucharist, God’s divine initiative is never changing, so the Eucharist must be continually offered to the community as the perennial starting point of the converted life. On the other hand, all Christians wander widely, after whatever conversion experience they might profess. Thus they all need to enter into the re-enactment of the story of divine grace and hear the call to conversion as often as they gather together-hear it and feel it as richly and as clearly as possible. This is the evangelistic gift offered to the Christian community by anglo-catholic liturgy, and so it takes its place along side the many wonderful evangelistic gifts of other parts of the Anglican world and the Christian community.

Evangelism in Catholic Anglicanism

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Michael Peers has said that “evangelism is too important to be left to the Evangelicals.” What then does evangelism look like in other Anglican traditions? This edition of good idea! examines evangelism in the Catholic Anglican tradition.

My friend was wealthy enough. He spoke of the financial goal that would allow him to retire. Thinking of the church’s pension plan, the amount he mentioned seemed astronomical. Then he told me that he had already achieved it. “So I raised the amount.” He shrugged amiably, as if to say, “I know it’s absurd, but it was the only thing I could do.”

Imagination is the drama in which bodies are invested

So my friend invests his body daily in a drama of more. He works hard, and I don’t begrudge him the results. But it’s not a drama worthy of him–of his more-than-usually curious mind, his spiritual hunger, his generous heart. He knows that, and he knows that he hasn’t found a way to be free of the drama that claims him. But for the years I knew him, he was a fixture in worship at his local parish church.

He’s not so very different from many of the people I encounter. They know there is something about the way their lives are unfolding that doesn’t stack up. They know that wealth (or status, or power) is an inadequate measurement for their lives. The drama in which they invest their bodies is, they know, somehow unreal. John Gertner’s recent article in the New York Times Magazine, “The futile quest for happiness” (September 7, 2003) explores the dissonance between what we think will make us happy or unhappy, and what actually does. Tellingly, most of the people interviewed in the research of psychologist Daniel Gilbert, whose work forms the basis of Gertner’s article, would choose a trick knee over a broken bone, even though a trick knee would be unpredictable and persistent, while a broken bone would heal and its consequences limited in time.

Much of our society is living with the spiritual equivalent of a trick knee, living, that is, with the knowledge that at any time, without warning, their lives could buckle and collapse. I am convinced that they know that it could happen, does happen, has happened. Moreover, most of them have a sneaking suspicion that they have chosen this condition, though, unlike those polled for Gertner’s research, they don’t know what the alternative is.

Part of evangelism in the Catholic Anglican tradition is to haunt people with the alternative. Because they have invested their bodies in a drama that they know, at some level, to be flawed–as much by what is missing as by what is there–our evangelism might come alongside them, not with a full-fledged alternative, but with encouragement for their suspicion. In fact, we might better and more effectively encourage their suspicion, since part of the claim of stuff, status and power on their lives is in its unwavering command, “thou shalt have no other gods but us”. The totalizing nature of the drama in which they have invested themselves, its shrill insistence that critical reflection is treacherous, makes many of our contemporaries wary of any absolute claim. The first step in evangelism among them may be to help them become atheists when it comes to the unexamined claims of tacit and totalizing gods. As Jose Miguez Bonino reflects in Room to Be People, “Only an atheist can be a good Christian.”

If the lives of our many of our contemporaries bear muted witness to their own ironic self-suspicion, it will not be enough simply to nurture that irony. It is our mission to bear witness to another possibility, to invite the suspicious into a world in which what is missing in “real life” begins to become visible. Catholic Anglicans, like other Christians, are stewards of two key endowments for life in that world–the sacramental witness of font and table, and the storied witness of scripture.

Font and table call us into an investment of our bodies that is at odds with the world’s dominant image of what it is to be human. They do not begin by telling us what we should do, but by reminding us (anamnesis, “unforgetting”) who we are. In these two sacramental acts, it is easy to be stranded on the level of the individual–the communicant member, the baptismal candidate–and forget that these are the actions of a public body possessed by an alternative imagination. The recovery of this corporate dimension of public sacramental life lies at the heart of Catholic Anglican evangelism.

Becoming inviting communities

Jamie Howison’s conviction that evangelism occurs by invitation (see page 3) is one that I share, but it begs a further question–how can our communities become inviting, in both senses of the word? How can they be communities who make invitation to others to enter the alternative imagination of font and table? And how can they become communities whose corporate life is transparent to an inviting, even beguiling Godly presence? In many churches of the Catholic Anglican tradition, that sense of invitation is not evident, and I suspect that many in our churches could not articulate a deep gladness capable of meeting the profound spiritual hunger of the world.

The second endowment–the Bible–is even more opaque in many of our churches. I suspect that the majority of our members feel ill-equipped to approach the biblical landscape with confidence. Perhaps this is because for so long the public face of the Bible has been dominated by a propositional approach to its truth. But when I read the Bible, it feels rather like a passionate, loud, and contentious dinner conversation among ancestors whose encounters with the living God are at the heart of their lives. Perhaps it is the fear of being wrong that strikes such fear into Anglican hearts in approaching the Bible. Perhaps it is the triumph of modernity, with its unexamined assumption that anything outside the bounds of current understanding is a boondoggle. Perhaps it is a rising fundamentalism that treats the Bible as a source of pithy simplicities. Whatever the cause, there will be no sustained evangelism in the Catholic Anglican tradition until we find ourselves a place in the Bible’s strange and holy conversation.

We are surrounded by people who have chosen the trick knee of living in the world without reference to its creator and redeemer, who struggle to understand human life without reference to its author, whose imaginations are constrained by the absence of a drama more compelling than the piling up (and fearing the loss) of stuff, status and power. We are entrusted with a drama (eucharist) and a landscape (the Bible) that bear witness to our creator and redeemer, that disclose the author’s intent, not by his comments on human life, but by his human life among us, that offer us holiness, communion and servanthood to nourish souls left starving by the empty calories of stuff, status and power.

The guy up the street works for a “services” company whose specialty is signing up consumers for things like cellular phone service. They have all the codes for the company’s customer billing list–the company itself does nothing at all, and pays a per-capita cost for every customer that my friend’s company uploads into their database.

Christendom used to be the “services” company for the churches. It delivered people to our doors as part of their citizenship, without any effort on our part. We paid a price, higher in some places than in others. But Christendom has withdrawn its services–whether because we decided not to pay the price or because our role in society diminished. We are now required to re-enter the marketplace of the human soul, and stake a claim for a way of life that we call abundant, sometimes without much sign of that abundance in our common life.

Evangelism in Catholic Anglicanism, then, has these features: 

  • A conversion and renewal of liturgy as an inviting alternative to the “trick knee spirituality” that plagues our contemporaries;
  • an engagement with scripture as a story capable of bearing the weight and complexity of the human predicament,
  • and a willingness to engage the searching hearts of those around us with intelligible, compassionate and inviting witness.

What is Natural Church Development?

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Natural Church Development (NCD) is a widely-acclaimed program which helps churches in self-understanding and healthy growth. Connie denBok, an experienced teacher of the NCD process explains how it works, and why we should pay attention.

Natural Church Development is a systematic approach to a very common process.

A very kind lady in my church donated a flowering plant to brighten my office and within weeks I had to smuggle the wilted skeleton to my compost bin, the victim of misfortune. No green thumb here.

Yet outside my window is a mulberry tree, planted accidentally along the fence by birds, and alive only because the lawnmower blades could never reach it. It is blasted by heat and drought in summer and cold and salt from the driveway in winter, yet it bears fruit in season, and the birds and squirrels delight in it all summer long.

Why does this one thrive on neglect, while the other, a precious gift, the recipient of my care, has died?

Christian Schwarz, a German student of church growth, tried to answer that question through a massive international survey project in the early 1990’s. The question was, “What do churches share in common that transcend language, nationality, culture, and denomination”? And the question that arose from that: “What do healthy thriving congregations share that their declining counterparts do not?”

More than 1000 churches in 32 countries on 5 continents were surveyed and tabulated. The surprise was that churches had a great deal in common, from the village house churches of Indonesia to the historic denominational churches of Norway to mega churches in North America. Every church of every tradition and culture, thriving or otherwise, had the same eight components: Leadership, Ministry, Spirituality, Structures, Worship, Small Groups, Evangelism, and Relationships.

The thriving congregations also shared these eight components, but with an important difference. The quality of each characteristic was higher, based on similar behaviours.

Thus all churches had leadership, but the healthy churches had a different style of leadership, characterized by the sharing and delegation of ministry, leadership through vision, mentoring, and processes for leading change. Empowering Leadership was characteristic of thriving churches.

All churches conducted some kind of ministry, but healthy churches understood ministry in terms of spiritual gifts interrelated through the congregation. People were trained, match-making was done between people and roles, systems were in place to support and challenge lay workers and individuals had an understanding of why their role was important to the whole. These churches had Gift-oriented Ministry.

Spirituality of one kind or another was part of every congregation but the thriving churches practiced personal and corporate disciplines. They had a contagious element to their faith which Schwarz called Passionate Spirituality.

Corporate Worship was universal, but the people of some churches recorded feelings of being inspired, God centered and celebrative worship, life transforming preaching, care in the planning of worship, care for children during worship and receptivity to visitors. These people were likely to identify Inspiring Worship as characteristic of their church.

Some churches have more structure, some have less. Thriving churches shared Functional Structures as a common denominator. Organizations and systems were interrelated with one another. Clear lines of support, accountability and oversight were built into the systems. Vision, goals, and planning together with creativity in managing change moved these churches beyond tradition, even in very traditional churches.

Every church has small groups, some formal and some informal. Holistic Small Groups were the mark of healthy congregations. The groups had a spiritual orientation but also emphasized authentic relationships and community. They were sensitive to guests and had built in processes to multiply believers, leaders, and groups.

Evangelism happens in every church, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. Persons in churches with Needs-based Evangelism developed relationships beyond the church, were trained to articulate their faith, were sensitive to the presence of spiritual seekers, and worked hard at incorporating new believers into the life of the church.

It is no surprise that thriving congregations were more likely to report Loving Relationships. People reported an atmosphere of trust and affirmation. They related to each other outside of formal church occasions and valued intentional conflict resolution.

When the survey results were collected, a surprising pattern developed. Where 50 was the median, every church that scored above 65 on each of the eight quality characteristics was also a growing or reproducing church. Ten years later, with many more thousands of churches surveyed, the pattern remains unchanged. There is an undisputed correlation between the quality of those eight characteristics within a congregation and its numerical growth. In other words a congregation does not get better by getting bigger, but as it become healthier, it is very likely to include and keep new people.

Mark 4:26-28 quotes a parable of Jesus:
The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, and he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”(NRSV)

The Greek word translated here as “of itself” represents the Greek word automaton, meaning “all by itself.” Evidently the sower does not understand how the process works. But the sower does know that the God who created the heavens and the earth has decreed that fertile ground will always grow something. Our choice is what it will grow. And when that appropriate choice is made and followed by appropriate nurture, the development is “all by itself.”

Many church people have pondered, “Why is church so often hard work with little result? How can it be that we lavish our beloved churches with time, money, and effort and see so little fruit? Are the leaders of healthy churches particularly lucky to have found a good one? Or are they rare geniuses? Or perhaps their success is because they’ve sold their souls to darker motives.”

Schwarz argues convincingly that as God’s creation the Church contains the same “automaton” principle as the seed of Jesus’ parable. The missing component is not the dedication and hard work of our people, or luck or genius or conspiracy theory. The missing link is our own understanding of the ways of God in the world, and how we partner with God in God’s work, the Church of Jesus Christ. Same people, same components, same God. Yet one situation is clearly empowered and propelled by the Holy Spirit in more dynamic ways.

The operative question is: Where to begin?

Using a survey developed by Schwarz, it is possible for any congregation to measure the quality of the eight characteristics named above. The pastoral staff and 30 lay persons with a leadership stake in the congregation fill in a four page survey. The data is entered into a special computer program normed to a national standard. In other words, Canadian churches are compared to other Canadian churches. The result is a profile of how each characteristic stands in relation to the others.

If we were to imagine each of the quality characteristics as staves of a barrel, some would be higher and some lower.
The question is: which stave of the barrel determines the water level of the whole? Obviously the shortest one.

The task of bringing a church to health in all eight areas is overwhelming. The good news, however, is that all a congregation needs to do to change the overall quality is to identify and improve its weakest component, the “lowest stave of the barrel.” Unexpected areas of the church will then improve “all by themselves.” Armed with this information, a congregation is able to focus on the one thing that will make the biggest difference. After an implementation process that lasts about a year the survey measurement is done again, the new “lowest stave of the barrel” identified, and work is underway to raise the quality level of the church.

One minister commented: “In less than two years we made the gigantic leap from dreadful quality to average. In two more years we have moved from average in all things to very good quality in some. It may take years, but our goal is to bring the lowest stave of our barrel all the way to 65.”

Information about NCD, including its publications and ordering information, is available at www.ncdcanada.com

Working with Churches on NCD

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Growing numbers are learning about NCD, and qualifying as “consultants” to churches which want to learn from the process. Here one such consultant describes his own experience, and why he is enthusiastic about NCD.

I was preparing a course on ‘Church Growth’ for Taylor College when I first came across the Natural Church Development movement. My imagination was caught by the liberating idea that church growth is natural. The growth of a church is not dissimilar to the growth of other organisms. We do not cause growth, we only cooperate with God by providing conditions in which growth can occur.

So far, my experience is limited to working with two local Churches and teaching NCD in a classroom setting. At one church, St. James the Less in Renforth NB, we completed the first survey. St James is a growing church and the results confirmed this: most of the eight quality characteristics were well above 50 in the score. From the results, the Church decided that it would look at concentrating on ‘Holistic Small Groups’ in particular, but also to continue to develop other areas in order to score 65 or better in each category in future. 

At Stone Church in St. John, we are almost ready to do our first survey. We have had a series of sermons on Schwarz’s Eight Quality Characteristics of a Growing Church, and there is a sense of anticipation building as we prepare to do the survey. Already there is a determination to improve whatever the minimum factor might be. This is a really helpful attitude as we begin to think about how we will raise our “lowest barrel stave.”

In presenting NCD in the classroom, however, I became enthused with another aspect of the program. It may not always be difficult to discover what is preventing a church from growing, but it is always a challenge to create a wholesome and effective way forward. Schwarz lays out what he has found to be the “Natural” principles of growing organisms. These then become a template for measuring any plan to address hindrances. NCD does not give ‘cookie cutter’ solutions. What the research has done is to identify the universal principles and help provide the framework in which these principles can be applied locally.

Most of us are not in the position of planting a church, or ministering in growing urban centres, where we can choose the model we want to apply. Instead, we are working in the context of a church and a community which has rich traditions. We cannot just impose a strategy, even if it has worked successfully in other situations. NCD provides a hopeful way forward in these settings.

As a result, I am pleased to have this as a tool in my classroom and I look forward to my post-classroom days when I can devote myself more fully to coaching local Churches in ‘Natural Church Development’.

The Proof of the Pudding: One Parish’s Experience with NCD

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How does NCD work out in the life of a local parish? One priest writes about the exciting experience of leading her parish through the NCD process.

Some years ago, I had acquired a video of a conference held by Christian Schwarz. Our vestry then had viewed the video and responded lukewarmly. In early 2002, the new Vestry viewed it. As I was mentally preparing to return the video to its now dusty case, a voice erupted. Perhaps the image of the horses pulling a wagon fitted with square tires was too much for the farmer whose voice broke the silence: “So what do we do next?”

It was the spark we needed. Within a few weeks we had begun the process of Natural Church Development, the most simple and yet effective means of achieving church growth I have encountered, affecting the whole of church life and challenging our very reason for being. I have taped one of the NCD principles on my study wall: “Growth depends not on what we do, but on identifying obstacles to what God wants to do.” 

Thirty members of the parish were brought together, the survey administered–and we waited anxiously for the results. Our highest score, we learned, was loving relationships–which came as no surprise to any of us. Lowest was “passionate spirituality.” No scores were outside normal parameters. Since NCD focuses on using strengths to build up weaknesses, our top-scoring characteristic of “loving relationships” was perfect for guiding us through the remainder of the process. 

Most exciting for me and for many involved in this process has been the “proof of the pudding.” It works! As we have gone through the principles and processes outlined in NCD, we have been encouraged and excited that much of what is taught has already begun in St. Paul’s. God was already ahead of us. For example, home fellowships had already been identified as desirable, and a training program was in the process of development–the beginning of an answer to our lack of “passionate spirituality.” Our prayer life has increased dramatically, which has given birth to two 24-hour vigils, the first for the healing of the land and an end to drought in our area, and the second for peace. 

In the past year we have experienced only minimal growth in numbers. The real miracle is in the quality of growth. As the people of St. Paul’s have witnessed more and more of God’s grace, experienced His love and miracles of all sizes, the greater their faith has grown. They have been encouraged to risk, and have begun to disciple others in a very natural way. We are now in a position to re-visit our mission statement, to articulate a real vision for the parish, and to develop goals and objectives by which to make this vision a reality using methods that are natural, proven, and very obviously blessed by God. We have come a long way, and expect that to be borne out by our next survey, scheduled for the Easter season.

A Beer and a Chat about Life

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The path by which people with no church background find their way to Christian faith is particularly varied. Normally, however, it seems to involve a partnership of divine and human agencies.

Looking back, I can see how God has been calling me for a very long time. Although I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, my best friend’s family were Christians and I used to attend Sunday School at their church for three years as a child. I enjoyed going, but whenever they talked about “asking Jesus into your heart” I would become nervous.

After high school, I went off to university and lived as many do, seeking happiness as my ultimate goal and living selfishly. I thought money, girlfriends, travel, and a good career would fulfill all of my desires. However, I couldn’t deny that in my heart all was not well. There were broken relationships in my life and I was a pretty unhappy young man, desperately seeking direction and the answers to life.

In my mid 20’s, I began work in the restaurant business and became friends with a Christian. After work, we would occasionally have a beer and chat about life. Inevitably, we would talk about religion and the human condition. Those discussions took place over about three years. Though I did not know it at the time, through this time my roommate’s mother, who was a Christian, was praying every day for me to come to faith, though she had never met me.

One day, I was having lunch with my friend and I was asking him about Jesus. This time, he looked at me and said that while he had always been glad to answer my questions, it was now time for me to go to the Source and ask God in prayer if he really existed. I went home, and I remember praying to God, saying that I needed to know if he was real and that, if he was, I was prepared to surrender.

After about 3 months, one hot summer’s night after work, I went home and lay down on my bed with the window open. I didn’t plan on praying, but it seems that the Holy Spirit led me. I prayed to God, confessing my sins and asking for his forgiveness, asking Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Saviour, and giving myself to God. I remember weeping for a long time out of sadness for my past life, but also for the joy that was now deep inside me which nothing could take away. I was so thankful to God for what he had done that I told him I wanted to be his servant and to do whatever he wanted me to do.

I was baptized on Holy Saturday at St. John’s on my first Easter as a Christian. It was a very significant moment as I was able to make a statement to the community that I was part of Christ’s family. I was overwhelmed by God’s love for me when I was baptized and I remember being moved to tears. I also felt grateful that I was baptized on Holy Saturday evening as I felt that it had significance with regards to the spiritual reality that I had died with Christ and I will be raised with Him also. Afterwards, I had a party with friends to celebrate.

The next day I told my friend what had happened and he was overwhelmed with joy, and we prayed together. That Sunday I went to his church. I joined a small group for seekers and new Christians who wished to learn the basics of Christianity. It was in such Bible study groups that I realized how much I loved being involved in ministry.

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