Meet NCD's National Partner for Australia and the South Pacific Islands

From the introduction of NCD by Colin Noyes, to the excellent work of Ian Campbell (now Director of NCD Canada) through to the work of the mostly volunteer team headed up by its current director Adam Johnstone, NCD Australia has continued to gather momentum and break new ground for Australian churches and churches around the NCD world.

NCD uptake

Since 1998, 1,100 churches from 25 denominations and movements have engaged in the NCD process in Australia - a number that continues to climb without faltering. This uptake is most encouraging since it is based almost exclusively on peer endorsement with practically no hard-sell advertising ever used. If NCD works for a church, they tell their friends. And there are a lot of friends being told about NCD in Australia.

Some of the results

In Color Your World with Natural Church Development, Christian Schwarz outlines the international progress of churches who have completed 3 NCD Surveys over a 31 month period on average. Looking at such churches in the Australian context reveals a 9 point average quality characteristic gain (6 points internationally) and a growth rate increase in excess of 100% (51% internationally). These key indicators combined with increasing survey repeat rates and countless stories of transformed churches and pastors are cause for great encouragement for us. It fuels our desire to see just how much more God has in store for us if we keep doing our part of the partnership with him better.

While there are many reasons we have seen these kind of results that are clearly beyond the international average (e.g. great denominational coaches, early development of the NCD Cycle concept, not making churches jump through too many hoops just to get started, keeping the process simple, etc.), it is clear that the development and nation-wide adoption of the Profile Plus report took NCD progress in Australia to a whole new level back in 2004.

Ready... set... GROW!

Each year the NCD community becomes increasingly diverse - more and different denominations involved; churches with one survey worth of experience and those with twelve; and more people beginning to apply the principles of NCD at different levels (eg. regionally, denominationally, in small groups, in the home, etc.) To support and encourage this diverse growth, NCD Australia is committed to pioneering new creative strategies and tools. Just a few examples are...

NxCD

My co-director Liam Glover heads up our NxCD (pronounced ‘next’) strategy. It is about relating the principles of NCD directly to church planting, in particular by encouraging new churches of any description to complete an NCD Survey in their first year of existence. We offer this survey at cost price as a sign of how important we believe it is for new churches to take a minimum factor approach from day one. Some of the outcomes of this work are really quite stunning (more on this in the coming days).

NCD Davids

We have identified a group of people that we call the ‘NCD Davids’ (see Christian Schwarz’s section on David and Goliath in the Color Your World book). These pastors or key lay people have overseen the NCD process in their church through at least 4 surveys and have either experienced at least a 15 point average gain, or have maintained their results all over 65 points during that time. Due to the significant cultural change brought about through these people’s leadership, it is no surprise they are in great demand by other churches on the NCD journey.

3 Color Life Cycle

The 3 Color Life Cycle is a principle-based process that increases the fruitfulness of ANY area of human existence in partnership with God and others. So far, it has been included in the latest edition of the NCD ‘White Book’, the NCD Survey Workbook and How to Implement The 3 Colors of Love in your World (to be released in June 2008). Over time, it will become the primary vehicle for taking NCD principles into the church, the home, the workplace, the world...

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Scratching the surface

When I first received a copy of the white NCD book in 1999, I went home and read it that night from cover to cover. A fuse had been lit. And yet as I look at NCD Australia and "all that has been accomplished through Jesus' suffering", I feel we are just beginning to take hold of the "Life in all its fullness" that he came to give (Isaiah 53:11, John 10:10).

Adam Johnstone is Director of NCD Australia and directing the NCD Campaign