Neil Adams, an NCD Coach from New Zealand, shares the NCD story of a church in Auckland. Encouraging!
2007 was our first “NCD Year”.
Prior to the NCD Survey, our church had undertaken 3 strategic planning exercises and two consultant reports over the preceding 6 years and all had resulted in little change and dwindling attendance. The congregation had fallen to around 90 people from approximately 200 members in 1998.
At the end of 2006 our church leadership underwent a complete change of personnel and a new team was put in place.
One of the new leaders encouraged the whole leadership team to consider the NCD Survey. A number of the NCD publications were passed around for reading and some took the opportunity to discuss the NCD experience with fellow church leaders who had used NCD Surveys in their own churches. Following considerable questioning (and with reluctance from some leaders who were skeptical of NCD), the leadership team agreed to participate in the NCD process. This was done with two aims - ...
- ... in order to establish a base-line for church health and
- ... to seek to develop areas of priority focus for 2008.
The survey was undertaken in early 2007 and results received shortly thereafter.
This spiritual health check demonstrated that our church had a number of major issues that required immediate priority attention. Results were extremely low when compared to “New Zealand averages”. Our results were communicated to the whole congregation and the two lowest scores immediately focused upon by our leadership.
- Inspiring Worship Service:
A team was put in place to work throughout the year specifically on Inspiring Sunday Services. 3 senior/passionate leaders worked with a new group of newly identified, promising leaders. Training sessions were held, experimentation was encouraged, freshness was experienced - and God was doing the work!
- Effective Structures:
The new elders implemented a new leadership team model: Elder Team, Leadership Team, Ministry Teams, Emeritus Team. One elder attended an NCD training day and the NCD process was widely communicated throughout the church. Leadership had been devolved to people with gifting and they were encouraged to take responsibility and leadership within the church.
A Pastor-search commenced and God was evident and growing His people.
Using the NCD Survey, our church quickly began to focus upon areas of “lowest-scores” in church health.
In the short-term we have already noticed some dramatic changes. Our attendance has turned around after sliding downwards for the past 9 years. By year-end 2007 we noted a total increase in attendance over the previous year of 17%. In the final quarter of 2007, our adult attendance was up 24% ahead of the same period the previous year.
During this period of growth and blessing, we also experienced some complaints and grumblings. Carefully explaining our reasoning behind the changes that had been implemented and referring to our NCD Survey results allowed us to take the 'heat' from those few who have been blessed with the gift of complaining.
As we got underway in 2008, we employed a fulltime pastor and a part time women and family pastor. These new staff took up their positions in March 2008. We were really looking forward to our second NCD Survey - our results were so bad last time, they could only go one way - UP!
And that’s what they did:
God is good!
Neil Adams is a licensed NCD Coach based in Taupo, New Zealand. Contact: neil@ncd.net.nz.
