The Canadian national partnership changed hands at the end of 2008 when Ian Campbell returned to his native Australia to continue his work with NCD and churches globally. Meet Bill Bickle, NCD's new partner for Canada.
My primary volunteer work has been for the church and my business is a strategic growth consultancy, FORDelm Inc., for corporate and not-for-profit clients. My wife and I have attended three Anglican churches, an inner-city church and two small town/rural churches although we were both raised in other denominations. We enjoy the opportunity to see the Canadian Church from such a unique perspective, to work across all denominations in a global movement making an eternal impact, and to witness God in action so abundantly. It is truly a joy to help remove the barriers to all-by-itself growth!
The new base for NCD Canada is FORDelm, the name of our house and the business. It is just north of the small historic town of Port Hope, Ontario on the north shore of Lake Ontario. We are one hour east of Toronto, North America’s fourth largest city, said to be one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet. This is, in part, because Canada has the world’s highest per capita immigration rate.
Although Canada’s population has grown three times in size over the last fifty years to 34 million, it is small relative to our land mass, spread across 9,000 kms, and ¾ of our population live within 150 km of the US border. Culturally, economically and on many other levels we are very aware of our proximity to a much more affluent and populated country but in spite of these influences, the Canadian church is in a post-Christendom state, no longer a largely Christian society. Even Canadians are surprised to learn that the Canadian church is quite dissimilar to the American church: to tell a coworker on Monday about experiencing God at church on Sunday is highly unusual. Most Canadians state a denominational affiliation but it is often an inherited one.
In addition to these unique characteristics, there are approximately 25,000 churches in over 50 denominations. Statistically, 77% of Canadians consider themselves Christian; 43% of these are Catholic and of the 34% remaining, the largest denomination is the United Church of Canada - the two together represent less than 3% of NCD surveys administered since 1999. We are trying to reach the ‘one-time churches’ (two thirds of Canadian churches that surveyed over the last 10 years have not re-surveyed) with the message that NCD is still here and offers additional resources: Profile Plus (purchased by 99.3% of Canadian churches so far in 2009) and the NCD Cycle to interpret the results and remove barriers to quality.
2009 has been a very busy year for NCD in Canada as the seeds of renewal and re-launch begin to bear fruit. We have been building the infrastructure required to run the partnership and keeping up service-levels for surveys, books and training. Many churches are returning to NCD now that they know about the new tools and resources available beyond the survey. Nearly half of all surveys completed in 2009 have been first time surveys, and nearly 20% are from churches whose most recent survey was more than three years ago. Now we will begin to focus more intentionally on helping leaders integrate the NCD paradigm into their churches for increased health and quality. Just as we’re promoting a long term commitment to a rigorous process of continuous improvement to churches, we are going to improve processes, information on the web-site, and the ability for practitioners to grow in the paradigm and work together across vast distances.
As we prepared for Christian’s North American visit back in November to describe his new book The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality, we were continuously reminded how richly God is blessing us through the opportunity to serve the Church in this way. Time and again prayer is answered when obstacles arise and we are reminded not to work out of our own strength. We are also encouraged by the beauty of God’s people giving so much to the development of their churches and their willingness to partner with Him in their natural growth.
Bill Bickle serves as NCD National Partner in Canada. Contact: ncd@fordelm.com.
