Quality and Growth March in Step

NCD asserts a clear, scientifically-verifiable relationship between the quality of church life (its health) and the quantity (how many people are attending).

Most often at NCD International we focus the attention of church leaders on quality because consistently raising the health of a church is the way to grow it. With these graphs, however, the starting point is a stark quantitative divide – declining in numbers versus growing in numbers. At the same time it differs from the classical approach of the church growth movement that used the size of a church and not the growth as criterion.

In the initial research of 1,188 churches in 32 countries, growing churches achieved an average of between 9 and 13 points higher than their declining cousins across all eight essential quality characteristics. 

 

Note the following:

• All the results for growing churches were well above the 50 average, scoring between 54 and 58.
  
  
• For growing churches, the most healthy characteristic was Passionate Spirituality and the least healthy was Empowering Leadership.
  
  
• For declining churches, the most healthy characteristic was Gift-based Ministry and the least healthy was a combination of Inspiring Worship Service and Effective Structures.

These statistics are sobering enough for leaders of declining churches, until we look at the results for nearly 60,000 Survey profiles collected over a period of more than 10 years (see graph below).

In this vast sample, growing churches achieved an average of between 10 and 16 points higher than their declining counterparts across the eight quality characteristics. Compared with the original research, the health differential between growing and declining churches is in fact greater for every characteristic except Passionate Spirituality, which remains the same. These results not only confirm the original findings of a correlation between church quality and growth, they also confirm (together with recent research showing that the average growth rate of churches that have done three or more surveys has increased by 51 percent) the basic assumption of NCD: improve a church’s quality, and the growth will happen automatically.

Note the following:

• For growing churches, the healthiest characteristic on average was Inspiring Worship Service, which was also the characteristic with the greatest differential from declining churches, where it ranks last. 
  
  
• For growing churches, the next healthiest characteristics are Effective Structures and Need-oriented Evangelism. Effective Structures is the second lowest characteristic in declining churches.

Don’t forget that the dynamic of church health is found in the adjective: leadership which is empowering; ministry based in the gifts of the people; worship that is inspiring such that people sense the presence of God; structures that are effective because they are directed at helping the church grow; and so on.

Christoph Schalk and Ian Campbell

Comments

[Ommund Rolfsen]

You write: "the basic assumption of NCD: improve a church’s quality, and the growth will happen automatically".

In Norway it looks like when all the eight quality characteristics score 55 or higher quantitative growth often happens. The growth seldom happens with small qualitative growth from one profile to the next and with low scores on the eight quality characteristics.

[Christoph Schalk]

Good observation. There is a high correlation between quality and growth, however this correlation becomes visible when a church reaches a certain quality level. At a level of 65 or higher for all 8 qualities, the growth is almost guaranteed.