Growing Healthy Churches
NCD (Natural Church Development)
Practical support for church congregations wishing to grow,
based on extensive research into church health and growth
of 80,000 churches all over the world.
All denominations, sizes, traditions and contexts,
including church plants and 'Fresh Expressions'.
Health and Growth
The obvious.... isn't always obvious?
What colour are most tree trunks?!
Instinctively when first asked that question as an adult, I answered 'Brown'. Wasn't that an obvious answer? That's what I had been told so many times and painted as a child myself.
Yet the author of the question said, 'Look again!'. Look at the trees...what colour are their trunks really?
I looked again. Green! Or grey!
How does a church congregation grow instead of decline?
Obvious? Or not obvious? Be careful.... remember the tree trunks!
Mission alone is not the answer.
There has been an assumption held by many over the years that the answer to church growth is mission/evangelism. The CofE had a Decade of Evangelism as a result. And the result? CofE Churches overall in the UK are still in decline. And that's because the equation, just like tree trunks equal brown, is incorrect.
Mission and evangelism, important though they are, do NOT in themselves result in long-term church growth. We all know that in our hearts and church experience, but somehow the emphasis keeps being repeated. In reality, church growth is far more complex than a simple equation: Mission/Evangelism = Growth.
So let's try a different approach......
In the natural world, health leads to growth
Compare the two pictures below. One is growing, the other isn't. Why?
Because one is healthy and the other one isn't.
So could the same be true for churches? Could church health actually be the answer to church growth?
Church health and church growth
Research across the world
by Natural Church Development
There is extensive reseach based on over 80,000 churches across the world (that is over 6 times bigger than the entire Church of England!), that church health has a direct influence on church growth. And furthermore, that there are specific qualities in relation to church health that are absolutely essential if church congregations are to grow.
The organisation that has carried out the research on whether churches can grow 'naturally' by paying attention to their health, is known as
How can we help?
Mentoring support to help your church grow
We offer to support churches at any stage of their life and health. Whether your church looks more like the 'Help me' plant, or the fruit bearing tree, or anything in between, we can help and support you by explaining these essential principles of health and growth.
We can GUARANTEE to help you find out why your church is or isn't growing.
The results may surprise you and it is almost certain that you will not be able to work out major blockages to growth on your own, without the extensive knowledge and research NCD can bring.
Warning - Beware the copies!
Please note: As with many areas of life nowadays, there can be significant levels of misinformation and/or copies of the real thing. Growing Healthy Churches (NCD) is no exception. Although it could be argued that doing anything is better than doing nothing, it would be wise to check that any approach you are being drawn to has extensive research behind it.
There appear to be a growing number of theories on the subject of church growth and church health. Make sure you do the research on their research! Some have very limited evidence to support the theories.
