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Natural Church Development (NCD) includes several individual and congregational self-assessment tools and models for addressing the needs identified by these tools. NCD is a world-wide movement and process of intentionally working toward greater fruitfulness and overall health in a congregation. Skyline Church is committed to utilizing NCD methods and tools in our evaluation and planning from January 2007 through May 2009.

The primary tool in the NCD process is a congregational survey, designed to identify a church's "Minimum Factor", or one of eight quality characteristics, attention to which will result in the greatest benefit for overall church health. It is taken annually by 30 people in the congregation who are active in leadership and corporate spiritual development. A secondary tool is a 3-color (or trinitarian compass) survey designed to identify the theological starting point for individuals and for the congregation. It is taken any time by at least a third of the worshipping congregation in order give meaningful results.

On Saturday, November 10, 2007, from 9-noon, we engaged in a special Natural Church Development Retreat for all leaders (Council and Pathway Ministers), in order to come to clearness about the next steps we will take as a church in order to leverage our Minimum Factor in the next 6-9 months.

During the retreat, we reviewed a paraphrase of the Letter to the angel of the church in Philadelphia for our devotions and conducted a SWOT analysis. The strengths and weaknesses are internal to Skyline church, and the opportunities and threats exist in our surrounding community.

The bulk of the retreat was spent generating "Can We...?" statements in five areas we identified as key issues for Skyline Church.

We will schedule a follow-up retreat January 19 to identify several initiatives that will address these key issues, possibly using the "Can We...?" statements as ministry ideas.

By now, many of you are probably familiar with the principles and theory of NCD, as well as our survey results from May, 2007.

Natural Church Development is a world-wide movement. Please look at the six mini-seminars on Natural Church Development in order to familiarize yourself with NCD theory and process. If you don't have the time (about five minutes each for the six mini-seminars), you can read our notes on the NCD process.

NCD basics involve an understanding of:

Our minimum factor is Passionate Spirituality. Our strengths are Gift-based ministry and effective structures. I've attached an NCD Insights into Passionate Spirituality resource to this page. You'll find 16 questions here that deal with four major facets of passionate spirituality at Skyline. Please look over them and answer as many as you can - and bring these answers with you to the retreat. If you would like, we'd appreciate it if you could e-mail us (and the rest of the group) your responses.

The NCD Coaching Guide to Passionate Spirituality is another great resource to review as you prepare for the retreat. The action points (after the first one) are taken directly from the excerpt from the NCD Implementation Guide (pp. 63-73) we passed out to you in May. Please e-mail us if you need another copy.

Thank you for taking the time to pray and prepare for this important time in the life of our church.

Peace,
Bo and Vicki

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Last modified: 02/11/08