How does God grow a church?
ALEXANDRIA – How does God grow a church?
Healthy, growing churches seem to share eight quality characteristics, according to Christian Schwarz, founder and president of the Institute for Natural Church Development (NCD) in Germany.
“[Schwarz] got to noticing that there was a connection along several points on churches he was studying across Europe,” said Randy Tompkins, president of Cornerstone Consultants here and a provider for NCD surveys. “After years of work and study, [Schwarz discovered] these eight characteristics.”
The characteristics are: “empowering leadership; gift-oriented ministry; passionate spirituality; functional structures; inspiring worship service; holistic small groups; need-oriented evangelism; and loving relationships,” according to Natural Church Development, a book by Schwarz.
Through NCD, churches can measure their effectiveness in all of these areas and thus “discover and develop [their] God-given, unique nature,” Schwarz wrote.
Tompkins – former state Sunday school director and Stewardship and Cooperative Program director at the Louisiana Baptist Convention – can lead a Louisiana church through a NCD survey which is designed to measure the perception of those church members who take the survey along the eight quality characteristics, he said.
NCD uses between 10 and 30 church members as a survey sample, Tompkins added. The smaller the church, the smaller the sample of those surveyed.
Once the church members take the survey, Tompkins tabulates the answers, comparing them to the results of about 1,000 other churches of similar size and geographic location, he said. From that comparison and the answers on the survey, he assigns a numeric quality for each characteristic that he then reports to the church.
Parkview Baptist Church here in Alexandria, for example, is now using information from the survey its members took as a template to study its ongoing ministries and actions and to plan for changes, additions, and/or deletions, Tompkins said.
Four staff members and 29 members at Parkview took the survey, said Pastor David Shaw.
“Our church scored the second or third highest score of any church in Louisiana over the seven and a half years [Tompkins has been] giving the survey,” Shaw said. “We were also rated in the top 3 to 5 percent of all churches nationwide.”
“One of the things [the survey] does is produce a chart showing these eight characteristics,” Tompkins said.
The chart will show a maximum characteristic – the characteristic assigned the highest numeric value – and the minimum – the characteristic with the lowest numeric value. Every church has a maximum and a minimum.
Schwarz, in his book, uses a barrel with eight staves to symbolize the eight quality characteristics of a church. Each stave on the barrel, like each characteristic of a church, has a certain height, or measurement. The barrel can hold water only to the height of the lowest stave.
In the same way, a church is effective only so far as its minimum characteristic—the lowest of its eight quality characteristics—allows it to be effective.
The goal is for the church to improve its score on the minimum characteristic, Tompkins said. The survey, if repeated within 18 months, can show the church’s progress towards that end.
“I’ve seen several churches through the years that have seen marked turn around in their ministry because they now had something they could measure their progress against,” Tompkins said. “It gave them a visual on what to look for and concentrate on.”
The cost of the survey is $100. If the church is located some place other than Central Louisiana, travel expenses are also assessed, Tompkins said. For more information, contact Tompkins at 318.451.1160 or email him at randy@cornerstoneconsultants.org.