Natural Church Development - Year 2

NCD Process      Quality Characteristics Graph      NCD Progress

How Can We Help You Grow Spiritually?

In 2004 the Congregational Council decided to embark on a new project - Natural Church Development.  Soon after that decision, many members of our congregation participated in a Natural Church Development survey that asked your opinions concerning various factors of church life at St. Bartholomew. At the Annual Congregational Meeting in January 2005 the members were presented with the results of that survey. The graph showed all eight Quality Characteristics that are present in every church and the ranking of each Quality Characteristic within St. Bart's according to the survey results. The graph revealed our Maximum Factor of Empowering Leadership and the Minimum Factor of Passionate Spirituality. Explanations of the Maximum and Minimum Factors were given at the Annual Congregational Meeting.

Early in 2006 some members of the St. Bart congregation took another NCD survey to 1) see if we changed our minimum factor of Passionate Spirituality and 2) determine our new Minimum Factor so we can continue to improve church life here at St. Bartholomew. The results of the survey were interesting to say the least. The results revealed that we actually lost 1 point in Passionate Spirituality but we went up in 5 other areas and stayed the same in 2 others. One of the areas that was unchanged was our highest Quality Characteristic - Empowering Leadership. Consequently the NCD Spiritual Health Team will continue to work on Passionate Spirituality again in 2006. View the  2006 survey results and the combined 2005 and 2006 results. 

Briefly defined, Passionate Spirituality is the level of passion at which your faith in Christ is lived out in real life. Christ becomes the center of your life, and that is reflected in your actions, thoughts and decisions. Spirituality is exhibited as personal or corporate. Personal spirituality is a personal encounter between you and Christ and concerns your private spiritual habits. Corporate spirituality is spirituality exhibited in a group environment. Whether in Personal or Corporate, a higher level of spirituality is a more passionate level of spirituality. Examples of passionate spirituality are:

It is the sincere desire of the Natural Church Development Spiritual Health Team to improve the spirituality of members of St. Bartholomew's and maintain all of the positive features that everyone likes about our church. We can only ask that members be open and receptive to our ideas that have been carefully considered before implementation. If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact Pastor Sonja at 609-393-6060.

Natural Church Development Process

There is a change process which will help us address our Minimum Factor.  The NCD Process will assist us in developing relevant goals and a plan to see the health of your church increase.

 Step 1 - Prepare - Prepare our church to engage in the total NCD Process. Getting leadership buy-in, mobilizing intercessors and choosing a Spiritual Health Team are all a part of this step. The Congregational Council chose this process in 2004 and the Spiritual Health Team was formed in early 2005 to carry out the NCD process within St. Bart and re-formed in 2006 to continue the NCD process.

 Step 2 - Diagnose - Diagnose the health of our church.  This step began when 30 members took the survey in early 2006, followed by an in-depth analysis of your Minimum Factor, including conducting focus group meetings (first one held at St. Bart on May 7, 2006) to determine areas of concern and praise within our Minimum Factor.  It concludes with the Spiritual Health Team identifying 3 - 5 key issues to address.

 Step 3 - Plan - The Spiritual Health Team will address our Minimum Factor.  In this step the Spiritual Health Team will develop a strategic plan to address the 3 - 5 key issues identified in Step 2.

 Step 4 - Implement - Implement the strategic plan developed in Step 3.  Staying focused on carrying out the plan and overcoming obstacles along the way will be the task of the Spiritual Health Team.

 Step 5 - Evaluate - Evaluate the process we used and the results of our effort, including determining the increased health in your Minimum Factor.  Then plan to re-take the survey to see if the Minimum Factor increased and other Quality Characteristics did not drop.

 * Currently we are in the latter part of Step 4 of the NCD Process here at St. Bart's. Following is a Progress Statement from the NCD Spiritual Health Team:

UPDATE ON NCD PROGRESS IN 2006

 As the Winter season approaches, we are about halfway through our second year of Natural Church Development here at St. Bart.  As you know, the focus of our efforts has been passionate spirituality.  A few months ago, we set 16 new goals designed to grow our spirituality, and we are now well into the process of implementing those goals. 

• Pastor presented an inspiring sermon series on passionate spirituality in July

• We introduced the new Saturday morning “Bible Basics” group, and it has become a popular weekend event

• We developed an exciting new curriculum for Adult Education and added a bi-weekly class on Sunday evenings

• We introduced a new format for our small groups that has created a deeper spirituality through faith sharing

• We gave a binder to each member full of information about the small groups and ministries here at St. Bart. The binders are a great  resource as we look for ways to express our growing spirituality

• We developed some creative new themes for our monthly Fellowship Nights, now held on Friday evenings, and we’ve had some great times together

• We held an informative time management seminar in September, followed by an amazing prayer retreat in October

• And finally, our new monthly “Praise Reports” given during Sunday service have given us all a new opportunity to share God’s presence in our lives

 A lot has been happening here at St. Bart, and a lot is yet to happen!

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