Helping a whole congregation to discover and harness their collective God-given energy is a profoundly powerful experience. And with the help of the Communal Test, it is also a remarkably simple and inexpensive exercise.
Proverbs 27:12 (NIV)
12 The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
Improving the health of a church requires that leaders be prudent.
If I were allowed to select only one NCD principle and declare it my "favorite principle” (though I told you that we should never do that), I definitely would choose this one: the growth force of energy transformation. The power behind this principle is so dramatic that I can only assign it to the fact that God himself has designed it in his wisdom...
A member of my congregation sent me this picture of the USS New York. "Twenty-four tons of the steel used in its construction came from the rubble of the World Trade Center, with seven tons melted down and cast to form the ship's stem bar." - part of the ship's bow. The construction workers reportedly treated it with "reverence usually accorded to religious relics - touching it as they walked by." The ships motto is "Never Forget!" Whilst one may question the whole war on terrorism, I found it a striking example of energy transference.