Since The 3 Colors of Community is all about discovering and harnessing the powerful dynamics that make up life together, studying the book as a group is a significant experience.
The free downloadable Reading and Discussion Guides provide an easy to follow 3 week plan. Even if some of your group members are not keen readers, they can still participate if having only completed the Communal Test and gained an overview of the topic.
The purpose of this series is to offer some basic “entry points” for beginning to explore your Minimum Factor graph.
This post is for those whose Minimum Factor is Holistic Small Groups.
Two initial points need to be made.
Currently 99 UK corps (churches) within The Salvation Army are actively engaging with NCD. 54 of these are part of the ‘Transforming Churches Process’ and many of them are slowly discovering that God is working through this new approach to ministry. What follows is a selection of comments from 8 of these corps, and all are being both challenged and inspired by NCD.
This is the second of a series of articles about NCD in The Salvation Army. Read the first article in the series.
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It has been suggested that we should start something with the end in mind. You may recall the previous article identifying and celebrating something that is characteristic of The Salvation Army: Need-oriented Evangelism - The ability to acutely identify the needs of suffering humanity and respond accordingly. What a blessing!
If there is a new Christian in your church, ask how they are going and how you might help meet any needs they have.
Ask anyone you come across in your church, who seems to have some longer-term tension with another person, to tell you one or more positive things about that person, then encourage them to communicate those to the other person in some way.
Make eye contact and shake hands or greet someone from your church with whom you have had even the slightest relational tension and ask how they are going generally or with one of their specific areas of interest.
Share with your congregation or team about the most recent recreation time you enjoyed and why you found it renewing.
Allow more time than usual in an upcoming personal or group meeting when you will visibly put aside the agenda, your diary, your phone and all other distractions and purely focus your interest and attention on the person with whom you are meeting, as a person.
Growing churches have developed a system of small groups where individual believers can find intimate community, practical help, and intense spiritual interaction. In these groups, people not only discuss biblical texts and listen to their leader's interesting explanations, but they apply biblical insights to the questions the participants have about everyday life issues...NCD tells us that Small Groups - healthy ones - are the most crucial factor in the quality of churches. But how to keep them these effective?
I've been wondering whether the name "group" doesn't convey a hidden, counter-productive message that undercuts "holistic". Reading Roland Allen recently ("The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Reasons that Hinder it") has crystallised this issue for me.
Empowering Leadership (EL) and Need-Oriented Evangelism (NOE) are the two Qaulity Characteristics (QCs) which I often lack to have enthusiasm for especially when it comes to me personally contributing something in these areas for the positive growth of my Church. I don't have leadership and evangelism in my "gift mix”, and together with a lack of NCD knowledge, it was little wonder that a while back I ended up concluding there was no point to even thinking about them. Thankfully, since then, God has shown me ways in which I can contribute to these QCs without "chea
Here are some 'Quality Characteristic Hand' photos I took that made up part of a thematic photo panel in the foyer of our church. At the bottom is a mock up of the photo panel itself.
You can click the photos to download the originals if you like.
Hope it is useful or prompts your own ideas.
