What if, rather than just sharing personal opinions, we could hear from more than 15 000 Salvationists in over 20 countries about the health of local corps ministry? What if we could then test those perspectives against a global Christianity database covering more than 70 countries and over 100 diverse denominations? Would that be valuable information?
Well, this is the first of a series of articles presenting some of the findings of exactly that kind of research. For more than a decade, the Natural Church Development process has been operating in corps around the world.
The greatest strength of The Salvation Army identified through the NCD process is that of Need-oriented Evangelism. This Quality Characteristic almost invariably shows up in the upper half of the survey result for any specific corps, and often scores highest. That should come as no surprise to us. After all, we are The Salvation Army. Whatever else we do, we almost always default to the Salvation Story. It is the reason we exist. It is the dominant theme of an Officer’s Covenant. We have slogans: ‘With Heart to God and Hand to Man.’ Or: ‘Where there’s a need, there’s The Salvation Army.’ As a movement we are continually looking for ways to meet peoples’ needs and thereby connect with the unsaved.
Many churches, and whole denominations involved in the NCD process globally, envy the strength we have in this area and spend a lot of time and money trying to emulate it. What comes so naturally to so many of our corps is anything but natural for so many church congregations. Dr Billy Graham once commented that The Salvation Army ‘is the best evangelistic movement that he knows of.’
It is no wonder that in many corps beginning the Natural Church Development journey, Need-oriented Evangelism frequently appears at the top of the results. Some – not all – of those things we do well, and the survey measures, that assist our efforts to meet the needs of people are as follows:
- we help people in need (food, clothing, education, counsel, etc.);
- we encourage new Christians to get involved in evangelism immediately by bringing friends and family to Jesus – God has saved them because He wants to save others;
- the activities of our corps are seen by responsible members as relevant to their own friends and family who do not know Christ;
- we do spend time in prayer for those same friends, colleagues and relatives, that they will come to faith;
- we do spend time deepening relationships with those people.
These themes, which have a direct relationship to the evangelistic heart, plans and activity of any church, consistently rate well in surveys returned by Salvation Army corps.
The massive international database of NCD allows us to project the likely growth of Corps in accordance with the average growth experienced by churches of a certain level of health. Based on these growth projection values and starting with the median sized Corps in the database, we can say that for The Salvation Army, if every Quality Characteristic was the same level of health as Need-oriented Evangelism, we could expect growth within the average Corps as shown by the top line in the diagram below. On the other hand, the lowest line indicates the expected growth based on our least developed NCD Quality Characteristic. The line in the middle then indicates just how much our least healthy area is pulling down our growth potential.
Looking from another perspective, the next diagram shows what could happen if we did take seriously the need to improve the health of every quality characteristic and therefore improve the overall level. The solid line again indicates our average projected growth rate. However the dotted lines above that show the kind of growth that some Salvation Army Corps and many other types of churches experience on average when they seek to address their least developed areas and lift their overall "salvation capacity"... and this difference in healthy growth is only based on a five year time span. Perhaps you can see where it would be heading after ten.
So while Need-oriented Evangelism is very healthy the other Quality Characteristics are at a level that tends to be counterproductive to any ground gained.
Evangelism is just one aspect of making disciples. Those new Christians have a need to be helped (by empowering leaders) to serve God through their own Gift-based Ministry. The new convert needs to find a spirituality that is passionate and worship services that are inspired by the presence of the Spirit of God. Like all people the new convert needs to find Loving Relationships in the corps family; and the search for such relationships can be greatly enhanced by Holistic Small Groups. The structure needs to be effective in fulfilling the purpose of the corps, i.e., disciple making. Just as healthy human beings require all of their vital organs, and those organs must all be functioning normally, so healthy churches (that are effective in winning souls and making disciples) require all eight Quality Characteristics, and at a certain level of health to be effective.
So how do we improve the health of our corps and increase its evangelistic effectiveness and disciple-making ability? If not by taking measures to improve and increase our outreach efforts – which are already relatively healthy – where are we to begin?
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Read the next article in this series.