Salvation Army

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 Gift-based Ministry.

Two initial points need to be made.

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.

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 Empowering Leadership.

Two initial points need to be made.

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 Loving Relationships.

Two initial points need to be made.

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 Passionate Spirituality.

Two initial points need to be made.

Since this site is about Natural Church Development in The Salvation Army a personal testimony must be in place:

I will never forget the feeling I had after reading my very first book about NCD. I was a corps officer and we had seen some growth in the corps, but it was hard work.

Then, suddenly, it was like a heavy weight fell from my shoulders as I realised, it was not my, but God’s job to grow the church. Not only that, but God had already placed the potential for growth in the church – all we had to do was to release it –get out of the way.

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.

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 Effective Structures.

Two initial points need to be made.

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!

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 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 Need-oriented Evangelism.

Two initial points need to be made.

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 Inspiring Worship Service.

Two initial points need to be made.

First, all the questions relate to the degree to which the worship service is inspiring. The higher a question’s result, the greater its contribution to the service being inspiring.

I am convinced that a fair percentage of male clergy treat the health of their church the same way as they treat their own health. The NCD process has made this link very apparent. I wrote the following allegory for an NCD National Conference back in 2004. Not surprisingly things haven’t much changed. Nor, as experience has taught me, have the issues been much different in places outside Australia. It goes like this. (The Australian male is known colloquially as the “Aussie bloke”.)

As a child I spent hundreds of hours playing with Lego. Out of my large suitcase of mixed blocks and colours came houses, tractors, people and various unidentifiable but lovingly crafted clumps of creativity.

Temporary Suspension of Gravity!

Such news would be plastered across headlines of newspapers world wide. Regular broadcasting would be interrupted to capture the effect of such amazing news. The very principle of gravity, thought to be always and continuously applying, suddenly and inexplicably suspended. A story just waiting to be understood, relayed and interpreted by all and sundry.

My son is doing an assignment about the appointment process and changes of officers. He was wondering if I could offer him thoughts on how NCD and Corps profiles could help TSA find new leaders for a corps when Officers are moved on?

I offered the following suggestions:

NCD could help in the appointment process in several ways (and probably more ways than I am aware of):

Perhaps some of the following paraphrases expressed by pastors approaching NCD may resonate with you:

"I haven't thought about my expectations. NCD has some good ideas in it and I'm going to give it a go."