Coach Webinars

About the webinars

NCD International presents four webinars each year for helping NCD Coaches to improve their skills and knowledge within NCD. These interactive webinars are focused on clarifying NCD best practice as well as improving your understanding and application of the various principles and tools of NCD. The presenters are Christian A. Schwarz, Christoph Schalk, Adam Johnstone, and occasional special guests. See below to register for the next webinar or to watch a previous one.

Earlier Coach Webinars

NCD Coaching: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

29 March 2023

Four different NCD Coaches share their experiences of working with NCD in churches. We asked the practitioners to give us their unique insights about the joyful moments and the more challenging aspects of NCD Coaching—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Gary Diehl (USA):
was first introduced to what a healthy local church looks like through the Natural Church Development survey in 1998. As a lay leader, Gary served as site coordinator for a consultation process at his home church. Three years later he joined the Living Stones Associates team and began consulting with churches out of a growing conviction that many congregations need comprehensive, biblically grounded guidance to become healthy and effective in our rapidly changing world. He was trained and certified with NCD in 2002 and has been recertified by NCD America and NCD International since then. During his 35+ year career in the business world, Gary sharpened his skills in problem solving, leadership dynamics, team development, project management, and strategic planning. He now uses those experiences to coach, guide and equip a broad spectrum of churches and leaders. Gary serves pastors, leaders, teams, local congregations, non-profit boards and multiple denominations across North America from his home in Ohio. He also serves as a lead consultant and an NCD specialist with the Living Stones Associates LLC consulting team (www.living-stones.com ). He can be reached at [email protected].

Kjetil Sigerseth (Norway):
has been the national leder of NCD Norway since 2015 (NaMu Norge, https://namunorge.no). He is 50 years old and lives together with his wife Liv-Kari in the small town of Molde on the west coast of Norway. Together they have three children on their way out of the nest. Kjetil has university degrees in economics, management and pedagogy (Cand.ed.), the subject of his main thesis was The Learning Congregation. He has worked in the church context all his working life, longest connected to The Church of Norway. Since 2020 Kjetil also has been involved with Fresh Expressions of Church in Norway (Church in new ways) connected to The Christian Council of Norway (https://norgeskristnerad.no/english). The last years he has also been engaged in building up Teleios Life Norway (connected to Equipping Ministries, https://www.equippingministries.org).

Gillian Knight (Australia):
My background is in Human Resources and have worked in that area for almost 20 years. In 2008 I was given the role of NCD Administrator for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North New South Wales Australia. Over the past 5 years my experience has extended to other SDA churches in Australia (South New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia) as well as assisting SDA churches in Fiji. I am very passionate about my role with NCD and love working with the pastors and leadership to build healthy, growing churches across Australia and Fiji.

Andy Stevens (USA):
has been in full time ministry since 1995, currently serving as the Senior Pastor at the Milford Church of God in Milford DE since 2007. He began unofficially serving as a leadership coach in 1999 and in 2017 officially created "Andy Is My Coach" LLC to serve churches, pastors and business leaders. Andy has been a certified NCD Coach since 2017 and has served around a dozen churches of various sizes, ethnicities, and demographics via the NCD process. In March, Andy gained coaching and speaking certification with the John Maxwell Team. Andy loves to introduce himself as “An Ambassador of Hope.”

Download Kjetil's presentation in PowerPoint format.

What new perspectives does the biblical energy paradigm open up for NCD coaches?
Brand-new experiences with ESP Training

7 December 2022

Within the NCD Coaching Community, Christian has spoken repeatedly about the biblical energy paradigm and its practical relevance for releasing previously unnoticed potentials. Now he goes a decisive step forward: What new perspectives does the energy paradigm open up for coaching targeted at transformation of individual lives and whole organizations? During this webinar, Christian conducts some interviews with leaders who have completed the Energy Synchronization Process (ESP) in the first half of this year and who will share about their experiences.

Download the presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

NCD Quality Characteristics: Matters of Life and Death

28 September 2022

The Quality Characteristics and other principles presented within NCD are often received as “good ideas” or “helpful suggestions” for growing a healthy church or growing healthy people. While, of course, universal principles can be seen as “good” and “helpful”, the point about such principles is missed if it is not clearly understood that there are significant consequences both if you align with those principles or if you choose to defy them—consequences that continuously play out whether we like it or not, and, whether we know it or not.

In this webinar, Adam Johnstone unpacks how an “every moment” understanding of universal principles can heighten engagement with NCD, releasing more life in the everyday.

Download the presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

Practical Applications of Restorative Practices

1 June 2022

Building on the Restorative Practice (RP) webinar in 2021, Bill will review the restorative relational principles and then move on to describe three real-world applications: Listening Circles; Relational Culture work; and Restorative Conflict Facilitation. These three contexts will be lined up with some of the questions from the NCD Church Survey. The main objective is to see where RP might assist in dealing with low scores, especially in Effective Structures, Loving Relationships and Holistic Small Groups.

Bill Bickle is NCD’s National Partner in Canada and has a background in Organizational Behaviour, Banking, Marketing and Strategic Planning. He runs a small organizational health consulting practice, primarily to churches and other faith-based organizations. He guides churches to the most important conversations with NCD resources and tools, and helps them have the conversation if they’re deeply conflicted by using Restorative Practices (RP). RP arose out of the Restorative Justice field and has been used extensively in the justice system, and in schools. Bill is on the Steering Group of FaithCARE, a unique organization using and training RP principles and tools to church communities and leadership teams. He is a licensed facilitator and trainer through the International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP).

Download the presentation in PowerPoint format and download the Listening Circle Script in Microsoft Word format.

Using NCD to develop health in an organization

26 February 2022

Ron Hamilton from the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (USA) explains how the use of NCD influenced the development of the health of their denomination.

Download the presentation in PowerPoint or PDF format.

The lightness of becoming – How transformation happens “all by itself”

10 November 2021

The biblical energy paradigm introduced in Christian’s three-volume work “God’s Energy," whose final volume has just been released, enables previously unprecedented ways of approaching church development, change processes, and spiritual growth. By tapping the deepest roots of what NCD has called the “all by itself” principle, and by providing completely new ways of intervention when working with individuals and groups, it redefines what “all by itself” growth is all about. In this webinar, Christian introduces a step-by-step process that doesn’t only make people intellectually familiar with these dynamics, but helps them get infused by them both in their conscious and unconscious minds. This results in the development of a dramatically sharpened intuition of what will bear most fruit in any given situation—a phenomenon that people unfamiliar with the underlying biblical dynamics may perceive as a “sixth sense.”

Download the presentation in PowerPoint or PDF format.

Wholeness in the Everyday - raising need-oriented evangelism to the ultimate level

18 August 2021

What would happen if the people surrounding your church communities came to believe the good news that Jesus is the empowering King of the universe? What would you see? What would you hear? What would you taste or smell? What would you feel? Going a step back, what would happen if the people in your congregations fully lived out that good news in everyday life? In other words, what would happen if the powerful and practical outworking of the evangel—the good news—was brought to bear on every identifiable need within and beyond those churches. That is fulfilment of need-oriented evangelism.

In this webinar, Adam Johnstone and his wife Melinda will present the Wholeness project and how it can help any church raise need-oriented evangelism to the ultimate level. They will also provide an update on the exciting developments in the Inspiration project introduced in Adam’s last webinar.

Download the presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

What happens when you enter the room? — Inspiration in the everyday

17 February 2021

It is a long time since Jesus spoke to the woman at the well telling her a day was coming when people would not just worship on a particular mountain or in the temple. But how much progress has been made in the mind of Christians in terms of the dis-location of inspiring worship? Especially in times when lockdowns and restrictions prevent people gathering for worship in their usual contexts, we as NCD coaches must help them capture Jesus’ vision of a 24x7 life of worship.

The Inspiration Test, support team, and tools (to be launched early 2021) are being developed for exactly this purpose. Its key question is, “What happens when you enter the room?” Do those in the room experience the breath of God entering their lives through you, or do you tend to drain the life out of them with your somewhat toxic, misdirected influence? This question is relevant to every room you enter with others in regular daily life or even during a COVID lockdown, and it is exponentially more important to consider when a whole group of people enter the room of a local church worship gathering. The preacher and worship leader know only too well that those who enter the worship room are more than capable of lifting each other into the realm of God or pulling each other down to a darker place. A church’s inspiring worship service result shows exactly which of those two directions is winning overall.

But the battle for a more inspired world cannot be won in the 90 minutes of a gathered or online worship service. The work of growing more inspired and inspiring worshippers must be lived out in the many other waking hours of the week. As people practice breathing God’s breath into every room they enter, gathered worship becomes more inspiring ... all by itself.

Download the presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

Using NCD with Churches in Crisis

11 November 2020

John Kimball from the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (USA) explains how they use the NCD Tools in their Turning Point Initiative, a process that intervenes when a local church finds they cannot continue without outside help. John is Director of Church Development for the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (www.ccccusa.com), Lead Pastor of Palmwood Church of Oviedo FL (www.palmwoodchurch.com), and Coach/Trainer for the Praxis Center for Church Development (www.praxiscenter.org).

Download John's presentation in PowerPoint format or download the TurningPoint Covenant Template or Church Development Covenant referred to in his presentation.

Transformational Coaching Model

12 August 2020

The Transformational Nehemiah Response Coaching Model facilitates the process of coming alongside a person or team to help them discover their preferred future with a plan to move forward. It is principle-based, capturing responses from Nehemiah’s challenge of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem and as described in Nelson and his wife Pam’s book, Nehemiah Response: a coaching model. You'll walk away from this webinar confident about having coaching conversations with the realization of transformation.

Download Nelson's presentation in PDF format.

Strengthening churches now and beyond Covid-19

20 May 2020

Because of the drastic changes in church life due to the Corona virus, countless churches worldwide are looking for orientation. How will the church look like after the crisis? What should be done right now, when public church meetings are strongly restricted? What could happen to prepare leadership teams and whole congregations to face the challenges after the restrictions? This very time, with all the turbulences and insecurities, could become the ideal period for investing in the heads and hearts of the people. Christian demonstrates how, without the need for a single physical meeting, the quality of church life could be strongly increased.

Download Christian's presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

Let's speak honestly about the church

12 February 2020

In a world of fake news and foggy language, NCD Coaches and practitioners have an important role to represent reality as clearly as possible within the church. In this webinar, Adam Johnstone describes how sharpening the way we explain the importance of NCD principles, and address other topics thrown around in the church world, will save many churches from facing the sad consequences that will (and do) most certainly fall upon those who don't take the principles of God's Kingdom seriously. (Sorry for the technical glitches with the slides during the video.)

Download Adam's presentation in Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF format.

Minimum Factor and Resource-orientation: The NCD Solution Cycle

11 December 2019

The Minimum Barrel is a key illustration of the NCD concept. However, it is also one of the major points of misunderstanding. In this webinar, Christoph Schalk explains how to combine the minimum factor strategy with resource orientation.

Download Christoph's presentation in PDF format.

How to use the Empowerment Test as a tool for maximizing your coaching impact

11 September 2019

Christian Schwarz explains how the Empowerment Test can maximize your coaching impact and why the principles behind it are essential if we are to address topics like abuse, freedom, maturity, and responsibility.

Learn more about the Empowerment Test.

Download Christian's presentation in Keynote or PDF format.

Making Healthier Church Decisions Every Day — Training leaders to be natural church developers

5 June 2019

Adam Johnstone introduces the NCD Stewardship Test, a tool for training church leaders to make the kind of decisions in the everyday that lead to better NCD results and a healthier, more fruitful church. The Stewardship Test brings to life in a personalized, practical way the growth forces found when we 'learn from the lilies of the field'.

Learn more about the Stewardship Test.

Download Adam's presentation in Keynote or PDF format.

NCD Research

20 March 2019

Petr Cincala of NCD America presents recent research findings from the NCD database.

Download the Keynote or PowerPoint presentation file from Petr's webinar.

Download Petr's research paper Servant Leadership and Church Health and Growth.

How to Handle the Global Participation Shift

30 January 2019

Christian A. Schwarz presents new research findings on a global shift in participation patterns within churches, and suggests three practical conclusions.

Download the Keynote or PowerPoint presentation file from Christian's webinar.

Mission and NCD. Friends or foes?

19 September 2018

Does engaging with NCD affect the missionality of a local church and if so, in a positive or negative sense? Henrik Andersen presents answers to these questions based on a research project conducted in the UK.

Download the PowerPoint presentation or Henrik's paper.

2 New Tools

23 May 2018

Adam Johnstone of NCD International presents the new online NCD Spiritual Style Test and the importance of this tool package for addressing the most common minimum factor of churches worldwide, Passionate Spirituality. Adam also demonstrates a new approach for addressing the twin challenges of "opening the front door" and "closing the back door" of church community and how to present these highly motivating themes through a church's NCD Church Survey results.

Download the presentation file from this webinar.

Attitude Goals in a Change Process

28 March 2018

Download the PowerPoint file and images used in this webinar.

Empowerment 3.0

18 September 2017

Christianity worldwide has entered a new phase that demands new ways of empowering leaders. At the center of Empowerment 3.0 is the rediscovery of the New Testament concept of God's energy, a concept that has been completely ignored by the Western stream of Christianity. The webinar shows what this concept is all about, and how it can move your coaching ministry to a new level of effectiveness.

Download a PDF version of the slides from this webinar.

The 3 Spheres of Natural Church Development

6 March 2017

Explore The 3 Spheres of Natural Church Development and how they form a roadmap to accelerated progress on a church's NCD journey. Also, find out how such an understanding significantly reinterprets much of the present day discussion around "missional church".

Download a PDF version of the slides from this webinar.

NCD Coach Community Kick-off Webinar

6 February 2017

NCD America and NCD International welcome you to our kick-off webinar. We will introduce to you the all new NCD Coach Community and the new 3 level Coach Certification process.