Natural Church Development
Have you ever wondered why some churches grow and others decline when they are located in the same general area and minister to the same general population? What is it that makes a church healthy?
Christian A. Schwartz, a church developer from Germany, has done extensive research on the guiding and transferable principles that make churches healthy. A healthy church leads to a growing church.
Schwartz studied more than 1,000 churches in 32 countries on six continents and has come up with a refreshing and practical approach to church health and growth. His book, entitled Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches is available through ChurchSmart Resources (1-800-253-4276). Schwartz concludes that if the eight essential qualities are present in a congregation, growth will happen all by itself. It will naturally flow out of the essential qualities present. If you click on the underlined quality characteristic, you will be linked to a resource that helps address it.
Each one of the following characteristics has a corresponding "Yahoo Group" page where churches and individuals can post comments and upload files related to ways in which they are addressing the issues that have made it their minimum factor. The eight qualities are (numbers in parentheses refer to page number in the book):
- Empowering leadership: Leaders of healthy and growing churches focus their attention on empowering laity for ministry. They don’t use laity merely to serve as “helpers” for their own goals, but rather “invert the pyramid of authority so that the leader assists Christians to attain the spiritual potential God has for them (p. 22).”
- Gift-oriented ministry: Church leadership is to help members identify their gifts and put them to use in ministry.
- Passionate spirituality: It matters not whether your church is more contemporary or more traditional, whether more charismatic or noncharismatic, theologically liberal or conservative. What makes a difference is whether or not the people of the church are on fire with their faith.
- Functional structures: The key here is to develop an organizational system that multiplies the ministry of the church. “Leaders are not simply to lead, but also to develop other leaders (28).”
- Inspiring Worship Services: It matters not that you attempt to reach “seekers” or that your worship is liturgical or free, or that language used is “churchy” or “secular” – what matters is whether the worship service is inspiring. “When worship is inspiring, it draws people to the service ‘all by itself’ (31).”
- Holistic Small Groups: Growing churches have small groups that apply bible passages to daily life and where members are free to share issues and questions that are immediate personal concerns. In holistic groups, Christians learn to serve others.
- Need-oriented evangelism: it is not true that “every Christian is an evangelist.” “Evangelists are only those to whom God has given the corresponding spiritual gift (34)” (which is about 10% of Christians). The key here is to identify those 10% in your congregation and direct them to ministry.
- Loving Relationships: How often do the members of your church invite one another to their homes? How much laughter is there in your church? These are just two ‘love quotients’ that lead to growth.
The office of Congregational Development of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference wants to work with your church to help bring these eight essential qualities to life. We can help you through the process of using Natural Church Development. The good news for our conference is that resource material on Natural Church Development is available in English, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, French and other languages.
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