NCD Presentation to St Francis of Assisi Sunday January 17, 2016 Tric Glover Before we start with results, I want to do a brief recap on how we got to this place. Spring of 2015 found our parish at a cross roads. With forty years of debt still looming overhead, and our givings trending down and unable to cover our month to month expenses, the Corporation met with the Bishop. Initial reactions were not ones that made us comfortable. Something needed to change and ideas like selling our building and amalgamating with another parish were being thrown on the table and considered. After much discussion, consultations, question periods, town halls, soul searching and prayer we embarked on a financial campaign in June to level set the playing field and see if we could truly carry our monthly expenses and work toward paying down debt. The results were amazing. For the first time I can remember we had around an 80% return rate on the pledge cards. Some were able to increase their pledge others simply cemented their commitment. We even received several one-time gifts. The Bishop could not deny the results the people of St Francis had spoken. We wanted to no needed to be here. Test # 1 passed. Before moving forward with any other planning or discussions about what our future in this building or this community looked like the Bishop requested we engage in a program called Natural Church Development. It is a program used globally that basically uses accumulated data from around the world and tens of thousands of surveys to effectively determine your church s health. We were given a Diocesan facilitator and then a cross section of people representing all segments of our parish took a small survey. The results were run through the NCD program and shared with the core team last month. Guess what? Test # 2 passed with flying colours the results showed that St Francis was a healthy church. As a matter of fact, our facilitator said that we were at a higher result of health than most churches taking their first survey. He was blown away. So the news I am going to share here today is GOOD NEWS. Page 1 of 8
So let s start with a word from our sponsor today s presentation is brought to you by the book of Mark Chapter 4 verse 26 29: He also said, This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. The NCD program has many organic and colour related themes. All churches are interested in growth, but not many understand the concept of all by itself: growth. All by itself growth is organic it takes time. We cannot expect to sow and harvest in the same day. This process of Natural Church Development is iterative. Survey, plan, action, survey, plan, action etc. So what does the survey measure? The program has been used in over 71 countries with all types of churches (not just Christian). Because there is a large segment of Anglican specific data and North American/Canadian specific data our results were measured against our specific segment. NCD says that all churches exhibit 8 characteristics Page 2 of 8
Leadership, ministry, spirituality, structures, worship services, small groups, evangelism and relationships. A church is healthy when you add the adjectives EMPOWERING Leadership, GIFT BASED ministry, PASSIONATE spirituality, EFFECTIVE structures, INSPIRING worship, HOLISTIC small groups, NEED ORIENTED evangelism, LOVING relationships. So we have been measured or evaluated based on these eight quality characteristics. The goal is to be well balanced in all. Churches are no different than the people in them. For example I may be stronger in organizational skills and making presentations than I am in balancing a chequebook or anything requiring fine motor skills. The same is true with our parish as a collective. We will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others. But balance and growth is the key. This is a great illustration to describe the process. The wooden staves making up this bucket represent the 8 characteristics. Notice all the staves are different lengths. When filling this bucket with water (or filling our church with the faithful, and offering all the support and service we want to offer, we can only fill the bucket as full as the shortest stave. Otherwise, water will start spilling out regardless if our highest stave is really really high. The Page 3 of 8
plan is to use our biggest strengths to help us raise our lowest stave. Once we raise that we have room inside the bucket for a little more. We do the survey again in another year and see what our lowest stave is and repeat the process. So here is a graphical representation of the St Francis Results. First, a few things to notice the colours. The eight characteristics lean strongly to how we experience God. Green is God the creator. Red is Jesus Christ. Blue is God the Spirit. The goal is to be on the blue dotted line well balanced in ALL areas (evening all the staves in the bucket). The yellow circle is St Francis. Churches with strong GREEN tendencies are typically reflective taking responsibility for all of God s creation they tend to have a focus on society and social justice Note we are strong in Green areas probably a nod to our patron saint. Churches with strong RED results are typically proactive. The focus is on discipleship and service helping others. The cross is in the centre of all they do. I am not surprised that we have strong RED tendencies to service. We scored highly on Loving Relationships and Gift Based Ministries. Page 4 of 8
Churches with a strong BLUE results have a focus on spiritual power. They are in tune with experiencing their faith and sharing their stories. They have stronger results in Inspiring and relevant worship. You can see our tendencies lean to both the red and green side. But we are still quite strong in the blue sector healthy but, still our weakest area. This slide shows the eight characteristics around the circle and our actual rating in each of the 8. This shows that, as a parish, GIFT BASED MINISTRIES, EFFECTIVE STRUCTURES, LOVING RELATIONSHIPS and EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP come most naturally to us. These speak strongly to our fellowship and service the things lots of us say are so important in our church family proven here. Our weaker areas fall just inside the balance circle but its clear that PASSIONATE SPIRITUALITY comes less naturally to us. Lots will say that this is because we are Anglican and come from a good staid, conservative and orderly history. So how do we use our strengths to raise our lowest stave? Let s look at some of the questions from the survey that fed into Passionate Spirituality. Page 5 of 8
These were questions we scored the lowest on. Participants were asked to mark on a scale how true this statement was for them. I often tell other Christians when I have experienced something from God. Do we? Are there forums for sharing the miracles that we experience in our lives? Do we feel comfortable freely speaking about these types of experiences? Next - I enjoy reading scripture on my own. What format of reading the scriptures might work for you? Taking home the weekly bulletin? Seeing a reflection on our website or Facebook page? Having a list of common scriptures to help in certain situations? Bibles in the church? And another - I experience transforming influences faith has in the different areas of my life (profession, spar time, family) How comfortable are we proclaiming and sharing our faith I don t know about you but I loved the Shout it outs that people did throughout our 40 th year celebration It made me feel closer to these friends in our spiritual journey but not everyone is comfortable standing up and sharing in that way. Does Political correctness stop us from experiencing Jesus Christ fully in our lives and recognizing that? The results prove that we are a loving community with God at our centre. We empower people and believe in our leaders and know that God is working in us. We feel aware and informed. We just don t always share our faith readily. It could be that we don t think about doing it, or are shy or perhaps uncertain about how well we actually DO know Jesus Christ or how important the words of scripture are in our lives. There is more to come by ways of ideas. The challenge of NCD is not to create a concrete action plan of tasks that forces people to create programs or things that steal time from what we are already doing well. It s more like a shift in our thinking, our behaviour. It s sowing the seeds, trusting in God and letting it grow all by itself. Page 6 of 8
So I want to leave you with a recap of our eight characteristics and how they specifically stacked up by the numbers, because we all like the concrete. Numerically, the number attributed to our highest stave is 67.8. That number is in the top 15% of all Canadian churches doing NCD. Our lowest number was 47.1 Passionate Spirituality but this is still a very reasonable score and most answers that related to this characteristic fell above the low end of the healthy range. The difference between our highest and lowest was 20.7. Ideally we want to be really well balanced so looking for a number less than 15. But the majority of churches that do their first cycle have a number over 30 for their difference. Our facilitator was very impressed and stated again that this was a healthy church score. Page 7 of 8
So I leave you with our St Francis NCD slogan for this year. Discovering, experiencing and sharing Jesus Christ Page 8 of 8