Natural Church Development
I just read the 9Marks review of Christian Schwarz’s “Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches“, and if you’ve been part of a church who has gone through the NCD surveys like I have, then I highly suggest this you read this short review of the book. The reviewer, Greg Gilbert, is an Elder at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, a PhD student in Church History at SBTS, and Director of Research for Southern’s President’s office. I met him personally when I went to visit Third Avenue in September, which was great to put a face behind the publications I’ve read from him.
I have not read much of anything on the Natural Church Development (NCD) model of church growth, and so, it was good to finally read a review from a respectable Christian source. I myself have done the NCD survey and answered that big list of NCD questions when my home church here in Toronto did it. I had never been for it, but at the time, it looked like the least pragmatic church growth model I knew of and also the least poisonous in my opinion at the time. Further, I was also concerned when my home church implemented the Willow Creek “Promiseland” children’s program for its lots of fun but little on Scripture methods. Today, a few years after all the NCD hoopla, now being a Southern Baptist, and very much affirming of the biblical principles of growing a church like the “9 marks”, I am continually concerned with all pragmatic “research-based” church growth methods. Believe you me, I have all the intention of studying more on the Church Growth Movement, but for now, let us see what our friends at 9Marks have concluded. (more…)
