Good question Tim
Good question from Tim Jeffries recently about the application of Natural Church Development to a “missional” model of church.
I regard Natural Church Development as the best paradigm and tool around for understanding and assessing church health. Good question about its application to “missional” models of church. NCD assumes “inspiring worship services” are on of the eight essential health characteristics. I’m assuming you’re asking, What happens if your model of church rejects the need for any form of worhsip service?
A few thoughts:
1. Work on the other 7 characteristics and see what happens. I’m assuming the other health indicators like “loving relationships”, “passionate spirituality” and “felt need evangelism” are compatible with a missional model of church. You could experiment with functional equivalents to “inspiring worship services” within your ministry model framework and values.
2. I think there’s a lot of mileage in getting your brain around the NCD “biotics” and a applying them your model of missional church. Not an easy task, but worth the effort. My guess is that Neil Cole has gone down this track either intentionally or instinctively.
3. If you’re going down the missional track make sure you are as rigorous in your critique of your own performance as you are in your critique of the models you reject. Whenever there’s a paradigm shift going on you’ll find a lot of fluff that won’t last and a few rare diamonds that point us to the future. Does your model of missional church yield health and healthy outcomes?
Finally, NCD is a great tool that reminds us that as we play around with our models of church, there are some bread and butter basics that every healthy church needs to get right—Loving one another, surrendering to God’s loving rule, multiplying life changing groups, adapting our methods, connecting meaningfully with lost people, mobilizing for ministry, leadership that empowers, and worship that inspires.
Hope this helps. I’ll get in touch with my mates at NCD Australia and see if they have anything to add.
