1.

You are a leader of a healthy growing church. There are leaders from other churches coming and asking you various questions: "What’s your secret? What can we learn from you? What contributes to your success?" Now, you know your secret (at least you think you know) and you are quite happy to share. But you want to assure yourself that your understanding is not just an educated guess but is justified by research so that you can pass along principles that are truly transferable.

Example: There were two clusters of churches that crossed denominational lines. One cluster significantly differed having higher scores. The leaders of the healthier churches wanted to have a better understanding of the results. Research showed that the healthier group was largely composed of charismatic, younger churches, while the other was composed of more traditional ones. The healthier churches were more open to change, connected through holistic small groups, and more effective in utilizing spiritual gifts for ministry.

2.

You are a pastor and/or coach and you would like to locate good resources to improve your minimum factor. Can you learn something from other churches to prevent possible failures that others have already experienced while improving the same area? What kind of church excels and could serve as a good role model in your area of weakness?

Example: A large church had a very high score on 7 of the 8 qualities with the exception of gift-oriented ministry. The minimum score was so low that the pastor and his team asked for a custom analysis. That analysis led to the following finding: All churches from this branch (worldwide) have high scores (especially on loving relationships) but very low scores on gift-oriented ministry. This finding led to a serious rethinking of their church life in this area as a denomination.

3.

You are a denominational executive and have a vision for healthy, growing churches. You have a cluster of churches that have obtained NCD profiles, and have found that very few of them have a score indicating good health. You may wonder what exactly are the barriers to health in our churches? Is there a common denominator blocking growth? Is there an area that needs special attention and should more resources be developed that are specific to your theological heritage?

Example: I was asked to do research for a particular denomination in one country. When I put all the data together and did a custom analysis, I discovered that for this given denomination there were two indicators that significantly improved the score of all eight qualities and thus the health of the churches.

4.

You have been an NCD coach for a while working with some churches in your denomination and you have done a good job. For that matter, your denominational leaders have asked you to expand your ministry. However, it is evident that they are not fully convinced of how other churches could benefit and they are significantly cutting your budget. You need to convince them. One way to do that is to document through research how the churches applying NCD principles are growing in health and quality and have a greater growth potential. 

Example: One coach, and sub-partner, was in a similar situation and he asked for customized research, exploring the kind of change and growth that is being experienced in the churches that are involved in the NCD process and have done two or more profiles. He was interested in knowing whether in churches that are growing in health there was a slight chance of increased commitment of church members, and whether healthier churches are generating more tithes that help others to be reached, etc.

5.

You are a person who lives in a country where NCD is not yet established, but you see how the churches in your country could benefit from NCD. Maybe you are considering the position of National NCD Partner. You’ve heard some of the basic facts about NCD that are available in books published by Christian Schwarz or Christoph Schalk, but given your cultural or religious context you are interested in some other more specific areas and/or questions and you know that having answers for those questions would make your promotion of NCD much easier and more effective. You may ask for an update of the data presented in the NCD books. Does the most recent data support Schwarz’s hypotheses?

Example: One missionary was excited about church planting and multiplication. He wondered how this related to the health of the churches, and so he asked for customized research to see the difference between mother churches and childless churches. Research in the NCD database revealed that there is a big difference!

6.

As a student and/or researcher you are expanding your knowledge in one of the areas of church ministry. You are trying to gather all the theoretical materials in this given area. The NCD questionnaire has questions that are relevant to your research and so you ask for a customized NCD analysis to get answers for specific questions. For example, your focus is on the influence of the pastor’s leadership style on church growth and the health of churches in general.

If you want us to do some customized research for you, please follow these steps:

• Send a description of what you are looking for to office@ncdnet.org.

• We will then check if our data offers answers to your questions.

• If it does, we will roughly determine how much time is needed to run the appropriate statistics, and will give you an estimate of how much the project would cost.

• Once you have agreed to cover the costs, we will begin the research, and usually within a few days you will receive a report with the results.