Petr Činčala

"We help the pastor find a good coach."

NCD in Sweden goes back to the year 2000 when a national NCD ministry was established by a Swedish denomination. Today NCD is being utilized by all denominations. eNCDine talked to Klas Eriksson and Tomas Arvidson representing the NCD National Partner in Sweden. Read more on the characteristics of this national ministry and how local churches benefit from NCD.

eNCDine: How was the NCD ministry in your country started?

NCD Sweden: Many denominations in Sweden started in the middle of the 90s to develop programs for church development. At the end of the 90s the Baptist Union started to work with coaches and was looking for good tools. In 1999 one of our coaches visited Great Britain and brought back home a copy of the NCD book. Directly after reading the book we adopted the 8 quality characteristics in our program, and in 2000 we developed a national norm and became NCD National Partner. From the beginning it has been an ecumenical process in Sweden. The national norm was created from churches of all denominations. Today the Baptist Union is still the national partner but the work is led by an ecumenical group.

eNCDine: How does NCD work in your country currently?

NCD Sweden: The work is going well and growing slowly in all denominations. So far about 250 churches and about 300 profiles have been completed.

eNCDine: In your opinion, what are the key ingredients of making NCD work in churches?

NCD Sweden: There are many reasons, perhaps the most important are:

• the holistic and biotic way to look at church development,

• to work in a long-term process with a coach, and

• the focus on principles and quality instead of models and quantity.

eNCDine: Do you train coaches and pastors? How?

NCD Sweden: On a national base the coaches are trained on a basic level with a one day seminar and at least one visit to an NCD church with an experienced coach. The national partner invites all coaches to an annual two-day training. The responsibility for coach training and the training of pastors is delegated to every denomination. All coaches are contracted and must take part in yearly training courses.

In the Baptist Union (together with the Methodist church) we have two additional annual seminars for our coaches. We also have annual training for pastors in NCD churches and once a year a seminar for the local NCD teams, both led by all our coaches together.

eNCDine: How do Swedish pastors benefit from your full time NCD ministry? What challenges do you face?

NCD Sweden: The greatest benefit is that we help the pastor find a good coach. You cannot do an NCD Survey without a coach in Sweden! We also invite them to annual seminars, some together with the NCD team from their churches. We also provide NCD resources. Our main challenges are:

• to avoid a cold start

• to keep the process going long-term (with several profiles)

• to help the churches train a healthy and functional NCD team

eNCDine: Are you going to implement anything new based on what you learned during the NCD World Summit back in October 2004?

NCD Sweden: We were very inspired and encouraged because we felt that NCD in Sweden is on the right track. We did not find anything dramatically new, but there were interesting tools from many countries that we probably will use in the future. The Nordic/Baltic cooperation has been developed and deepened during the conference.

Petr Činčala (PhD) lives in the Czech Republic and works as Research Manager for NCD International