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Natural Church Development is no model, and
it's more than a tool. It's more like a journey. A journey with God that
allows you to see life unfold in your ministry. Read how this journey
began to put this Australian church planter's "world" upside down.
Thankfully, my capacity to seed and grow a
community of Christian faith is a little more developed than my capacity
to seed and grow a plant. People who know me will laugh with me (I think
they’re laughing with me?!) as I recount the occasions where I have
successfully killed both indoor and outdoor plants. (How was I to know the
difference between the growth needs of indoor and outdoor plants? I prefer
to view those dead plants as the ultimate expression of what it is to be a
dried flower.) Or the occasions where I have reduced to a quivering mass
of coloured plastic (with which my kids love to play) a number of
artificial plants once welcoming guests into our home.
Perhaps more accurately, my desire to grow
the church is significantly stronger than my desire to grow a plant,
thereby informing my allocation of resources of energy, time and money to
kingdom building activities. However, as I have discovered, life
principles subsist irrespective of where we see God expressing his
creative genius (plant or church). The assimilation of the "naturally
developing church" paradigm has altered the trajectory of the church
planting model we (the planting team and I) were seeking to implement.
We have enjoyed some wonderful challenges
(oft used euphemistic term for mistakes) and points of celebration –
kingdom victories! It became clear after slogging away for around 18
months that adopting other well known models of "doing" (planting,
growing, reproducing) church was unsustainable and, without significant
energy consuming contextualisation, unhelpful. Like I discovered in my
truncated sojourn as a gardener, what grows well outside does not
necessarily mean healthy growth inside.
Discovering NCD about that time caused me to
partially rethink (although I had deceived myself into believing I had
completely rethought) the way forward. In reality, we were treating NCD as
another model, perhaps a helpful tool. Thus, we dabbled in applying some
of the NCD principles (minimum factor, biotic principles, etc) with
varying degrees of success. It was no wonder the health of our small
church declined, as I was not fully applying myself to create an
environment conducive for the development of church health. (Plastic
plants will not withstand an environment of post 40 degrees Celsius!)
Around mid 2002 we started to get serious
with applying all our energies to remove growth inhibiting barriers to
create an environment where we can best partner with God to bring about
personal, small group and corporate transformation. Identifying the most
significant barriers to church health, with the assistance of
Profile Plus, continues to powerfully
impact the health of our community of faith. After 7 profiles we have seen
multi-faceted evidence of the manifestation of God throughout various
expressions of our church.
Like my understanding of how to best grow
healthy plants, the church planting journey has changed dramatically from
the way it begun. But that’s okay. We are not there yet, but the NCD
journey to life has begun.
Liam Glover has been
involved in urban mission in Australia since becoming a Christ follower,
and for the past six years has been planting a church in Brisbane,
Queensland. He is presently completing his Masters in Divinity and is a
director and chairman of the board of Journey to Life Limited, a
not-for-profit company established to assist organisations committed to
kingdom expansion by encouraging the holistic engagement of the principles
of Natural Church Development through training seminars, conferences,
networking opportunities, coaching, mentoring and the establishment and
maintenance of a web based resource network. To discuss Liam’s journey
further, contact
www.journeytolife.org or
liam@journeytolife.org. |
