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In the international NCD movement there is
an appropriate aversion to models and technocratic approaches. After all,
the NCD principle-oriented approach is proving itself to be far superior
to other alternatives. So, does the Profile Plus detailed analysis
substantially enhance the principle-oriented approach or return us to the
"bad old days" of models and prescriptive answers?
In one form or another this question has
been asked many times since the predecessor versions of Profile Plus were
first used more than 2 years ago. Allow me to make some specific comments
about two common concerns.
1. Isn't it dangerous or technocratic to break the NCD survey down to
the question level?
Whenever this concern has been raised we
have found it helpful to point out that while the Quality Characteristics
are representative of universal principles, the individual questions on
Profile Plus are also in every sense representative of universal
principles - not models or prescriptive ideas. These universal principles
that lay behind the individual questions still require individualisation
in a specific context to give them meaning for any particular church. To
put it simply, the individual church still has to ask the question "why is
the result for this question low?" or as they more often ask "why are the
results for these questions low?" Profile Plus simply helps them to
make sure that the questions they ask are valid within the context of
their minimum factor and overall profile. After all, one major reason for
doing a survey is to help a church gain some objectivity about itself.
2. Will people use it in a biotic way?
Before Profile Plus was released, we had
used its predecessor with over 300 churches in Australia and New Zealand.
At one of the earliest stages of testing, I gave a room of 30 pastors
their individual reports and gave them 20 minutes to go through them
without any instruction or explanation. I wanted to see what would happen
if even the written instructions were not provided. (This was quite a
scary experience because of the number of pastors, some fairly low
results, and the fact that some churches had done 2 surveys with little
progress made between them). I was absolutely delighted by what happened.
Within minutes, all were switching between pages and making connections
between different questions. In other words, they were naturally adopting
an organic approach of seeing that each question was part of a broader
picture of the health of the church. By the end of the 20 minutes, every
pastor had experienced at least one significant revelation based upon a
number of different questions. With the addition of a few instructional
points in the accompanying notes, the pastors had all of their significant
questions answered and were ready and keen to take the results back to
their leadership teams for further discussion.
What became clear that day (and 100's of
times since) is that pastors do not "begin" to engage with biotic thinking
when they "start" the NCD process. Every living person in the world who
has any degree of contact with other living people already uses biotic
thinking to some extent. By putting Profile Plus in pastor's hands we
provide them with more objective information than they can otherwise come
up with for themselves through any other means currently available, and
then they are able to begin applying whatever biotic thinking they already
have - "all by itself". This level of biotic thinking will obviously be
different from pastor to pastor, however it is quite unreasonable to think
that if a pastor has a lower biotic thinking level to start with, that
they will get more out of using just the basic graph of the 8 Quality
Characteristics for their analysis – even with the best coaching
available.
Beyond this, we have consistently found that
Profile Plus is one of the best tools to encourage and teach biotic
thinking. As in the story above, when pastors begin to make connections
between different questions on the report they quickly discover many of
the interdependent links in their church. Also as churches repeat profiles
regularly and these are displayed in Profile Plus, a "moving picture" of
the organic nature of church life begins to emerge very clearly - "We
applied these resources and this result was seen!" Now we have learnt
something significant about the life (bios) of our church and the
important part we play in stimulating greater health!"
One of the specific components of Profile
Plus that promotes biotic thinking is the "Highest 10 and Highest 10
changes" and "Lowest 10 and Lowest 10 changes". On these pages a church
can very easily identify significant relationships between various parts
of church life. Many times a church will quickly and accurately identify 1
or 2 themes out of these pages and these themes then lay the foundation
for their action plans. Thereby allowing momentum to be maintained and NCD
to remain "natural" instead of itself being a giant barrier that causes
leadership to drop everything else for a period of time. This streamlining
advancement has led us in Australia to reform our training around the
concept of "NCD in the Everyday".
Beyond these two more technical points, I
cannot emphasize strongly enough the impact that Profile Plus (and its
lesser quality predecessor) have made on the uptake of NCD, helping
churches remain in the process, progress in results and most importantly
the bedding down of the NCD (biotic) paradigm in Australia. We have
churches now coming back for their 3rd and 4th detailed analysis with
increasing hunger, commitment and understanding of the NCD paradigm.
May I suggest that you put Profile Plus
through rigorous testing as we have in Australia and feed back to us any
consistently occurring short or long-term issues that emerge? From our
experience – in accordance with the heart of a biotic approach – Profile
Plus has been returning significantly increased fruit with significantly
decreased input of time and energy from all concerned. For the sake of NCD
in your part of the world, you must reach your own wise/biotic conclusion.
For a sample of
Profile Plus click here.
Adam Johnstone of NCD Australia is one of the co-developers of
Profile Plus. He is also an overseer on the Empowering Team of Lake
Community Church (7 NCD Profiles undertaken) |
