February 12, 2001
Gerry,
Finally,
here are my thoughts on the Natural Church Development survey and your Ministry
Fitness Check. The major distinction for me is that NCD is product-driven and OC
is service-driven. NCD is promoted through Church Smart, a marketing company.
Church Smart is a Christian business, driven by mass marketing and product
sales. Outreach Canada is a Christian mission agency, compelled to serve local
churches through on-site personal intervention.
Church
Smart provides a multitude of product resources to empower a church to work
through an action plan based on the church's minimum factor. This is quite
different from the OC approach which empowers the church primarily through an
on-site personal consultant. The strength of NCD is in their published research
and materials. Church pastors are attracted to the NCD survey instrument
primarily through extensive research documented in the hard cover book, Natural
Church Development. Their reporting of results is severely lacking.
Their report is a simple bar chart showing the relative values of the eight
critical factors. In contrast, the strength of the MFC is in the reporting of
results. The extensive reporting given by the MFC is a clear, specific,
discriminating and helpful to the church as the leadership mobilizes an action
plan. Right or wrong, church leaders always want to know how their church
compares to others. NCD provides published standardized scores with a plus and
minus one standard deviation range to allow church leaders to make such
comparisons.
The
audience surveyed is also quite different. NCD surveys 30 individuals, usually
key church leaders. The MFC surveys the entire congregation. On the one hand,
church leaders are better informed, but they are also limited in their
perspective of the church. Members and less well informed, even unqualified to
answer some MFC questions. However, they provide a much more thorough
perspective on the life of the church. The MFC inclusion of narative comments is
also quite enlightening.
When
given an option, I always favor using the MFC. I've been through the NCD
certification. I appreciate their work and I use their material. However, the
strength of the MFC reporting is so overwhelming that I'm compelled to use it.
Gerry,
you are welcome to use any part of the above comments as a testimonial.
God
Bless You!
Lowell Goetze, Consultant
Churches Alive