The NCD Process
The practical steps of the NCD process are as follows...
- Discuss the NCD process with your leadership team. While there is no need to do any pre-study in order to take the survey and start the process, you may find tools like the above video or The All By Itself Pathway booklet helpful for those who need to know more before committing. Beyond these tools, please contact NCD Australia any time if you have questions or special considerations that you would like to discuss.
- Order your NCD Survey kit. The kit comes with comprehensive instructions for facilitating your survey online, on paper, or with a combination of both. In summary, you will be surveying as many people as possible (up to a maximum of 30) who...
- each have some form of regular task in the church
- each are involved in some form of small group in the church
- each attend your church's worship services
- collectively represent the various demographics of your church (e.g. age, gender, race, etc.)
You then enter any paper survey forms you have online (or ask us to do it for you) and check that any online survey participants you may have invited have responded. When ready, you click calculate to produce your results. Click here to see what is included in the survey kit or to order it.
- After your results are processed, you will make a time that is convenient for you (and a group of your leaders if you wish) to have a 60-90min telephone or Skype debrief discussion with one of the NCD Australia directors. With more than a decade of experience in working with 100s of churches in and outside of Australia, they will be able to help you through almost any questions you may have. After the initial discussion, you can call any time for further assistance.
- Shortly after your initial debrief discussion, you will be able to start acting upon the kind of simple action plans that are most likely to bring about progress. Ideally, this begins with the key influencers in your church who are due the most affirmation for the strengths of your church as well being those who need to carry a larger responsibility for the growth areas. Given your minimum factor is usually low because it hasn't had as much attention as other areas of church life, you can expect to start to see signs of progress quite quickly if those areas are given some consistent attention as the rest of church life continues along.
- Once you have begun to see some clear signs of progress and you suspect there have been changes in the health and culture of your church, then repeat the survey. This will allow you to track your progress (even in areas that you didn't specifically focus on), identify if there is a new minimum factor in need of attention, as well as show you if there are any longer term cultural sticking points that are going to require a more concerted effort to transform.
After a number of survey cycles, you will be seeing clear signs of how your church is stewarding the time, treasure and talent given to it in far more fruitful ways... all of which happening without having to interrupt church life or suddenly trying to move it in a different direction. Instead, you will be starting to experience the Mark 4:26-28 "all by itself" growth that Jesus spoke of and has in mind for your church.
To order the NCD Survey kit, click here.
To speak to NCD Australia, click here.