Next Level - Biotic Thinking

Last Sunday as elders met to talk about Church Development it was evident that a shift in thinking is needed for our churches to develop naturally. Hopefully we understand of WHAT tools to use checking the vital signs of living and healthy church (evangelism, ministry, worship, leadership, spirituality, structures, relationships, groups). Optimistically I hope we understand WHEN to focus on specific areas of growth (minimum factor improvement) restoring the balance.
We’ve been asking for a while HOW TO. The answer is simple – PARADIGM SHIFT! Or simply put – thinking differently through applying principles that govern all life.
June 4th 2005 I briefly introduced “Biotic Principles” contrasting these two pictures: Robot vs. Baby
Questions were asked: whose baby is it?
Did someone just had a new baby?
Is a baby shower being planned?

The real question is: do we see ourselves as a Living Body, an Organism? Are we maintaining a Mechanical Machine, an Organization? 10 month ago I ended with a promise to unpack biotic principles through natural living examples – never got to it.
There is really nothing we can do about church growth, and yet we ought to do something. God needs no handbook – we do. Sounds cool, but it is a false paradox. For God always cooperates and involves humanity in His work. He reveals His secrets and plans to His people. Apostle Paul says that believers are entrusted with the secret things of God. (1st Corinthians 4:1)
Our efforts of using right tools (that’s all the NCD is – a diagnostic tool) will get us nowhere unless God builds the spiritual momentum, unless our thinking is in sync with God’s plans, unless we check our actions according to principles recorded in God’s Word.
Let me re-introduce the 6 Biotic Principles: Interdependence, Multiplication, Energy Transformation, Multiusage, Symbiosis & Functionality. When making decisions remember:

• God’s Kingdom is a large connected system. Changes in one ministry will affect other ministries in the church and community. What are the “side-effects”?
• Healthy organisms do not grow endlessly but reproduce themselves.
• Energy already flowing, whether positive or negative, can be redirected to accomplish God’s purposes.
• Gifts and assets of people in changing environments and circumstances do serve multiple purposes.
• Mutual benefit of cooperative relationships is greater than operating separately.
• Each ministry needs to produce results in line with its intended purpose.

Why Natural Church Development?

Each member, even the pastor, can see only part of the total reality of the church life. Each one of us has personal favorites. As we think of our church some wish to see more improvements or changes in the worship style and format. Others would like to see the building itself improved, expanded, redecorated and furnished. Another group is eager to go on the street corners and do more evangelism, reach the community. There are few “small group” enthusiasts. Pastor thinks that empowering and training more leaders will solve our needs. The different preferences are obvious even when we come to our Board meetings. Yet, only networking perspectives of many individuals will result in an accurate picture.
This is the main purpose of the Natural Church Development plan –assessing strength and growth areas, exposing urgent needs while encouraging to use and build on strengths to improve vulnerable; enabling to pull together all the fractions and all different interests into a teamwork, and prioritizing what’s important at the moment.
A year ago we did our first evaluation and obtained an objective picture of our church health at the time. We worked faithfully on areas that needed improvements – at South the Loving Relationships, at North the Small Groups; both churches needed a process of Spiritual Gifts discovery to provide opportunities for ministry, not neglecting other vital quality characteristics of the church life – Leadership development, introducing visual enhancements to our worship, developing the church choir, improving and updating our facilities, introducing the groups and prayer meetings at home, preaching to appeal to and to challenge the passionate spirituality. Some of the essential areas were less invested in – we have not done any evangelistic work for the needs of the community around.
Many small victories took place in the past year. Many small changes added to the momentum. People themselves changed as our church is not frozen in a status quo. It is time to observe the trends again, to see where we grew and where we overlooked the need to grow. April 29 @ North & May 6 @ South we will invite 30 people from each congregation to stay after the church for 15 min and to complete the NCD survey. Personal invitations will be sent to individuals selected to participate in diagnosing the church health.
Meanwhile – do not forget what our goal is: becoming a Church where spiritual leaders facilitate inspiring, genuine and participatory WORSHIP, where spiritually gifted people minister the Good News to the needs of the community, where passionate personal spiritually is expressed through loving relationships, where functional and effective structures assist community development & discipleship through groups.

Back to the Future - back to NCD

I hope you still remember what the acronym NCD stands for:
the N_ _ _ _ _ _ C_ _ _ _ _ D_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _. Right?

It has been almost a year since I first introduced this concept to the leadership of our church – Healthy Churches Grow automatically, without fuss and fumes, “all by itself” using God given potential.
Last weekend of March 2005 the concept was introduced, and through the month of April we were preparing for the diagnostic survey, explaining and unpacking the 8 essential quality characteristics of every church.
Then in May we did it – surveyed ourselves and waited for the verdict, preparing the leadership team for implementation.
With trepidation we discovered or “minimum factor” in June, and then we got interrupted – camp meetings, General Conference, summer time, busy, busy, busy…Although Ghanaian families had began the Cultural Diversity Program as a part of implementation process. Preparing for the leadership restructuring in the fall we had invested August and September encouraging the total participation of all believers through the use of Spiritual Gifts.
Last few months we took time to consider and study the postmodern drift and shift of paradigms in the contemporary culture, and finally, with the new ministry teams we are ready to get back to work - back to the Natural Church Development.
Quite often people fall into extremes in their thinking and understanding the Church – either too static, or too dynamic, seeing the church either as technocratic structural organization, or unrestricted unpredictable organism. The Biblical view has always been the balance between extremes, a creative relationship between static organization and dynamic growth.
Just think of these Biblical metaphors for Church:

	Dynamic / Organic	Static / Technical
1st Peter 2:5	living	stones
Ephesians 2:21	growth	of the Temple
Ephesians 4:12	body of Christ	built
1st Corinthians 3:9	God's field and	God's building

Paradoxically these are not mutually exclusive but constructively inclusive pictures of how God works and what He does with His Church: unchangeable yet growing, absolute yet ever relevant, structured yet adaptable – it’s a definite PARADIGM SHIFT!