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!