Over the past decade or so, many pastors have become familiar with NCD (Natural Church Development) and other similar survey tools that attempt to promote overall church health and church growth. As the Willow Creek Association has shown, the use of similar surveys can be very effective in identifying and addressing some church needs, and in removing obstacles from church growth.
A few years back, in Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought & Practice, John Holland (2008) compared nine of these church health surveys and texts.[1] A few things are clear in Holland’s comparison: (1) most of the surveys are based on some type of church model[2] and (2) the church health characteristics are trying to measure some aspect of Church Climate, yet through a singular venue.
Church Climate is best defined as “what a congregation feels like.” It’s the question me and some of my consultant friends ask our families after we visit a congregation for the first time, and words like “rigid,” “traditional,” “formal,” “open,” “unfriendly,” “rocking” and the like are often the answers. In leadership research, there are at least 20 aspects of organizational climate – and if I had to guess, they could be practically limitless.
Back to NCD, etc: A number of the models measure “inspiring worship.” Both from the point of view of organizational climate research and ecclesial leadership research, inspiration (or being lifted up, as Holland puts it) could actually derive from a number of sources. What if small groups were inspirational though? What if being lifted up actually came from teaching rather than the music? (1) The current crop of survey instruments couldn’t measure it and consequently, (2) for some of them, your congregation wouldn’t be “healthy” if it didn’t get the right adjective from the right activity. Measuring overall climate (and perhaps even choosing the specific elements of it to analyze) could thus give more insight and possibilities for congregational growth. NCD – and tools like it – do give valid answers to specific questions. The issue for church health and growth, though, is how much those specific questions need answers – or if other, more general questions, need answering.
Holland’s article also highlights another interesting aspect of these diagnostic tools and church health markers. Just like Schwartz’s NCD has noted,[3] these diagnostics are primarily not theologically specific. This is especially interesting because basically every published study in organizational climate notes a link between values and norms (i.e. shared beliefs) and the climate. In short, organizational culture (which in a church is composed of its theologies as well as of its ways of doing things) affects organizational climate. So why focus exclusively on climate – which is in part brought about by beliefs – rather than considering the beliefs that contribute to the climate? Or better – why not look at the beliefs and the climate in your church – and how they are related?
Now the “kicker” in discussions of theology is that what the pastor teaches, or the denomination indicates as their standard beliefs, is not necessarily what the people in the pews, chairs or couches believe. Martin Percy, in his Shaping the Church (2012), called what the consensus of congregants believe (but don’t say) Implicit Theology. Implicit theologies are more specifically defined as “generic, usually unspoken ideas about the theological realm that have a measurable effect on individual and congregational behavior.” And if decades of organizational research hold up, those unspoken shared ideas contribute directly to how people behave – and what those situations feel like, even to outsiders that happen to be present. For example – if most members of a congregation believe that people generally tend to be self-serving, that congregation might just not feel very friendly to outsiders!
Of course, all this leaves us with a few questions:
1) What do the people in your church believe that makes your church "feel" a certain way?
2) How come the people in the pew hold views so different from what you preach?
3) What is the carrier of implicit theology?
4) What can we change in order to change our folks' implicit theologies - and in order to change the church climate?
Now the “kicker” in discussions of theology is that what the pastor teaches, or the denomination indicates as their standard beliefs, is not necessarily what the people in the pews, chairs or couches believe. Martin Percy, in his Shaping the Church (2012), called what the consensus of congregants believe (but don’t say) Implicit Theology. Implicit theologies are more specifically defined as “generic, usually unspoken ideas about the theological realm that have a measurable effect on individual and congregational behavior.” And if decades of organizational research hold up, those unspoken shared ideas contribute directly to how people behave – and what those situations feel like, even to outsiders that happen to be present. For example – if most members of a congregation believe that people generally tend to be self-serving, that congregation might just not feel very friendly to outsiders!
Of course, all this leaves us with a few questions:
1) What do the people in your church believe that makes your church "feel" a certain way?
2) How come the people in the pew hold views so different from what you preach?
3) What is the carrier of implicit theology?
4) What can we change in order to change our folks' implicit theologies - and in order to change the church climate?
[1] Holland, J. (2008). Church Health: A New Zealand Case Study. Stimulus 16(4), 30 – 38.
[2] Although Schwartz has contrasted this (http://ncdnet.blogs.com/encdine/files/NCD_Reveal.pdf), according to organizational leadership research and church research, the small group IS part of specific church models. Cfr. Models of the Church (Dulles, 1978) and Church Turned Inside Out (Bergquist & Karr, 2010), Church 3.0 (Neil Cole, 2010)
