Natural Church Development is a process that helps churches look at 8 basic characteristics of healthy, growing churches, and then focus on them one at a time.  The goal – healthy, growing churches!  The idea is simple – most of us are already doing a lot in our churches, and the thought of adding one more responsibility may just be too much.  Natural Church Development involves the church in taking a survey to get their scores on all 8 characteristics. 

Those 8 characteristics are:

• Empowering Leadership
• Gift-Oriented Leadership
• Inspiring Worship Services
• Passionate Spiritualtiy
  Effective Structures
• Need-Oriented Evangelism
• Loving Relationships
• Holistic Small Groups

Thru the Natural Church Development process, the church focuses its energy on the "minimum factor" (the one that has the lowest score of the 8), and don’t worry about the others, for a period of time, approximately one year.  Then they take another survey, and see what the change has been.  Churches that have done 3 cycles of this ALMOST ALL report not only that their church is healthier, but that they’ve grown in numbers too.  This is irrespective of the type or size of community in which the church is located.

For a more indepth description of Natural Church Development,

click here for a downloadable PDF file.

The Presbytery Congregational Growth and Development Committee is making this process available to interested churches.  They are setting up cluster gatherings around the presbytery so that interested churches can send their sessions and learn more about it. 

We especially encourage session members to attend these meetings to they can understand fully this opportunity, and then make a decision about whether this is something that might be helpful for their church at this time.

Cluster 1:     Northwest churches                             Sunday, April 13, 2 - 5 pm

                     Federated Church, Fergus Falls, 224 Union Ave. N.  (218) 739-3227

Cluster 2:     Northeast churches                             Saturday, June 7, 9 am -12 pm

                    First Presbyterian Church, Brainerd, 512 8^th St, (218) 829-6069

Cluster 3:     East Central churches                           Saturday, June 14, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm

                     First Presbyterian Church, Willmar, 312 6th St. SW,  (320) 235-1263

Cluster 4:     West Central churches                         Sunday, June 8, 1:30 – 4:30 pm

                    Christ United Presbyterian Church, Marshall, 400 W Lyon St, (507) 532-9679