Orthodox Natural Church Development

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

In the summer of 2018, with the blessing of Fr. Haridimos and our Board of Directors, a discussion began about the health of our church community. We discussed the number of people in Sunday Liturgy, our youth and children’s programming, the need for volunteers and financial support and asked ourselves what we could do to foster a growing and thriving community.  This dialogue had us ask the question of what makes a church community truly healthy. 

To that end, on January 25th,  2019, with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Archbishop Sotirios, our parish hosted an information session by the V. Rev. Jonathan Ivanoff, Director of Orthodox Natural Church Development (ONCD) about how to help Orthodox parishes develop into healthy, living organisms that thrive.  The meeting was attended by our parishioners as well as priests and representatives of other parishes in Toronto. 

After this meeting, the six members of the ONCD Church Health Team received training on how to administer the ONCD survey. In the weeks ahead, the Team selected 30 people to take the survey, who (a) attended Divine Liturgy regularly and (b) performed a regular task for our parish. The survey is a proven diagnostic tool based on the only comprehensive international research ever done into what causes churches to grow or decline. The survey was conducted on April 14, 2019. The results have been received and we are currently providing parishioners – who love and care for our Church – to voice their thoughts and 
concerns in Focus Group sessions. In these sessions, we are addressing our parish needs and how we can meet them going forward. Our goal is the continued health and growth of our beloved All Saints Church.

If you have any questions, please visit our frequently asked questions page or email us at: oncd@allsaintstoronto.ca

We look forward to people coming together, with love 
and care, to work through this exciting process!
Sincerely in Christ,

Your Church Health Team
– Nick Sotiriou (Leader), Dimitra Chronopoulos, Angela Solomos, Don Givelos, Christopher Issariotis, Leo Lazaris

FAQs

1.       What is Natural Church Development?

Natural Church Development (NCD) was originated in the 1990s by an institute of the same name, to study the causes of parish growth and revitalization. NCD research is interdenominational and has studied church growth in over 1000 unique churches on 5 continents with published research studies in 34 countries to validate its research methodology and approach. NCD applies principles that have proven to apply to any culture at any time for healthy churches. NCD uses diagnostic tools which enable a parish to determine its level of health.

There are eight distinguishing characteristics and principles of healthy and growing parishes.

2.       What are the eight distinguishing characteristics of NCD?

• Empowering Leadership

• Gift-based Ministry

• Effective Structures

• Fervent Spirituality

• Inspiring Worship

• Holistic Fellowship Groups

• Need-oriented Evangelism

• Loving Relationships

3.       Are we the only Orthodox Church that has participated in NCD in Canada?

No, we are the third. St. Herman's Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in Edmonton was the first over a decade ago. Many parishes in the Greek Orthodox Churches of North and South America have also participated in this research and development effort since 2001. Leadership for this process resides in the OCA with Director Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff.

4.       What is considered a “healthy” church?

The best way to answer this is to look at the eight distinguishing characteristics of NCD. The key to each characteristic is the adjective: In a healthy parish, the leadership is empowering, the spirituality is fervent, the worship is inspiring, the relationships are loving, and so on. Gauging the health of a parish involves investigating the extent to which those adjectives apply.

5.       Why does the survey process include only 30 people?

The NCD profiling software used to assess the survey results is optimized to work with 30 surveys. This has been statistically validated through the thousands of surveys that NCD has profiled and is deemed a sufficiently representative sampling.

6.       When and how was the survey conducted?

The survey took place on Sunday, April 14th, 2019, after the Divine Liturgy in the church wing. It took about 40 minutes to complete by 30 parishioners involved in ministries. All 91 questions were answered on a scale of 1 to 5: to a very great extent (5), to a great extent (4), to an average extent (3), hardly (2), and not at all (1). The survey takers were instructed to go with their immediate response to a question or to leave a question unanswered if they were unsure or felt it did not apply to them. The surveys were anonymous. We contacted those selected for the survey personally, with reminder notes or with email invitations or by telephone.

7.       How were people selected?

We relied heavily on NCD’s expertise that validates the need for two criteria for selecting people to complete the survey:

1)     Committed to the life of the church with regular attendance at liturgy

2)     Actively involved in ministry, preferably performing a regular task

NCD’s expertise also strongly recommended that we include a broad cross-section of people that are demographically diverse. Some of those criteria:

• Women and men

• Young, middle aged, and seniors

• New members, long-tenured members

• Converts and cradle Orthodox

Our selection process was geared toward meeting those criteria so that we would reflect the wonderful diversity of our parish.

8.       What does the survey tell us?

NCD provides a profile which rates the health of the church on eight quality characteristics. The rating is calculated by taking raw scores from the questionnaires and measuring them against a standardization calculated from over 50,000 surveys conducted across the United States since 1995. This produces a very accurate assessment of our church’s health with respect to other churches.

In essence, the survey profile gives us a rating for each quality characteristic, but also holds a wealth of information about:

• Relative strengths and weaknesses of the quality characteristics

• Potential interrelationships between various quality characteristics (why would one characteristic be high and another low?)

• Changes and trends in different quality characteristics from survey to survey, if we were to repeat the survey

Most importantly, it identifies a parish’s Maximum and Minimum Factors—the characteristics on which they scored highest and lowest, and which become the focus for discussion, analysis, planning, and action.

9.        Which quality characteristic will All Saints focus on first?

We will begin to improve the health of All Saints by working to develop our Leadership. Since all eight quality characteristics are essential to healthy growth, it makes sense to focus on our leaders and provide them with the tools and strategies to nurture the overall health and growth of our parish. This will require our leadership and all parishioners to work together at meeting the needs of All Saints Church, and will inevitably improve all the other quality characteristics.

10.   Who is on the All Saints Church Health Team for the ONCD initiative?

The team consists of Fr. Haridimos, Nick Sotiriou, Dimitra Chronopoulos, Angela Solomos, Leo Lazaris, Christopher Issariotis, and Antoni Givelos.

11.    How were the committee members chosen?

It was important to have diverse representation on the committee and to select people with certain skills or experiences that would help us to expedite this process. Our team includes cradle Orthodox, converts to Orthodoxy, clergy, parish council members, males and females, and people with professional experience in consulting, social services, leadership, communications, and business.

12.   How will the survey results and analysis be communicated?

The ONCD team has received the results and, in consultation with Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff, is reviewing and digesting them. The team will soon share the results with all parishioners and solicit feedback through focus groups. The team will partner with the parish council to set goals regarding parish health, make plans, and implement them in the coming months. We will work to identify our key areas of opportunity and communicate them to all parishioners.

13.   What is the purpose of the focus groups?

The purpose of the focus groups is to engage the parish in identifying the key issues that contribute to both our highest and lowest scoring characteristics. Keep in mind that lower scoring characteristics do not mean we are failing in those areas. It just means these are areas where we can strengthen and improve quality. The focus groups will allow us to provide an atmosphere for open dialogue and gain relevant insight from many parishioners.

14.    Who can participate in the focus groups?

The focus groups will be open to all parishioners.

15.    Who will be facilitating the focus groups?

We will be selecting people who have experience with facilitation. We will provide them with the training and the tools they need to facilitate fruitful discussions.

16.   What are we trying to change?

This initiative is not about change for the sake of change. It is about assessing the health of our church and determining what we need to do to grow.

17.    What does growth mean?

Holy Scripture teaches that the local church is a living organism—the Body of Christ—which God wants to grow. The church is like any other organism which God has created and sustains. Its potential for growth lies in its health, not its size.

To think of our parish as a living organism is to acknowledge that quality (health) is just as important to church growth as quantity (attendance). In fact, quality is the essential foundation for quantity. As we improve the quality (health) of our parish, we grow naturally through our ministries, outreach and fellowship.

18.    Why is the NCD process a good thing for our parish?

In order to plan for the future, we must clearly understand the past and where we’re at in the present. The typical decisions, actions and activities of the past, carried out to address challenging issues, will be reviewed so that our parish can develop new strategies to produce better health and growth.

19.    What is the involvement of the parish council?

The parish council has been advised of the ONCD initiative and fully supports it. As we enter the assessment phase, they will be engaged in focus groups as will the entire parish. They will also be engaged in the process of identifying actionable steps to improve and strengthen our Church once the focus groups are completed.

20.    What makes the NCD process so effective?

The NCD process is based on the most comprehensive research project about the causes of church growth that has ever been conducted in the Christian Church. To establish a database large enough to come up with scientifically significant conclusions, a research project was undertaken beginning in 1991 that had as its goal to study at least 1000 different churches on five continents: large and small churches, growing and declining ones, churches that are persecuted by the state and churches that are financially supported by the state, prominent and well-known churches as well as totally unknown ones. The study grew to become the most comprehensive research project every conducted on the causes of church growth. The questionnaire, which had to be completed by 30 church members in each church, had to be translated into 18 different languages. In the end, the project analyzed a total of 4.2 million responses.

When the project was completed, it became possible to see clearly the principles God has used universally to build His Church.