E-mail Natural Church Development (NCD) Team

St. Mark's has been engaged in Natural Church Development (NCD) since early 2005.  NCD is a process for fostering congregational vitality, empowerment, and growth and utilizes an annual survey instrument to measure the quality of 8 areas of congregational life (empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship, wholistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, and loving relationships).  It's grounded in the notion that God grows the church (Acts 2) and that what we need to pay attention to as the church is simply getting out of the way of what God has designed living bodies/organisms to do naturally.  It coaches congregations to take their congregational strengths and apply them to vitalizing the congregation's weaknesses (called  minimum factors).

For the 2005-2006 cycle, between St. Mark's initial survey and it's second survey, this congregation was the only one in the Nebraska Synod (we've been told) to grow in all 8 areas of ministry--a rare thing to see in this movement regardless.  In most of our areas, we grew signficantly.  St. Mark's next annual survey comes this September.

The current NCD Team is comprised of some of St. Mark's finest servants, including: Les Jessen, Brad Lovejoy, Gloria Tighe, Kathryn Zeber, and Sharon Hefner.

If you are interested in seeing St. Mark's continue to grow as a vibrant mission outpost for Jesus and his reconciling work and would like to be on a future NCD Team, give Pastor Nathan a call or e-mail him to let him know you are interest in the future work of this team.