Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches

by Christian A. Schwarz

Critics of the church growth movement have often emphasized the need for quality congregations. We should not focus on numerical growth, but rather, we should concentrate on qualitative growth.

Christian Schwarz has done extensive research world-wide and found that healthy, growing churches seem to share eight quality characteristics. These characteristics

Empowering leadership
Gift-oriented ministry
Passionate spirituality
Functional structures
Inspiring worship service
Holistic small groups
Need-oriented evangelism
Loving relationships
Schwarz uses the illustration of a barrel with eight staves to symbolize the eight quality characteristics. The barrel can only hold water to the height of the lowest stave. So too, Schwarz argues, a church can only grow as far as their 'Minimum factor,' which is the lowest of the eight quality characteristics in their church. He challenges churches to resist the temptation to work on improving areas in which they already excel, for by doing this they do not increase their minimum factor or their church quality.

This revised version of Natural Church Development now includes Schwarz's "3 Colors" teaching.

Genres: Church, Leadership, Christian, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Religion, Ecclesiology

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Tung · Rating 1 out of 5]

Schwarz is the founder of an international organization that assists churches in growing. Unlike other books that state their methods, and claim them to be both biblical and universally effective, his organization takes a very statistical approach. Using a proprietary survey instrument, Schwarz surveyed tens of thousands of churches (both healthy and unhealthy, growing and declining) and analyzed the data to determine what characteristics were common among growing, healthy churches. He found 8 major characteristics – ranging from holistic small groups to empowering leadership to inspiring worship services – and then organized those characteristics to some underlying growth principles, and to a growth spiral (essentially a process of continuous improvement). As someone with a background in qualitative and quantitative research, I found Schwarz’s methods and analyses very interesting. The way he described his findings was very methodical and data-driven – something most church growth books lack. Unfortunately, the entire book is a very shallow read. Schwarz only describes his characteristics, principles, and processes at a very high level. Clearly the goal of this book is to get you interested in his organization’s total consulting package. He repeatedly refers to the NCD survey and training and program, but does not provide the full details. Unlike most Christian books that give away their secrets and methods in the hopes that they inspire churches and church leaders, and expand and impact the kingdom of God, this book hoards its knowledge. This approach turned me off completely. Unique approach, but too shallow a read to recommend.

[Zee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Ukrainian version needs HEAVY editing - basic spelling mistakes are present.

Also, the book authors did a great work on collecting so many responses. However, they completely ignore the cultural contexts of the churches, therefore the information is seriously skewed. For example, you can't simply say that 82% of churches that are declining and bad quality have educated pastors, and those churches where only 42% of pastors are educated are of higher quality and on the rise. This doesn't take into account, for example, African countries where education is simply impossible at times, yet the churches are growing and Christianity is on the rise. Meanwhile, in Europe, where generally people are more educated, pastors are also educated, yet general religiosity is on the decline because people have access to way too much information.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best of the worst part of Church Health. Very well done research using a HORRIBLE set of assumptions. They did their science right, they just didn't do their thinking right.

So basically it's how to be a "perfect church" according tot he authors' ideals. Nothing about the poor, nothing about the future. Just the same, basic 8 values.

ENOUGH!! Stop publishing this stuff! Thousands of dollars and hours spent trying to make churches be the kinds of churches the authors want to go to. Geesh!

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book for my Master's class on Church at Wheaton college. The basic idea is that quality churches grow. Schwartz and his team researched 1000 churches in 32 countries on 6 continents. They found 8 quality characteristics that together help a church grow. They also discovered that if a church was above 65 quality index on all of them that the church grew in every instance. The qualities were the best part of the book. From there it went downhill for me. I would like to see the survey to measure the quality of my church & ministry.

[Jon Barr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a challenging read. At first, I found it too jargon-laden. That feeling never really faded, but I began to enjoy it much more when the author introduced the statistical analysis.

My biggest takeaway: rather than focusing on either your strengths or working to improve your weaknesses, USE your strengths to improve your weaknesses.

[Nathan Marone]

A strange book, this one.

In a lot of ways Natural Church Development read like a bad argument for a position I hold. The main problem is that Schwarz's research methodology seems suspect at best. A lot of the argumentation revolves around the idea that God has created principles that can be derived from nature and then applied to churches. He discovered a lot of this through...surveys.

At its core, the idea of the book is this: we should not focus on numerical growth, per se, but rather on the overall health of the church. A healthy tree, planted in good soil with ready access to sun and water, will grow.

Schwarz lays out eight areas that a church could focus on to stay healthy and develop into maturity. The book's value is probably in these eight areas. I'll keep my copy around as a handy reference as I think about my own work as an assistant pastor.

The drawback here is that Schwarz doesn't ground much of his material in biblical reasoning. This is a particular shame, because I think most of what he writes would have a fairly strong basis in New Testament theology! Oh well, I guess.

[James Tetley · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK book - the research results very interesting. Raises some important questions on church values like

Is going to church fun?
Who are the evangelists in your church?
What is your model for continual small group development?
Where is laughter in church life?
What are your goals to improve church quality?

Language a bit confusing. More explanation of the factors and levers to move them would have been helpful.

Also a complete lack of 'kingdom of God' thinking and touching and blessing your neighbour hood. I wonder whether the survey had a holistic set of attributes in its design, or a too narrow view of evangelism.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm split on this one. I'm pretty convinced by the ideas and the research. It's an awkward read, though, partly because it's jargon-laden and partly because everything is split into two-page chunks. Schwarz could have spent more time developing his ideas, giving examples, etc. Part of the solution for a healthy church is to, of course, work with his company and products. It doesn't feel slick -- these programs seem to be genuinely useful for churches that can't analyze large survey data or the like -- but it's a little off-putting, and would have felt more appropriate as an appendix.

[José & Cecilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Buen libro, no esperaba tanto pero me sorprendió. Totalmente diferente a lo que venía leyendo. Es un llamado y una invitación a poner las manos en el arado, literalmente nosotros hacemos todo lo posible y Él lo imposible. El objetivo es usar los medios que Dios utiliza orgánicamente para que la Iglesia se prepare para lo que viene".

[Casey Sabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. A genuine life-changer. The author’s approach to church growth and development is unique and refreshing. One of the best books I've read on helping churches become healthy and to use with ongoing tools and objective analysis.

[Darren Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good resource with ways of approaching church growth.

[MrWalterN · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. It is helpful for me to read research and models such as those contained in this book from time to time to challenge my current thinking. With that said, at times Schwartz seems to over-extending his natural/organic metaphor for church growth. In some ways, he also appears to become overly fascinated with his research and resultant system. Still, overall, a good - and quite quick - read.

[Ryan Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book although it got overly technical in the middle. The research and premise are very solid though and make it a great resource for church coaching and overall health/design. It starts and ends very strong.

[Brian King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, the book does seem to have some truths in it, but my problem is that it seems like a 128 page infomercial for other Christian Scharz products. They want to sell their tools for measuring the 8 areas and they want to see their tools for each of those areas along with leader guides, etc.

[Jeff Noble]

Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches by Christian A. Schwarz (?)

[Dale Mcmillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard Read

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and should be applied. Long and boring and technical.

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. School book.

[Joanne Almsteadt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great material.