Professional Dissertations DMin
Date of Award
2009
Document Type
Project Report
Degree Name
Doctor of Ministry
College
Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary
Program
Doctor of Ministry DMin
First Advisor
Russell Burrill
Second Advisor
Joseph Kidder
Third Advisor
Donald C. James
Abstract
The Problem
Natural Church Development (NCD) is a church health paradigm that is being used in Seventh-day Adventist churches across the United States as a tool for increasing both church health and growth. One question that needs to be addressed is whether the implementation of NCD within Seventh-day Adventist churches results in church growth.
The Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation is to establish a validation of the NCD process by evaluating the church growth experienced at the Milwaukee Central Seventh-day Adventist Church and compare that growth with Seventh-day Adventist churches across the United States which have participated in taking the NCD survey.
The Method
An exegetical study of Mark 4:26-29, along with a review of current literature, provides the setting to analyze the effectiveness of NCD within Seventh-day Adventist Churches in the United States. One hundred churches were randomly selected to participate in the analysis, and divided into two groups, depending on whether it could be verified that the church attempted to improve their minimum factor. The two groups church growth factors of tithe, local giving, membership, and baptisms were then compared.
Conclusions
As Christ spoke of the self-growing seed, so in Seventh-day Adventist churches across the United States, once the environment of the church is healthy, God will and does cause His church to grow. In comparing the growth statistics, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in four of the six areas tested. Those areas were tithe, membership, annual number of baptisms, and total number of baptisms.
Subject Area
Church growth--Seventh-day Adventists; Milwaukee Central Seventh-day Adventist Church (Milwaukee, Wis.); Natural Church Development (NCD)
Recommended Citation
Mills, Rodney Jon, "An Evaluation of the Implementation of Natural Church Development Within Seventh-day Adventist Churches in the United States and the Resulting Church Growth" (2009). Professional Dissertations DMin. 553.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/553
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dmin/553
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/553
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