Interpreting your Natural Church Development scores

The Minimum Barrel

Your survey results come as eight scores, one for each of the Quality Characteristics. A score of 50 is a median score, meaning that half of the churches in your country scored higher than that on that characteristic, and half of the churches scored lower.

The scores are not percentile scores, but "standard deviation" scores with a standard deviation of 15. This means that scores are distributed in the shape of a "bell curve" with 68% of all scores falling between 35 and 65. This means, for example, that a score of 65 means that the church scores at the 84th percentile on that characteristic–higher than 84% of other churches in the country, lower than 16% of other churches.

For the purposes of developing your Action Plan, the most significant scores are your highest and lowest scores. How can you use your greatest strength(s) to improve your area(s) of greatest weakness?

Your lowest score is called your Minimum Factor. This indicates the area that is likely doing the most to limit healthy growth in your church. This suggests that focusing attention on strengthening this area is likely to produce the greatest return on investment in improving the church's health. As the minimum barrel illustrates, to increase capacity, it is necessary to increase the size of the minimum stave, not the highest one. Many churches are acutely aware of their need to improve in their strongest areas because they have been giving focused attention to these areas. Often, the Minimum Factor is a "blind spot" that has received limited attention.

While people may initially be attracted to a church because of its strengths, if the church is not retaining as many of those newcomers as it should, it is often because of a weakness in the Minimum Factor area. Strengthening the Minimum Factor is often a way to close the back door.

In addition to your eight basic scores, you may also order a detailed analysis of your scores which breaks down your results within each of the eight Quality Characteristics to a greater level of detail to help you understand what aspects of your Minimum Factor are most hindering healthy growth. This detailed analysis is available in two forms–NCD Insights, which divides each Quality Characteristic into four sub-characteristics; and Profile Plus which breaks results down on a question-by-question basis. Your NCD coach will recommend one of these versions of the detailed analysis depending on the consulting process you choose. Living Stones has found the detailed analysis to be so valuable that we use it in every consultation.

There can be multiple reasons for a low score in any of the Quality Characteristics. Using the scores to diagnose weaknesses and develop an Action Plan is not a mechanical process, but requires wisdom and spiritual discernment. Some resources that many churches find valuable to this process include:

While a consultant can give you expert guidance in interpreting your NCD results and recommending practical steps to improve church health, most of the actual work must be done by people within the congregation. For more on the process Living Stones uses to facilitate the development and implementation of an Action Plan, click here.

What is Natural Church Development?

What the Natural Church Development survey measures

Developing and implementing your Action Plan

Natural Church Development resources

How to schedule a Natural Church Development survey