Bible

Natural Church Development Principles and the Bible

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My child, listen and be wise: Keep your heart on the right course. Do not carouse with drunkards or feast with gluttons, for they are on their way to poverty, and too much sleep clothes them in rags. Proverbs 23:19-21 (NLT)
What is the Preacher saying here? He is saying, ‘Keep your heart on the right course.’ He has already indicated earlier: Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. (Proverbs 4:23). He is suggesting that if we get the heart right, everything else will fall into place.
Let’s take this to the local church. The early church leaders showed little concern for issues that were external to the church. Their chief concern was for problems within the church. Internal problems could do serious damage to the church; problems in the world would have little effect – unless church members opened the door to them. So the Preacher’s advice to his son is equally apt for the church. Let’s keep the heart of the church on the right course. Let’s guard the heart of the church above all else because that determines the course of the church.
What is the heart of the church?
It has to be the leadership team, the main influencers in the church. By surveying the thirty main influencers, we get a picture of the health of the whole church.

If we need to improve the health of our church we do not have to ‘lift’ the total congregation. The focus of our strategy should be, must be, the heart of our church, the leaders, the main influencers; where they go, the rest of the church will follow. What they are, the rest of the church is in the process of becoming.

Natural Church Development Principles in the Bible

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Those too lazy to plow in the right season will have no food at the harvest. (Proverbs 20:4)

Jesus said He always did what He saw the Father doing in both the spiritual and the natural worlds. In the world of horticulture, believers and unbelievers alike, do what they see the Father doing in the natural world. They know there is a right season to plough, and if they do not plow at that time they will come up short. There will be no food on the table. They are doing what they see the Father doing whether they believe it or not.

Several significant Principles are ignored by a lazy person like this one in Proverbs:

Sowing and reaping, Fruitfulness, Multiplication, Sustainability, Interdependence, Energy Transformation – all of these are working against this lazy person.

Fruitfulness: There will be no fruit because the ground has not been prepared at the right time to receive seed.

For Multiplication to happen, seed has to be sown and a crop harvested.

Unless someone else comes to his rescue, the life of this person will not be Sustained because he has no food.

Because he has failed to work, using the Interdependence that God has set up in His creation, he will starve to death.

This principle will also be working against him.

Energy Transformation: It is very clear that he is investing no energy whatever in doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, in the way it needs to be done, so there is zero energy going into the very thing that should be done. Investing energy in avoiding work could very well work against him in his muscles seizing up (what you don’t use, you lose); starvation (scarcity of food); strained relationships (who will continue to provide food and a bed for this sorry individual?)

These are some of the principles that God has woven into His creation and that Natural Church Development is based upon. They are always working whether we acknowledge them or not. And if they are not working for us they will surely be working against us.