Cycle Starter Plans

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Having understood your church a little better with the help of the NCD Church Survey, its now time to start cycling together towards a healthier church. You’ve chosen to start experimenting and learning more about the topic to the left. Now, select one of the cycle starter plans below and write number 1 in its box. Put this sheet on your wall, then, go do it!

Next time you are meeting with others who are also working through a topic, ask each other the questions from the cycle, starting at “do” and finishing at “plan”. After a cycle you may decide the most important thing to do now is to keep going with the same plan, modify it, or choose another option from below. If choosing another from below, just write 2 in its box and so on.

If you’d like more cycle starter options, or to work on another topic highlighted by your NCD Church Survey results, just visit ncdchurchsurvey.org/cycle-starters

Inspiring Worship Service

  • Arrive early for the worship service ensuring you have time beforehand to relax and prepare yourself.
  • Ask the music team if they enjoy the music in the worship service and also what music most helps them encounter God and why.
  • Consider the advantages of a worship service over personal worship.
  • Consider what can be done through a sermon that cannot be done equally well or better through another forum of church life.
  • Help your congregation understand that inspiring worship services depend upon every person bringing along their unique gift-based offering of worship to bless God and encourage the church. Help individuals to discover what their offering might be and how it could be expressed regularly before, during, or after the formal part of the service.
  • If each of your individual worship service components always seem to go for about the same length of time each week, consider what is "magical" about that length of time and why it might not be even more fruitful if each one was shorter or longer.
  • Make eye contact and shake hands or greet someone from your church with whom you have had even the slightest relational tension and enquire how things are with them.
  • Physically step through the process of arriving near your church and making your way to a seat in the worship service from the perspective of someone who has never attended before. How could you make your service easier to find or more welcoming?