Natural Church Development (NCD)

Natural Church Development is a way of measuring the health or quality of a church. By using a carefully prepared questionnaire with 30 members of a church, the survey will determine the health of your church in eight critical areas.

These Quality Characteristics are universally used in building healthy churches:

1. Empowering Leadership
2. Gift-based Ministry
3. Passionate Spirituality
4. Effective Structures
5. Inspiring Worship Services
6. Holistic Small Groups
7. Need-oriented Evangelism
8. Loving Relationships

Relational Ministries with Gary Parks

Communication and human connection are the keys to a happy and functioning team and a strong witness for Jesus. Do you clash with a co-worker, a fellow church member or with someone you love? Or maybe you want to take the next step in mentoring and build a stronger team?

Gary Parks shares the Bible-based principles of different communication styles, active listening and strong relationships, and how to open doors to new and deeper levels of connection. His seminars are a fun-filled and deeply insightful way to learn information that you may not hear anywhere else.

Some of the topics that Gary is ready to share include:

1. Understanding Different Brain Styles
2. Listening to Understand
3. Asking the Right Questions
4. Forgiveness
5. Understanding Differencess
6. Active Listening

For additional information about Gary’s Relational Ministry, visit The Oregon Conference Relational Ministries Website

Discipleship Ministries with Paul Coneff

Paul's own experience growing up in a dysfunctional family, the resulting chains of alcohol abuse and self-harm and ultimately the freedom he found in Jesus Christ has been the motivating factor behind Straight 2 the Heart Discipleship Ministry.

Paul believes that prayer is the greatest power on earth because prayer connects us with “Christ, the Wonderful Counselor,” and the supernatural power of His suffering, death and resurrection.

His passion is equipping others to experience freedom in Christ as they experience the Hidden Half of the Gospel.

All of his discipleship training resources need to pass the test of being reproducible in the lives of others, multiplying people into their calling as sons and daughters of God.

He is married to his black-haired, brown-eyed beauty, Cristina. They have a 13 year old daughter, Carolina, their “celebrator of life,” and her dog Cookie. Paul loves racquetball, reading and seeing the local church developing discipleship teams that impact their community for Christ.

For additional information about Paul's Discipleship Ministry, visit Paul's Website

Percept Demographic Data

Percept Demographics allows you to get to know your specific community in a very unique and detailed way. This information will be crucial for you to strategically plan how to best reach your community. As you take the time to learn the needs of your community, this will enable you to find the best match between the mission of your church and the needs of your community.

Some benefits of Percept Demographics include:

1. The only full-service demographic information company completely dedicated to church leaders
2. The only faith-based demographics
3. Serving the church since 1987
4. High-impact, graphic presentation of information
5. Recognized as one of The Best 100 sources of information products and services by American Demographics magazine.

Disciples Interest Tracking

Disciples is an interest tracking system designed for the unique needs of evangelistic teams.

Disciples can be run either as a standalone software on desktop computers, or in a networked setting with multiple users sharing information using either the desktop software or the web and mobile (iPhone/Android) versions.

Some benefits of Disciples include:

1. Smart Filters - Quickly sort through thousands of records to find just the ones you're looking for.
2. Easy to use - Intuitive, familiar interface makes Disciples simple and convenient.
3. Multiple Churches - Keep track of all the churches in your district or all the sites in your evangelistic program.
4. Multiple Users - Allow multiple users to access your data. Assign interests so everyone gets followed up.
5. Maps - Integrated mapping gives you instant access to all your interests' physical locations.
6. Barcode Support - Take event attendance painlessly using any compatible USB barcode scanner.
7. Members and Interests - A holistic approach that allows you to assign interests to members/workers.

To learn more, visit Disciples.io.

Life-Changing Divine Appointment Challenge

A divine appointment is the Spirit-guided intersection of people’s lives for God’s purposes.

What would happen if you prayed every morning for 30 days that God would give you divine appointments that day? How would your life be impacted? How would the lives of those you meet be impacted?

Taking on this challenge is certain to be life-changing…and not just for the other person. Each day of the challenge includes a devotional/equipping segment, a coaching question, a real-life divine appointment story and a space to journal. Begin the adventure with God today!

We recommend having the entire church go through this 30-day experience together leading up to a reaping event. The individual hard copy divine appointment journals are available through the Oregon Conference Outreach Ministries department.

How to be a Literature Evangelist Training

In this training, every member will see how they can be literature evangelists through different levels and methods. Every member will learn the importance of Literature Evangelism in our world today through real experiences and scripture.

Attendees are encouraged to make literature distribution an integral part of their lifestyle by choosing a location to keep them, carry it in their pockets, and pray and ask God for opportunities to pass them out.

This training can be done by a member of the Oregon Conference Outreach Ministries team, a Thrive Evangelism Team trainer, etc.

Literature Evangelism

Every piece of Literature is a seed that is planted, yet requires cultivation beyond what the tract offers in order to bear fruit. Cultivation can be accomplished through the Bible Study Offer initiative, larger books, or personal bible studies.

This approach begins with the church establishing a GLOW/Literature Evangelism leader.

The GLOW leader(s) will focus on the following:

1. Promote GLOW rack to aid in GLOW distribution
2. Church mailings with featured monthly tracts
3. Promote Literature Emphasis Month
4. Plan annual GLOW Mission trip

SermonView InterestGenerator

InterestGenerator helps your church find people in your community ready to study the Bible with you. Rather than deluging you with dozens of leads at once, like a Bible study card mailing might, InterestGenerator spreads your leads across an entire year. This allows your personal ministries team to manage consistent, ongoing Bible studies.  

You’ll receive a dashboard overviewing the success of the campaign and access to your specific Marketing Coordinator. Your coordinator can help talk through challenges with leads or about any specifics surrounding the program. A lot goes into managing your ad campaign and we handle it all—ad testing, detailed targeting, conversion tracking, and managing comments/messages are all part of the package. Plus we’ll use our brand My Free Bible Study allowing us to generate leads without utilizing your page or account.  

As part this program, you’ll receive access for your whole team to our InterestTracker software. This software was designed to ensure that interests don’t fall between the cracks and that your team knows exactly how and where to respond to interest’s requests. Every lead will automatically flow into your church account and inform your team when someone has just requested a study.

To learn more, visit InterestGenerator.org and watch the video at InterestGenerator.org/how-it-works/.

SermonView InterestTracker

InterestTracker is a FREE online platform designed to help your church manage interests on their way to membership and beyond. The InterestTracker software allows for a church to create unlimited users and track notes, tasks, offer requests, decisions, and more all in one central place. Your church account will notify your users as tasks arise, interests are assigned or a follow-up is required.

InterestTracker also allows you to connect other paid modules to increase the effectiveness of your software.  There are plans to add bulk texting features and a full attendance tracking module that can allow InterestTracker to be a single point of information for all of your evangelism efforts.

Attendance Tracker is the InterestTracker module that allows you to track nightly attendance for unlimited meetings, Bible studies or other ministry activities throughout the year. You can quickly pull attendance reports, email or text attendees (requires text module), and check people in for both in-person and online meetings. With Attendance Tracker check-in is easy. It uses barcode scanning and quick type technology to enable for fast check-in for in-person meetings. Every event also receives an online check-in link that allows you to check people into the same meeting while playing online. You can use YouTube, Vimeo or any streaming platform while still seeing who and when people attend.

To learn more, visit InterestTracker.org.

SermonView Evangelism Marketing

Reaping events are still one the most successful ways to grow a church. However, marketing for these meetings has gone through a lot of changes over the past two decades. SermonView’s evangelism marketing system is based on a deep understanding of the needs and goals of an Adventist evangelistic series, while implementing the best marketing practices for today.

Every event is built using a multi-touch approach to your promotion. Mailers, online ads, print and large banners combine to offer the highest impact and more people through your doors. Combine this approach with SermonView’s online registration platform that connects directly into InterestTracker and you have a simple, turn-key solution for hosting your own evangelistic series. SermonView also offers solutions for online and hybrid events—including an online player that allows you to invite watchers to request prayer, books or other offers that go directly to your team. 

As evangelism marketing gets harder it becomes even more important to work with a ministry that has real experience solving the challenges that local churches face. SermonView’s team has been dedicated exclusively to serving Adventist churches since 2005, and has handled over 5,000 evangelism marketing campaigns in the last decade.

Find out what options will work best in your area. Contact a team member today at 800-525-5791 or visit evangelismmarketing.com.

Growing Young - Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church

Churches are both shrinking and aging as more young people disengage. Based on groundbreaking research with over 250 of the nation’s leading congregations, Growing Young provides a strategy any church can use to involve and retain young people. It profiles innovative churches engaging 15- to 29-year-olds that are growing–spiritually, emotionally, missionally, and numerically. Packed with ideas, Growing Young shows ministry leaders how to position their churches to reach younger generations in a way that breathes life into the whole church.

To learn more about Growing Young, visit ChurchesGrowingYoung.com.