Strengths

Several years ago Christian Schwarz did research on what were the eight essential qualities of a healthy church. I think it was well done research and he developed Natural Church Development (NCD) out of it. The theory was that you should identify your weaknesses out of the eight qualities and work to improve them. It was the old "weakest link" argument. Our church took one of the assessments that they provided and I think our weakest quality was Ministry but I don't remember for sure.

The thing I liked about NCD was its emphasis on a biotic approach. It recognized that a church is a living, breathing organism and not a machine. That fit well with the weakest link idea because nature is filled with examples of the weakest link being the limiting factor. (A mineral deficiency will stunt plant growth.)

But working on your weaknesses can be depressing. Who wants to put tons of effort into what your bad at doing? Gallup has now come out with a new report that basically says that strength based development nets you the biggest return. One of the big reasons for this is employees are motivated because they love their work. Interesting. I think Schwarz might have identified the problem but missed how you fix it.