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 Healthy
Church UK began its work in July 2003 following the
closure of the British Church Growth Association (BCGA). It
was formed by Rev Dr Philip Walker, D Min BD Cert Ed, who
was formerly Executive Director of BCGA.
Philip was brought up in a manse and came to faith for himself in
his mid twenties. He trained as a secondary school teacher
and taught Maths in Inner London for 7 years before attending
Theological College and obtaining a Bachelor of Divinity degree.
From there he began leading a small church and lectured in
his denominational Bible College on the Old Testament. After
a spell at the denominational headquarters, Philip returned
to full-time ministry in York.
As an ordained minister, Philip has been working with Church
Growth for more than ten years following the commencement
of his work towards a Doctor of Ministry degree with Fuller
Theological Seminary in Pasadena California. He studied under
the Church Growth guru of that time — Dr Peter Wagner.
This enabled him to understand and teach the traditional thinking
behind Church Growth, but with a UK slant, and led to him
becoming Executive Director of the BCGA in 1999.
In the six years that Philip was leading his church in the city
centre of York, he came across the Natural Church Development
process and began to use it in the church. The approach which
considered health before growth was an obvious development
of church growth teaching and it seemed right to become more
involved with the work, while not discarding any of the earlier
teaching on church growth
Healthy Church UK has been formed with one purpose:
To work with local churches and church leaders of every shade
and tradition — traditional, charismatic, emerging, liturgical,
newly planted, with the aim of helping them to improve their
health and growth
Four different means are being used to bring that about:
| 1. |
Healthy Church Magazine is being published quarterly examining
and encouraging best practice in health and growth for
all sorts of churches. There cannot be one set pattern,
and so many different ways are being explored. |
| 2. |
Healthy
Church UK is the NCD partner for the UK and Ireland,
which means:
- All the NCD resources available in the UK come through us
- NCD Church surveys are analysed by us
- Coaches and churches which choose to do the analysis
themselves are taught and enabled by us
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| 3. |
Philip has great expertise in church consultancy, preaching, teaching and
coach training, and is available to come to your church.
NCD is not the only way to improve church health and he
is able to assist in other ways too. |
| 4. |
There are many ways out there to help churches to improve health
and growth but there does not appear to be a directory
of them all, so Healthy Church UK is beginning to build
up a Resource Directory of all the things that have worked
in local churches. The work has already begun, but the
list is very small so far, but it contains the Web sites
and contact details of a number of organisations so far.
Eventually we aim to publish the list here on the Web
Site for your use. The first stages of it are on the links page. |
Philip’s Family
Philip is married to Eileen and they have two adult children and
two grandchildren, although only one, Charlotte, is in the picture! Morgan doesn't like his picture being taken.
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