For this to happen, there has to be an awareness that there is something lacking in the way the church has been working. Each of the churches we are working with would be thought to be 'good' churches in their own areas. They would be the sort of church that someone moving into the area would visit first. But they are aware that they are not seeing people come to a mature 'whole-life' faith and they know that they need to be more intentional about this happening.

A survey of the congregation is taken that essentially asks people to say where the church is helping them to live out their Christian faith, and where they find it difficult and the help they would like to receive. This can be seen as a threatening exercise, but the results have been interesting. Congregations are often more positive than their leaders are! The survey raises the issues that reflect the real situations are in. The survey becomes a permission-giving document for everyone. Those who fill it out are given permission to answer honestly. Those who receive the answers are given permission to address the real issues. It stops the process being seen as the leader's latest good idea!

The Church Life Consultant then meets with the leadership group and a process begins of making responses to the survey. This first stage contains small changes that we hope begin to make longer term change possible. The way we explain it is in terms of one degree shifts. If you make enough one degree shifts, you end up at a different destination.

The one degree shifts have included preachers intentionally changing their focus of sermon application. other shifts include the church that has introduced a mentoring scheme for younger Christians, whereby they are partnered with more mature believers where the emphasis is on the way they are living the Christian life. One church changed the format of small groups, to make them more stable and using new resources that allow them to understand the process the church are undergoing. Another group of church leaders heard their church asking for more foundational teaching. However, this was not in terms of 'can you tell us what the Bible means' but 'can you tell us how to understand what the Bible means'. Another realised that they needed to have more stories of what God was doing with people in everyday life, and they have appointed 'in-house journalists' to find these stories.

Further changes are introduced as is appropriate to each church and that are line with the local context.