Congregational Development

Current Ministry Assessment

Before you know where you are going, it's important to objectively establish where your are today. To assess your church's current state, you need to evaluate your current ministries and surrounding environment by asking questions such as:

• Where has God called us to serve?
• What are our strengths and gifts?
• What challenges and roadblocks do we face?
• What's working and what needs to be changed or improved?

Your church's current ministry assessment should consider both internal factors and ministries as well as external influences. Internal factors include your strengths and weaknesses -- what you can do well and what you don't. External factors to examine might include demographic or economic changes in the surrounding neighborhood or shifts in religious attitudes in your area.

It's particularly important to create an honest and objective picture of your current ministries during this process. Too often church planning committees are prone to think about "the way we were" in better times, or the how they think they ought to be. These tendencies should be avoided; there will be ample opportunity for visioning later.

Census data, surveys and historical parochial reports are good sources of background information for starting to assess your church's current state. The diocesan coaches can also assist in your evaluation by offering an objective - yet supportive - view of your church.

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