Congregational and Diocesan Development Issues

The purpose of this blog is to promote discussion of some ideas which I think will promote the development of first world churches, and through debate to improve those ideas. To follow the flow of my logic, read forward from the first entry; entries which form the cornerstones of my thought are flagged with "KEY--", and are listed below with a short summary of the key idea. Kindly share your suggestions and improvements with me, and I will adjust the contents accordingly. Thank you for your participation! (Direct email contact is also welcome.)

• KEY--Why are congregations weak?
  (Mostly due to defects in the culture of the judicatory: unclear mission/vision, ineffective structures, misaligned incentives, and lack of support, all of which lead to a low quality "product".)
• KEY--Correcting diocesan weaknesses
  (A summary explanation of what is involved in correcting those defects.)
• KEY--Correcting the weakness of congregations
  (How to move away from a "laisser faire" leadership style at the diocesan level in a way that has organisational legitimacy.)
• KEY--Setting Targets (Overview)
  (Dioceses now measure mostly finances and attendance, if they measure anything. Some suggestions on better measures which should have a cause and effect relationship towards wholistic growth, a Balanced Scorecard.)
• KEY--Sample Benefits from a Balanced Scorecard
  (Illustrating what wholistic growth would look like: much more than just more money or more people in church!)
• KEY--Cause and Effect for Laurentian Congregational Revitalisation
  (Shows the linkage between the different strategic activities in Laurentian churches, and growth in organisational, spiritual, financial and participatory health.)

Every Protestant mainline judicatory that I have encountered gathers some form of statistics on its congregations. Most of them do little or nothing with the data, unfortunately. (Please comment if your diocese uses your stats in useful ways, including your email address, and I will add a page of "valuable exceptions" to my general statement; I am also working to design a Strategic Information Database for the Anglican Church of Canada, which would provide useful analytic reports--more on this in a later post!)

In our work with the Laurentian Deanery, we have tried to identify all of the information which we need in order to identify the potential (internal and external) of congregation. We call this our Congregational Summary Report, and it includes both a text description and the Niagara Assessment as described before, as well as the more statistical data, falling into the following general categories:

1. Attendance (Average Sunday Attendance, Persons in Adult Faith-Education or -Sharing Groups, Sunday School Attendance, Total Visitors of All Kinds and With Potential to Become Members, and trends; it should show the average age distribution of attenders)
2. Membership (Total members, New Members in the Last X years, Average Loss of Members per year, Age Distribution of Members, Trends)
3. Givings (Identified Givers and Average Contribution, Committed Givers (envelope or known to be regular) and Average Contribution, New Givers per year, Total Givings and Total Committed Givings)
4. Finances (Revenues, Percent of Revenues by Source, Expenses, Percent of Revenues Given Away, Savings, Savings as a Percent of Expenses, Endowment, Debt, Trends, Value of All Assets, Regularity in Paying Assessment, Percent that Salaries are above Minimum)
5. Demographics for both the Primary and Secondary Catchment Areas (Census data on Number of Residents and their Average Family Income, Number of non-Census Weekenders, if applicable and theirAverage Family Income, Age Distribution of Primary Census population)
6. Other Churches (How many, and what average attendance)
7. Quality (Rating scales for Welcoming, Preaching, Congregational Climate, Pastoral Care, Building Maintenance, Care of the Needy; should have Worship Quality)
8. Miscellaneous (Seating capacity, Attendace season)
   

These measures, taken together and in conjunction with the Niagara Scale and the written description, provide a good description of the congregation, and permit comparisons to a baseline over the years. View the single page with this data only; view the full 5-page Congregational Summary Report for a sample congregation.