Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.
– Japanese Proverb

Missional Assessment is the essential foundation of any missional work. 

According to our research, whether you are starting a new congregation, revitalizing your existing congregation, or simply starting a new ministry, your likelihood of success rests on three things:

1. A clear vision (why your congregation exists),
2. A deep understanding of your congregation and the neighborhoods it serves, and
3. The congregation’s willingness to experiment with new ways of achieving its vision

If any of these pieces are missing, your likelihood of success are limited. 

Missional Assessment improves your congregation’s likelihood of success by providing a way for congregational leadership to put these essential pieces in place.

What Does Missional Assessment Look Like?

FaithX’s Missional Assessment typically process consists of a pre-assessment and three 1-hour Zoom-based sessions:*

Pre-Assessment

About three weeks before the first session, a representative group of congregational leaders and members take the Congregational Vitality Assessment (CVA) a 65-question, online survey that provides a diagnostic assessment of 11 areas of congregational vitality (how healthy it is now) and 2 areas of sustainability (how viable it is in the long term). The CVA takes about 30 mins to complete. The group will have 14 days for every one to take the assessment, then the survey closes and the survey initiator will receive a report containing the score in each of the 13 areas and some recommendations about what they can do about.

Session 1: Assessing Congregational Strengths and Weakness

Program: FaithX consultant meets with congregational leadership to discuss their CVA results, identifying from their scores their congregations top areas of Vitality strength and the Vitality areas most in need of improvement. They will also discuss their Sustainability scores: Internal Sustainability (do they have sufficient human, financial, and enthusiasm resources to stay afloat) and External Sustainability (does the community they serve contain sufficient resources to support a typical congregation).

Homework: Leadership validates what they have learned about their congregation by sharing and discussing these scores with ministry chairs and the congregation.

Session 2: Identifying Neighborhood Missional Opportunities and Challenges

Program: FaithX meets with congregational leadership to study their community using a Neighborhood Insights Report (NIR), an interactive infographic report that contains 40+ demographic essential data points and trends in the neighborhoods the congregation serves. Leadership also may choose to dig deeper into any of the infographics using MissionMaps for Faith Communities, our online, interactive demographic/analytic platform.

Homework: Leadership validates what they have learned about the neighborhoods the congregation serves by going out, two-by-two, into selected neighborhoods and talking with the people in those neighborhoods. An important point: They are not going out to evangelize or ask people to come to their church (this effort will fail if they do). Rather, they are going out to ask people about their hopes, dreams, and issues that they are facing in their neighborhoods, and compare this to what they surmised from the NIR

Session 3: Leveraging Congregational Strengths to Engage Neighborhood Opportunities

Program: In this third and final session with their FaithX consultant, leadership will prayerfully discern which of the congregation’s vitality strengths they can leverage to leverage which neighborhood opportunities in which specific neighborhoods. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to prioritize and select a single strategy to engage a single opportunity in a single neighborhood, then test that strategy in that neighborhood for 90 days (we call this a 90-day MicroStrategy

Homework: Leadership plans and implements the MicroStrategy in the selected neighborhood for 90 days, then evaluates its effectiveness, then plans and implements another MicroStrategy that either builds on its success, tweaks it to make it more effective, or try an entirely different MicroStrategy altogether.

For many congregations, that’s all they need.

But if your congregation needs additional assistance from FaithX, we are just an email away at info@faithx.net

*The 3-session model can be adapted to specific situations.