pat loughery

Every year at this time we do a church wide health survey. I created it myself, based heavily upon the ideas in Natural Church Development. We look at the same 8 essential characteristics of healthy churches as Schwartz’ book does, but I don’t use their survey because 1) it’s too expensive for us, and 2) we don’t have enough respondents for the data to be accurate.

Those 8 essentials are:

Quality Characteristic #1) Empowering Leadership (Does leadership in the church serve to identify, equip, empower the body? Or is it merely administrative or project-focused?)
Quality Characteristic #2) Gift-Oriented Ministry (Do the members of the body know their spiritual gifts, and serve according to their gifting?)
Quality Characteristic #3) Passionate Spirituality (Do the members of the body have authentic, passionate spiritual lives, or are they going through the motions of ritual?)
Quality Characteristic #4) Functional Structures (Do authority structures serve to grow the body, or do they exist for reasons that aren’t practically applicable for this individual group?)
Quality Characteristic #5) Inspiring Worship Gatherings (Are people connecting with God during the times that the church gathers?)
Quality Characteristic #6) Holistic Small Groups (Do small groups which worship, encourage, pray, study, apply Scripture to daily life exist? Do people feel connected to God and others in the groups?)
Quality Characteristic #7) Need-Oriented Evangelism (Do the members of the body see evangelism as natural and healthy, and do those with the gift of evangelism practice it? Do people build relationships with the missing?)
Quality Characteristic #8) Loving Relationships (Do the members of the body feel loved? Does the church laugh together? Do people really know each other?)

I put together a survey of around 45 questions on these 8 topics, and we’re asking people to fill them out by the end of this coming Sunday. We’ll then summarize the results in our annual business meeting & potluck on the weekend before Super Bowl.

Early returns are in. I’m getting hammered on #1: Empowering Leadership. That section contains these questions:

1. Our pastor and leaders equip and empower me for ministry.
2. Our pastor and leaders assist me in attaining the spiritual potential God has for me.
3. Our pastor and leaders invest the majority of their time in discipleship, delegation and multiplication.
4. I know what our church’s vision is, and how I can participate in fulfilling that vision.

We ask people to respond in numbers from 1 to 100, strongly disagree to strongly agree.

I’m not surprised – as you saw by my previous to-do list, I’ve let myself get trapped into a schedule containing a lot of administrative tasks, and my ongoing discipleship and mentoring and spiritual direction tasks have slowed.

Part of the reason that one of my goals for 05 was to reread Eugene Peterson is that he does a fantastic job of convicting me about pastoral responsibilities :-). I’m waiting, waiting for the package from Bean Books to arrive…

I also spent all of last evening with a lovely family from church, handing off the responsibility of tracking membership and offerings; updating our website with birthdays and anniversaries; and best of all, doing a weekly bulletin. Last weekend out of the blue I got a volunteer to take over the bulletin work, and I asked about the first two possibilities as well. Done and done. Last night was training, round #1.

I already feel more free.