Every Church Is Unique
A recent multisite epiphany was that while a global vision for all campuses saturated our work, in practice, each campus had executed slightly different growth strategies. Essentially, each one had different growth engines due to its unique context, leadership team, congregational composition and campus origin story.
While this was an early lesson in multisite ministry, the concept is true in any church context—large or small, traditional or innovative, urban or rural. Every church has unique advantages and disadvantages due to the internal and external factors that together account for its character, composition and context.
SWOT Analysis
Recall that a SWOT Analysis includes four areas:
Identifying the top 3 growth engines for any church is all about uncovering its unique advantages and then developing a strategic plan to capitalize on those natural strengths. Conversely, it’s about minimizing disadvantages and taking proactive steps to address concerns that might cause trouble for your church.
So how do you leverage a church’s growth engines for maximum effect?
Identify the Top 3
The key to understanding a church’s growth engines starts with reflection, internal research and self-assessment. It’s often true that the things a church does well are its best kept secret. Everyone knows what they are because the character and identify of the church is inextricably welded to them.
Identifying the top 3 can happen in several ways:
Build a Strategy
Recognize that your church is uniquely gifted to reach segments of its community in at least four ways:
Building a strategy for your top 3 growth engines is the nuts-and-bolts application of creativity, inspiration and knowledge. It’s tied to an executing skillset informed by all the ways the church is uniquely gifted and positioned to reach its community.
Ask these questions as you build your strategy:
Define Lead Measures
Once you have a strategic plan, then determine measures that show success or failure.
The key question is whether or not your ministry action plan is working. For most churches the answer is a mixture of yes and no. Some strategies will work and some won’t. Build on ministry success and commit to adjust strategies and plans that fail to get you where you need to go.
Ask a few simple questions:
Sample 1, Campus Growth Summary
Sample 2, Campus Growth Summary
Sample 3, Campus Growth Summary
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