Where Are We As A Church?
Thursday, January 7th, 2010Ministry Toolbox is a software package that the church purchases from the Kentucky Baptist Convention for $200. The church owns the software and can administer the survey yearly or as often as they want without additional cost to the church.
Many teams at Kentucky Baptist Convention are starting to use Ministry Toolbox which includes a congregational 46 question survey of 12 key areas of church life, thus addressing the question, “Where are we as a church?” (worship, evangelism, Sunday school, culture, discipleship, ministry stewardship, vision, fellowship, missions, student ministry, and administration)
There are project suggestions a church can implement to enhance each of the 12 areas (Up to 20 for each key area). This helps answer the question, “How can we improve?”
Each project idea comes with a step by step action plan summary to accomplish the project.
The survey results help the church see the difference between their perceptions and actual behaviors. Most surveys are not behavior based but only deal with perceptions.
Survey Reports help the church compare the difference in leaders’ perceptions and scores versus those the of the entire congregation.
There are three types of questions on the survey:
1. General perception questions (How I feel the church as a whole is doing in each of the 12 areas).
2. Personal perception questions (How I feel I am doing in each of the 12 areas).
3. Behavior based questions (What I am actually doing in each of the 12 areas).
Using the behavior grouping report ministry leaders could begin asking “What can I do to increase the presence of this behavior in our church?” (Example: A report showed that 6% of the people keep a list of names of people they hope to reach. A ministry leader could challenge his Sunday School Class to develop a “10 Most Wanted List” and place it in their Bibles to pray for the 10 people they most want to see come to Christ.)
For more information regarding Ministry Toolbox, email Alan Witham, Team Leader for Church Development at Alan.Witham@kybaptist.org