Revitalizing Existing Congregations

As part of the strategic plan to revitalize existing Kansas Churches a report was given about two areas where the Annual Conference is working to make progress.

Church Transformation Survey

A Church Transformation Survey was sent out to congregations of the Annual Conference. The hope is that this continued process will give us the ability to look at ourselves honestly as a congregation and also as an Annual Conference. Here are some of the results of that survey.

Out of those congregations surveyed…

1. 11 – declining
2. 194 – maintaining
3. 2 – transforming

The focus is not on the designation, but the process that is taking place. I found this to be an interesting statistic. It was recognized that the amount of maintaining congregations is not necessarily a bad statistic. I suppose that the results of this survey are a sign of the conference going on to perfection.

On a 5 point scale, here are some of the scores of the congregations of the Annual Conference:

Strength Areas

1. Small Groups – 4.55
2. Apportionments – 4.26
3. Mission Ministry – 4.14

Growth Areas

1. Leadership Training – 1.26
2. Rotation of Leaders – 1.45
3. Guest Follow-Up – 1.60
4. Children / Youth / YA – 1.91

Lowest score on leadership training, this is not a good sign. The raising up of leaders is a crucial part of the continuing vitality of any organization and includes faith communities and conferences. However, I do think that there has been recognition of this need as a part of the strategic plan. One of the important ways to address this is the leadership incubator.

Leadership Incubator

From the Kansas West site about the Leadership Incubator:

“The L3 Leadership Incubator system, key to the Kansas Area’s plan to strengthen existing congregations, is a sustainable, peer-group-based, mission-driven, leadership development programs that will include 212 congregations across the state over the next three years.”

Three key areas that the leadership incubator is seeking to address:

1. Creating environments for change
2. Establishing processes that produce fruit
3. Become spiritual leaders

There was a pilot group in both the Kansas West and Kansas East conferences and the design of the plan is that each of the participants in these groups will start a group in the local congregation or facilitate another group – thus creating
an exponential spread of this training and experience.