5. Case studies
Circuit A
A circuit of more than twenty churches, formed three years previously, felt that the time was right to initiate a strategic review. The circuit meeting formed a steering group for the review, and invited me to be a member of the steering group and to facilitate the review.
A team of ten people, several of whom were local preachers, were trained by me to facilitate a review in each church that would be conducted after a church lunch, following morning worship that would be on a missional theme, have a number of strands to it:
- We would ask people to describe in short phrase what they felt their community was like, leaving them to define was meant by ‘their community’
- We would then show some key statistics from the latest census material for the area around the church and invite them to reflect on anything that surprised them from the figures when compared to their own perceptions.
- Thirdly the group would be invited to describe what they felt about their own church, again using short phrase
- Finally, we would undertake a review based on the healthy Churches’ handbook. The aim of this was to invite people to indicate how they felt there church measured up against the seven marks of a healthy church.
Following the review day, all of the written material was then returned to me so that I could present a summary of the responses back to the churches a few weeks later.
Again, the response day was to be a conversation led by the facilitators, with the aim of discerning where there was a real passion for change and people who were willing to do something.
Once the exercise was complete in all of the circuit churches, it was then possible to produce an overall summary for the circuit as a whole.
In addition to the church reviews the circuit meeting was invited to perform a similar exercise, but for the circuit rather than the churches and using the Healthy Circuits handbook as the basis. I facilitated this session.
Finally, the circuit staff engaged in a healthy Circuit review, which I facilitated.