A Church Assessment FOR THE MISSIONAL PATHWAY

Ready & Willing

The Missional Pathway has been most effective and beneficial when churches meet two criteria. We call them “ready” and “willing.” Here is an assessment of your churches’ readiness and its willingness to be influential in the community, as a church on mission.

 

First, some definitions:

  • Willingness: Heart-felt decision to live on mission individually and collectively.

  • Readiness: Demonstrated ability to sustain change over the long-term.

How to take the assessment:

  1. Take the Ready & Willing Assessment yourself and score your result.

  2. Have each of your staff members and elders take the assessment, then plot your and their “Readiness” and “Willingness” scores on a whiteboard or easel pad sheet. It will resemble a dot plot. Here’s the format:

Scoring the assessment:
There are twelve statements to which you assess your agreement on a scale of 1 to 10. (10 = strongly agree, and 1 = strongly disagree).

Here are the twelve statements. Answer honestly:

  1. The lead pastor has successfully led this church through major change.

  2. The lead pastor embraces leading congregational change as a central and natural part of her or his role.

  3. The elected leadership of the church is confidently aligned behind the lead pastor, without competing factions and schisms.

  4. The congregation has demonstrated its ability to embrace change without major defections, splits, guerrilla warfare, and the like.

  5. The congregation, at least intellectually, affirms the centrality of mission in the life of the ordinary believer. 

  6. Several well-regarded members in the congregation live missionally already. That is, they are routinely engaged in serving the unchurched with whom they have built consistent relationship.

  7. The lead pastor clearly communicates the desire for the church to be engaged in the community.

  8. The lead pastor, as much as possible, is personally active in ministry to those outside the Church.

  9. The elected leadership actively supports the church turning its focus and ministry outward.

  10. The elected leadership have demonstrated the willingness to redirect resources to support ministry to those outside the church body.

  11. The congregation is increasingly supportive of a Christ-centered church culture.

  12. The congregation has demonstrated its willingness to change, even when that change is risky and results are uncertain.

Score your results:

Individually:

  1. Total your scores for statements a – f. This is your “readiness score”.

  2. Total your scores for statements g – l. This is your “willingness score”.

Interpreting the results:
Churches that score above 35 on both the readiness and the willingness axis are most likely to experience great benefit from the Pathway. Those with scores below 35 will require some remedial work, probably a year in duration, to increase deficient characteristics. Contact Novo’s Activate(d) Team to discuss coaching and other appropriate responses.