Outline of MAP Process:

Stage One Review:

Prayerful listening x 3

  1. Holy Spirit– prayer days/groups/walking area/focus for whole church
  2. Local context/community–
  • Statistics from Church Urban Fund, Office of National Statistics, Local Council.
  • Listening to people from local community – audit of wider perceptions of community both of area and of church, identify possible areas for loving service, action/collaboration with others, possibility of hostingconversations, developing relationships with community networks, dynamic organisations/individuals.
  1. Church–members perceptions of our church, local area and opportunities for mission

Tools for Church Audit:

  1. SWOT
  • Strengths - identify what is life giving, gifts, mission projects already started or established (focus of MAP might be growing and developing these)
  • Weaknesses - areas that may require attention (question of how many of these go into MAP and how many should be flagged for attention of PCC but not in MAP)
  • Opportunities – where does church have potential to grow mission to wider community
  • Threats – (frequently these are around scarcity of resources: Buildings/Finance/People/Time/Skills but may also include culture or mind-set of church where outward focus and change not easily embraced)

Other Tools for Church Audit:

B. 7 signs of healthy church in The Healthy Churches’ Handbook, by Robert Warren;

  1. Four Marks of Vital Congregations developed by Diocese of Oregon;
  2. National Church Development – Christian Schwarz;
  3. Five Marks of Mission

Stage Two Choose:(see template)

Prayerful discernment

Values:underpins all we do (tool for discipleship)

Mission:what we are here for/our purpose

Vision:What we believe God is calling our church to become in three to five years time. This vision is particular to your context and your discernment of how God wants you to engage in mission.

Three Priorities/Goals to reach our vision in next three to five years. Under each priority identify asequence of smart goals/main action focus, for next three to five years.

Stage Three Plan:(see template)

Prayerful ownership

  • Priority Goals for this year: 3 - 5 maxdepending on the action required to achieve these goals. “The demands of MAP must not be beyond what we have the energy or capacity to do or to develop” (Appendix 2 How to do Mission Action Planning, Mark Chew and Mark Ireland).

SMART goals and detailed action planning for Year One.

  • For each goal one lead person must be identified to recruit and co-ordinate a small team to action goal (incumbent should not be default person).
  • Each goal must be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced and Time bound, specifics named in plan and agreed by PCC.
  • Plan for communication and regular updates on progress/problems to PCC and wider church.
  • Plan dates and process for review and MAP 2. (Some goals will take longer than one year and can be updated as part of review process).

Priority goals for next year: it may be helpful to outline 3 - 5 goals for second year, building on the first, knowing you will be revisiting these after Year One). It isn’t practical to do detailed planning beyond two years.

SMART goals and action planning for Year Two

  • Priorities identified – and some areas of SMART outlined but not all, i.e. person and resources might not yet be identified, but dependent on Year One outcomes.

Communication to wider church: Sunday services, postcards, parish notice boards and website, booklet for congregation members to fill in with options for how they can be involved

Stage Four Action:

Prayerful action, reflection and celebration

  • Communication of progress and problems to PCC, concrete stories of what is happening to wider church and parish
  • Ongoing review and reflection as part of action process to feed into AGM and annual review of MAP
  • Celebrating what has been achieved.

Annual Review of MAP:

Reviewing your MAP after a year provides a useful reality check, learning opportunity and chance to celebrate what has been achieved and learned. It is often not until churches get to this point of reflecting on their experience that understanding and ownership of the MAP process really begins. It is important to stress that this isn’t about failure or success but about learning from what happened, so that the learning can be applied to the next stage of the journey.

1. Evaluating Our Goals and Objectives

  • How far did we achieve our stated objectives?
  • What did success look like?
  • Were our success criteria set too high or low?
  • What can we celebrate?
  • Were there other objectives that were not written down?

2. Where are we now?

  • If we accomplished our objectives why was that?
  • If we didn’t what do we think were the reasons for this?
  • Were resources overstretched?
  • Was there sufficient support?
  • Were there sufficient reviews of progress?
  • Was there adequate communication?

3. What does this mean for how we should revise our MAP?

  • What can we learn from and build on?
  • What do we need to do differently next time?
  • Where do we need additional support, training and resources?