ASSESSING YOUR CURRENT CULTURE

Take some time to answer the questions below.  You might want to also print out a couple of extra copies to share with your leadership team or other groups in your church/organization in order to get multiple points of view.

(1)	Values

•	Do you have a list of stated values?
•	Are they prioritized?
•	Which ones are talked about most often?

(2)	Vision – What is your church’s stated vision?

•	Is it unique to the church, or borrowed language?
•	Was it developed by a leader in seclusion, or as a shared effort?
•	How it is expressed? (words, pictures, building, money?)

(3)	Mission – What is your church’s stated mission?

•	How well is it understood?

by staff?
by key influencers?
by the congregation at large?

•	How deeply is the mission owned?

by staff?
by key influencers?
by the congregation at large?

•	Who do we say is our target audience?

(4)	What do we say about ourselves?
•	What do we say we do well/do poorly?

•	What do we emphasize as we talk about:

our values
our vision
our dreams for the future
our traditions 
our relationships
our imagery
our heroes (internal/external; past/present/future)

(5)	What do others say about us? 

•	People in the community
•	Other churches in our community 
•	New staff members
•	New members (ask a few new members what drew them to the church and what caused them to decide to stay)
•	Exit interview discussions (contact people who have left the church for reasons other than geographic relocation and ask why they left; ask the same of people who resigned from ministry/volunteer positions but stayed at the church)

(6)	What do we emphasize in our ministries?

•	Which ones do we think are most successful?
•	Which ones do we think are not successful?
•	Which ones get the most public mention?

 (7)	What do we emphasize in our budgets?

•	What do the numbers say we emphasize?
Give a rough estimate of the % of budget allocated to the major budget categories: e.g. administration; staff; ministry; mission, etc.

(8)	What do we emphasize in our time?

•	What does the use of staff time, program time, meeting time, etc., say we emphasize?

(9)	What do we emphasize in our personnel resources?

•	What do staff allocations emphasize?
•	Where do we put our best non-paid leaders?

(10)	What do we emphasize in our motivation & evaluation?

•	How do we evaluate & reward staff?
•	How do we evaluate & reward non-paid leaders?
•	How do we evaluate & celebrate our church’s progress?

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