Welcome to 

First United Methodist Church 

Greetings!

 In the previous Blurbs, we concluded that the Purpose/Mission of First United Methodist Church of Michigan City is to make disciples of Jesus Christ via welcoming-worshiping-nurturing-sending.  We also discussed how having a Vision statement defines what we want to become and by when.  The Vision Statement defines our goals and objectives.  The next step in the process is self-evaluation, both as individuals and as a church.  

Success Factors need to be identified first.  We need to identify those things that are important needs of both potential disciples and current disciples.  They are factors by which any church is evaluated by potential disciples and current disciples as far as satisfying their needs.  Success factors differ based on the age, gender, and level of achieved discipleship.  Therefore, it is important to decide to focus on specific disciple types.  Examples include young adults vs senior adults, children vs teenagers, newcomers vs long-time members, well-versed in the Scriptures vs low in Scripture familiarity.  These are just a few; there are more no doubt.  After the four lists are established, each list should be prioritized in order of importance.

Self-Evaluation is next.  We need to evaluate how well we, both as individuals and as a church, perform each of the success factors.  In the process, we do self-evaluation for each of the key activities (welcoming, worshiping, nurturing, and sending) for each of the target disciple types.  At this point, you may be thinking that this sounds like a lot of work.  Not really.  With passionate disciples that are committed to the church's purpose of making disciples of Jesus Christ, this work can proceed quite easily.

Situation Analysis follows next.  We identify and quantify our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  This is known as the SWOT list.  We do this also for each of the key disciple-making activities and for each of the target disciple types.  Strengths are fun to identify but they may still be able to be improved.  Weaknesses are not fun to identify but they must be lessened or eliminated.  Opportunities are those things that are available to benefit from or take advantage of.  Threats are those things that need to be countered to avoid damage.

In the next Blurb, we will discuss developing strategies to improve strengths, offset weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and eliminate threats.

Please give me a phone call or send me an email to share your thoughts on the above.  Your feedback is important.

May God Bless You All,

Lance Domke

ljdomke@comcast.net

879-1599