I saw the following message posted by an association in an attempt to convince congregations to complete the Annual Church Profile. I suspect the message was provided to them by their state or regional convention. I modified the message so as not to reveal its source.
When your congregation needs to confirm its tax-exempt status, your ACP and giving through the Cooperative Program will be checked before confirming your tax-exempt status with the national denomination.
Trustee-appointed positions in [Southern Baptist Convention] life in its national expression are determined with ACP data.
Our denominational office uses this data to order offering materials for Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings.
Our denominational office uses the data to determine messengers (aka delegates) for the annual denominational meeting.
The ACP establishes annual accountability.
Congregations and pastors can use this data to review the history of their congregation and current and past trends.
Only the sixth statement adds spiritual and strategic value to the ministry of congregations. A couple of the others may actually be confusing or misleading.
We must serve congregations
If we are not going back to all-day or even multiple-day annual associational gatherings where narrative stories of congregations are shared, then one thing the ACP must do is serve congregations.
Without clearly serving congregations, the ACP is on a slow death march.
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It must become more valuable to congregations and less of a statistical organizational report focused on helping national agencies and state and regional conventions measure their progress.
The ACP should empower congregations clearly, directly and in a timely manner.
Congregations must understand how their ministries are enhanced by completing the ACP. Otherwise, an increasing number each year will stop completing it. Loyalty to the denomination and the request of their associational office is not enough motivation. It must add helpful value to the ministry of congregations.
Therefore, it must move from serving the national denomination to serving congregations and their associations. It should focus on delivery of the follow-up services with state and regional conventions in collaboration with the associations. It must be done in a timely manner following the completion of the ACP by congregations.
A case study
The following state convention case study is several decades old, but the principles and practices can be adapted to the current day. I was the director of the team that did this.
First, start with the end in mind. Our desired result in collecting and analyzing the ACP reports for our state was to provide each congregation that wanted it with an assessment of its ACP compared to other congregations of its size and context.
Everything we did focused on doing this. Getting the ACP completed for the national convention was a secondary benefit, although we were also highly committed to doing this. However, congregations were always our primary client — as they need to be for your association.
Second, we were assertive about collecting the ACP by Sept. 30 from every possible congregation.
The 12 months for which congregations were asked to report was Sept. 1 of the previous year through Aug. 31 of the current year.
This time frame was not to serve state or regional conventions or the national denomination. It was because associational annual gatherings tended to be during October. This allowed them to have the most up-to-date reports from congregations for this gathering.
Third, we promised congregations that if they would get this report to us by Sept. 30, we would report back to them when the state convention annual meeting was held six weeks later. We would be prepared to print out a report of their congregation in comparison with other congregations of their size and type of community context. These reports also included their five- or 10-year trends.
We could meet with them in the exhibit area during the annual meeting and interpret their report and the trends. Or we could meet by conference call later and even come to their association.
We would also provide them with an updated demographic report of their congregational context and interpret this for them.
This was very hard work, but the goal of serving congregations made it worthwhile.
EDITOR’S NOTE — George Bullard spent 45 years in denominational ministry. He served on the staff of three associations, was a key staff person working with associations in two state conventions and served on the association missions division staff of the former Home Mission Board of the SBC. He retired in June 2022 as director of Columbia Metro Baptist Association in South Carolina. He has led strategic planning processes in more than 100 associations and has written extensively in this area. Bullard now serves as a strategic thinking mentor for Christian leaders through his ForthTelling Innovation ministry and a correspondent for The Baptist Paper.
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