Small Church Checkup: Assessing Your Church's Health and Creating a Treatment Plan

by Kay Kotan, Phil Schroeder

Many small membership churches today are faced with the sobering reality of attendance loss and overall decline. This resource provides a guide to help you find hope, alternatives, and the possibility of a new beginning. Included are tools to help you measure your church's vitality, evaluate the results, and diagnose your church's condition, along with several options for treatment plans as you seek to faithfully serve your community. Remember that we can choose our story. If we believe in our hearts there is another possibility, we can be faithful in choosing intentional pathways forward that honor God, the church founders, and generations to come. Follow the steps outlined in these pages to evaluate where you are and what the next steps on your journey need to be as you seek to be a "not yet big church," "a stable, small church," or a church that chooses to close and be repurposed for unexpected new life.

Genres: Church

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and Impressions Unlimited (mystery worshiper company). She is also the creator of The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community. Kay has also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging.
She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for 29 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron.

Reviews

[Bill Hooten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book, but it was more concerned with a part of the life cycle of a church -- that I was not interested in. They were talking about a church that was dying, and how they should go about closing a church. What I found to be exceptionally interesting, was the forms and questionaires that had to do with status and future of a local church. I do believe, if you are working with a small church, this would be book that was worthwhile for you to read.

[Janet · Rating 1 out of 5]

The authors use a medical analogy for assessing the health of a church. This didn't particularly resonate with me. I also didn't like the way churches seemed to be treated like businesses to be built up. I believe that the focus should on discipleship and prayerfully seeking God's direction.

[Alex Joyner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kay Kotan and Phil Schroeder, both directors of Congregational Development for United Methodist annual conferences, know the interplay we have with our doctors. The ways we appreciate their knowledge and yet resist making the changes they recommend. The ways we often come around when they can get us to face the facts. That’s why Kotan and Schroeder use a medical metaphor to diagnose options in their new book Small Church Checkup: Assessing Your Church’s Health and Creating a Treatment Plan [Discipleship Resources, 2018].

Sometimes your doctor needs to shock you into recognition that there is a problem, and that’s where the authors of this book start on the first page. Quoting Charita Goshay, they say, “an estimated 80 percent of churches are flat or declining; 5,600 close every year.” (15) That’s the future for churches that believe that they can just get by on the way they’ve always done it before. But Kotan and Schroeder want to offer a way forward:

“We can choose our story. We do not have to allow our story to unfold without our intervention, intentionality, faithfulness, and prayer. We can choose.” (15)

What follows over the course of the next brisk ten chapters is a practical guide to diagnosing your congregation’s condition and choosing a course towards a different future...

Read my full review on Heartlands...https://alexjoyner.com/2018/07/24/sma....

[Jeff Bobin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay as a basic introduction to making a church health assessment but has no depth.

The treatment plans are way to basic to be helpful with almost no detail on how to go about the process.

Good introduction but nothing more.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great step by step guide for leaders to examine the heart and fruit of churches