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

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.

Kay Kotan, PCC, is the director of Congregational Development for the Susquehanna Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, and she has a passionate approach to teaching, consulting, and coaching. As one called to serve from a laity role, she offers a unique perspective for church and leadership development that is informed by her diverse background serving in corporate America, owning her own businesses, lay leadership in the local church, traveling the nation as an author and speaker, and now serving as a conference director. Kay is married to Bob Kotan, and they have an adult son, Cameron.

Phil Schroeder is the director of Congregational Development for the North Georgia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Phil graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and then studied at Emory University, where he received an MBA and an MDiv. During his Doctor of Ministry work at the United Theological Seminary, he completed three books titled Using the Five Senses to Tell God's Story: Children's Sermons for the New Common Lectionary--Years A, B & C. He is also the coauthor of The Stewardship Journey, The Capacity for More, and More than Just One Neighbor. Phil and his wife, Elizabeth, have been married for more than thirty years and have three children, Daniel, Kathryn, and Paul.