By Jon Martin
Editor’s note: The Annual Church Profile will be made available July 13 to Associations for distribution to their churches. Annual Church Profiles are to be completed no later than the date set by your local Association.
Each year the Mississippi Baptist Convention, in partnership with local Associations, ask every church to complete an Annual Church Profile (ACP) for their congregation. The ACP is a set of questions that are used to help the church, the Association and the State Convention. Currently, only 76% of Mississippi Baptist churches complete an ACP. While this does give us a general understanding of trends for churches in our state, the ACP has many other elements that could benefit the church and the cooperative effort of Southern Baptists if more churches would participate.
I want to suggest a few benefits of the Annual Church Profile that I hope will encourage you to complete it.
The Annual Church Profile Helps You Celebrate. When your church completes its ACP annually, it allows you to look back and be reminded of all that the Lord has done in your congregation through the years. Often, before I speak at a church, I will look at the church’s ten-year profile and find something worth celebrating. An increase in the number of baptisms, consecutive worship or Sunday School growth, or even the number of dollars sent through the Cooperative Program to take the Gospel around the world can be encouraging and motivating to a congregation. Completing your ACP will help you find areas of ministry to celebrate.
The Annual Church Profile Helps You Plan. When I consult with churches that have completed their ACP, I often look at their ACP data. This data will point to specific areas of ministry where more effort may need to be spent. Sometimes we see a plateau in baptisms, reminding the church to consider how they are spending their resources and planning to use them more effectively for local evangelism. I have also worked with churches who have experienced growth in worship attendance, leading them to address space constraints, so that they can better plan for future needs. Completing your ACP provides a historical record of these ministries to help you develop a better plan forward.
The Annual Church Profile Helps Us Stay Connected. In addition to collecting numerical data for your congregation, the ACP also allows for better communication. The Leadership Profile provides space for names, positions, and contact information for the leadership of your church. Despite our digital connectedness, communication seems to be more difficult. Having the names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers for specific ministry leaders helps your Associations and the State Convention communicate training opportunities, provide consultation options, and supply needed resources to those leaders. When you complete the Leadership Profile section of the ACP, you are connecting your leadership to more resources.
The Annual Church Profile Helps Us Build Better Strategies. At the end of each ACP cycle, I always spend time reviewing data. The ACP data gives the Convention and the Association a snapshot of the life of churches and helps us consider the best strategies to assist local churches in accomplishing their mission in their context. This includes creating new resources, training and conferences, consultations, and certain local emphases that could best benefit the local church in making disciples in their communities. The more data that we collect, the more accurate our strategies.
The Annual Church Profile Reminds Us of Cooperation. The Annual Church Profile is not mandatory, but it is certainly not just administrative paperwork. It is a tangible expression of our shared mission, serving as evidence of friendly cooperation envisioned by Article III of the SBC Constitution. As each individual church completes its ACP, the data is combined with the data from other cooperating churches in Mississippi and added to data from cooperating churches around the country. In a very tangible way, it is a demonstration of our combined cooperation. Alone we make a Gospel difference in our communities, together we make a Gospel difference in the world. When you complete your ACP, you aid in our cooperative effort to make disciples in communities throughout the United States and beyond.
Martin is the Chief Strategy Officer of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board. For more information about completing your church’s ACP or to receive a 10-Year Church Profile, contact Vesta Clary at vclary@mbcb.org
Comments are closed.