Among the many tools made available as part of the Acts 1:8 Challenge emphasis is the MAP Church instrument designed to help churches develop their missions involvement. MAP Church stands for “Missional Assessment Profiles” for churches. It is a tool that uses surveys filled out by your church members to measure the missions awareness and involvement in the local church as perceived by the members, staff, leadership teams, or selected groups. Questions are presented to participants via an Internet e-mail link to a web survey. Participants may select English, Spanish, or Korean language translations.
In order to be able to recommend this tool to others with confidence, I requested special permission to register as a fictitious church and go through the entire process from registration to final evaluation. I can tell you that I was not only impressed with the content and practical application this tool offers, but I was equally impressed with how easy it was to implement. All you have to do to register your church is go to the website www.mapchurch.com. Once you are set up your designated administrator invites as many church members as desired (minimum of 15) to participate by entering their e-mail addresses. Separate reporting of special groups such as deacons, staff, etc., is offered if a church wants to compare their responses with the congregation’s.
There are two instruments to chose from. “Church MAP” is a more complete assessment that uses 126 questions to evaluate nine main areas of the church such as evangelism, discipleship, prayer, and missions. “Missions MAP” is more specific to missions awareness and designed to be used in combination with the Acts 1:8 Challenge process. It measures involvement and awareness level in the four areas: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the World.
Once the administrator is satisfied that a sufficient number of surveys have been completed, the survey portion of the assessment is brought to an end and evaluation forms are prepared. These evaluation results help church leaders identify strengths and weaknesses in the specified areas within the church and also suggest resources to address the needs discovered by the instrument.
MAP CHURCH is a partnership between the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board. It is available at NO COST to church consultants, individual churches, local associati0ns, state conventions, seminaries, and agencies.
