Mission Audits

Background

The Mission Audit is an in-depth tool developed over many years' experience in 'hands-on' evangelism by Pete Gilbert. Pete leads Inspire, one of Pioneer's networks of churches, is a part of Pioneer's leadership team (National Churches Forum) and heads up Pioneer's primary leadership and discipleship course DNA. He has been involved in full-time evangelism since 1978, over which time Pete has pioneered novel forms of mission (e.g. escapology!) and through various media (author of 7 books, numerous magazine articles, broadcasting, DVD productions, etc).


Pete's passion is to see people find faith and relationship in Jesus, and grow on into wholeness and fruitfulness in Him through the process of discipleship. As the church is God's primary carrier of the Kingdom of God, and the vehicle for evangelism and discipleship, Pete's desire is to effectively serve local churches in their evangelism, in evangelistic training, with evangelistic strategies and evangelically appropriate structure. To this end Pete regularly serves 12 churches and has been personally involved in planting 3 churches.


Overview

The Mission Audit is one way of delivering these passionate convictions at a very practical and accessible level. It involves an in depth internal and external look at the church and its territory, as well as an analysis of its existing teams, structures and training needs. The audit offers no short-term solution; the church engages with a process over an 18 month period. Which includes monitoring and evaluation. The audit produces a report recommending action a the level of training in evangelism, doing evangelism, strategy for evangelism and church structure and evangelism. Whilst the church of course retains the right and the initiative to implement that set of recommendations.


Delivery

Typically (though flexibly) the Mission Audit begins with a visit from Pete to the church's core leadership team to share heart, vision and values of the audit, and to explore if there is a God connection relationally.


If so, the second step deliberately exposes Pete to the whole church usually through their Sunday meeting, again to check and establish relational connections. Where the church is well known to Pete and he to them this second step is unnecessary.


The third step generates a very details written report from the church's core team stimulated by a comprehensive questionnaire provided by Pete.


The fourth step engages the whole church in a questionnaire aimed at investigating the members connection with the church vision for evangelism, their personal vision for evangelism, their experience of evangelism and their perceived need for evangelism training.


The fifth step consists of a questionnaire given to not-yet-Christian friends and contacts of church members, to evaluate their experience of the church and its impact on community.


Step six collates all the information gained in Steps three to five and generates the next part of the Audit process.


Step seven, typically held over a weekend visit, affords an opportunity for Pete to individually interview key leaders, key church members (e.g. with community access, youth and children's workers, youth, not-yet-Christian contacts, key ministries, etc) and to tour the church's individual community.


The eighth step draws from Steps three to seven to deliver detailed reflections to the church's Core Team and their apostolic link person. These reflections will usually cover a minimum 18-24 month period of proposed implementation, all at the discretion of the local leadership.


Finally, the ninth step ensures that Pete remains available to the church and its leadership over that 18-24 month period for monitoring, input and evaluation as required.


Details

Costs of the Mission Audit are self-determined by the church in discussion with pete, but are typically around £1,000-£2,000 for the whole package.


Dates are negotiable with Pete, and on average Steps one to eight take between 3 to (more usually) 6 months. Stage nine is usually 18-24 months.


All of these stages are flexible and negotiable between Pete and the church.


Commendations

John Doohan – LiFE Church, Harlington:

"Pete Gilbert carried out an evangelistic audit in LiFE Church commencing in June 2006 and completing June 2007 with 145 recommendations.

Local demographic and needs research was required to form a firm basis for the audit but Pete’s experience and spiritual discernment was really evident throughout the whole process.

Since publication the leadership and members have been working through the report recommendations and have been able with the Lord’s blessing to implement 120 to date.

The results of working through the implementation of the recommendations have been excellent in the following ways:

The new focus gave the whole church direction through a period of great uncertainty.
Working through implementing the recommendations gave us all a real sense of progress.
Consequentially the church has grown in spiritual unity and numerically.
Pete has walked with us though the whole process and a firm relationship has formed.
As a church we firmly believe that “by their fruits shall you know them” and fruits there have been in abundance!

An evangelistic audit is not a quick fix (total process may take up to 5 years for full implementation) and requires input from numerous sources- in our case other local churches and non-christians from the community we serve.

Looking back with hindsight, LiFE Church has changed shape and is better equipped to serve Gods Kingdom.

www.lifechurch-beds.co.uk "

Jo Wood – Hertford Community Church

"Hertford Community Church underwent an 'evangelism audit' in 2004 and five years on, we still return to the process and the findings when praying through our missional goals and strategy. Not only did it produce something incredibly helpful and insightful, but the actual practice and process of cultivating so much information was eye-opening for us as leaders. I would whole-heartedly commend any church serious about evaluating its evangelistic strengths, weaknesses and God-given opportunities to undertake a mission audit. But prepare to be challenged!"


Contact Details:

Pete Gilbert