Monday Matters: The Annual Report – an update

Great questions, and timely for me -- you reminded me that I need to write the pastor's report this week for our annual meeting at the end of the month!

To a certain extent, I wonder if every institution is always going to have to have this sort of thing in its life. A mission-oriented church is still going to have a mission statement or something like it, and there is always a need for some sort of governance and accountability.

With that in mind, I suspect that the Annual Report is always going to be at least a little bit about the institution. If that's the case, I think the *content* of the report(s) is going to distinguish a "missional" report more than anything else. The idea of shaping the report around the congregation's mission statement is a great thing, and perhaps that could be extended by asking the entities that report in it to talk about how their work is (or is not) reflective of the congregation's missional priorities.

In all this, you're probably still going to have to have the numbers, statistics, and the like -- but they are almost secondary. They could even be an appendix to back up the content shown elsewhere.

We are so blessed to have you help guide our ministry and mission - very insightful questions! I don't have any answers but I'm willing to help in the discussion :-)

Wow, Jim, those are good questions. I'm going to have to do some thinking there.