During our 2012-2015 triennium circuit visits, we uncovered three common concerns held by our pastors and lay leaders: declining worship attendance, aging membership, and financial challenges. We followed these visits up with a survey taken by more than 550 church workers and lay leaders across the district to better understand the strongly held feelings surrounding these key challenges.

Throughout the 2015-2018 triennium, we once again visited our circuits to find out more about the expressed challenges, and focused these visits on developing solutions to address the challenges. Many ideas were shared, and our hope is that this report helps provide a better understanding of the challenges and how they can be addressed in helpful, specific ways.

This report contains the following: the survey results (including the full quantitative results and a helpful synopsis of qualitative results), the responses gathered from the 2015-2018 circuit visits, and a synthesis of some of the best ideas garnered from the most recent circuit visits (along with some practical applications). Our hope is that leaders in our congregations can pull some tangible ideas from this report to address the challenges they are facing.

For each of the expressed challenges, our district staff looked at the data gathered at the 2015-2017 circuit visits, found some of the most common suggestions to address each challenge, then developed a list of action items to put each suggestion into practice. If you need assistance in implementing new ideas, contact a district staff member. Click here to download the report or read it below.