SUNDAY SCHOOL GROWTH  EVALUATION MANUAL

This Growth Evaluation Manual can be of great help to help you plan the future growth of your Sunday School Church. How can one think clearly and creatively about growth until they know some basic matters such as:

"Where are we now?"

"What was our Sunday School doing a year ago? Five years ago?"

"Have we increased or declined in past years?"

"What is our attitude as a church body toward growth today?"

"Where do we want to be in a year? 5 years?"

It has often been said, "If you don't know where you want to go, then any old road will take you there. Over the years as a pastor, I often trained my staff to set goals and to build a plan to reach them. In my manual "The Sunday School Manual." There is a chapter titled "Start With A Plan", and another chapter titled "Growth Is Caused". I wrote these two chapters first, because I believe that growth without a plan and goals is impossible. I also believe that building a plan without a through evaluation is often a waste of one's time. The information which you will compile through this evaluation will help you to answer questions such as "Is your church in a decline or growth pattern?" It will give you valuable information to help you to build your own personal five year growth plan for your church.

Often times we know we are in trouble, but we do not know why. The first thing that must be done is to find out where you are, then you can begin to evaluate your weak spots so that they can be corrected. A good example of this is that in one pastorate I assumed they were losing in excess of $100,000 annually in their Christian School. From the conception of the school to the point I became pastor the loss had exceeded one million dollars. The school was draining all of the resources of the church. They had five gallon buckets to catch the water from the leaks in the roof all over the property, including the auditorium. The parking lot was sinking as it had been built on top of a good number of springs. There were many serious problems that needed to be resolved, but there was no money. The Christian School was draining every penny they had. The problem was that no one could figure out where the money was being lost. I hired a Christian School Consultant and brought him to our church for two days. He asked questions, went over what financial records were available, evaluated every class, figured the teacher to pupil ratios, got statistics on our buses as to what we were charging for bus service, how full each bus was,  he evaluated our cafeteria, sports programs, music department, etc. Three weeks later we received his 30 page evaluation report. In that report he showed us where we were heavy in salaries, how much money the cafeteria was losing annually, that the buses were losing money, that for the size of our school we had twice the sports program that we could afford, etc. In order for him to do this he had to departmentalize every area of our school. He separated the pre-school, elementary school, and the high school. He separated all other areas such as busing, cafeteria, print shop, wood shop, music department, sports programs, etc. He then was able to show the income and the expenses "By Department". When that was done "where all the money was being lost stuck out like a sore thumb". There was absolutely no way to correct a massive problem such as a $100,000.00 annual financial loss without an evaluation first. With the evaluation we then laid out a plan of action to begin reducing the deficit. In order to "stop" a decline in your membership and income you must first evaluate your church to find out what has taken place If your growth is stagnate there must be an evaluation to find out why. The point is that you cannot improve something if you do not know "where" the problems are. The purpose of this evaluation is to help you to come up with the vital information to enable you to correct problems areas and to help you to lay out a 5 year plan of growth.

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