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Context

Understanding the context for your ministry is the next step of the process in the Incubator Ministry Action Plan. During the four sessions of Context you will be moving towards making an assessment of your congregation. This will be the most intense time of work in the Incubator process. You will use two main tools during the four sessions related to Context:

I. Understanding Your Context

Understanding Your Context is a downloadable document that contains worksheets you can use to examine the demographics of your community. It also gives you forms you can use when you visit restaurants and other churches to get a picture of whom they are trying to reach.

The Understanding Your Context template has a form you can use with the U.S. Census to get a quick picture of your community. For more in-depth analysis, you may want to go to your denominational representative. For example, United Methodists can go to www.newchurchUMC.org and click on the Research Office button under the General Board of Global Ministries to get additional information about their church and community.

II. Church Assessment

In preparation for Session Fourteen: Assessment Results, you will need to do a church assessment. Here are some factors to look at in preparation:

1. In Session Fourteen you will share the results from a Church Assessment tool. You will need to decide what tool you will use. You may choose to use the Church Vitality Indicator. By virtue of the purchase of the L3 Leadership Incubator Kit, you have a one-year subscription. To use the Church Vitality Indicator, go to www.cvindicator.com to set up your church. Type in your email and the passcode you used when first registered on the L3 website.
   
   
2. If you are using another tool, like Natural Church Development or Gallup, follow the instructions related to that tool with the goal of having the results by Session Fourteen.
   
   
3. If you are in a pastors’ Incubator or a regional Incubator, and you are planning to the use the Church Vitality Indicator, participants will either need to purchase the L3 Leadership Incubator Kit (which includes a one-year subscription to CVI), or they will need to go to www.cvindicator.com to subscribe. There is no credit towards the purchase of the L3 Kit if you buy the CVI first. They are two separate products.
   
   
4. If you are using the Church Vitality Indicator, go to www.cvindicator.com and familiarize yourself with the tool. If you use the Church Vitality Indicator, you will need to do a congregational survey and then spend four hours with a leadership group in your church to do a discernment process related to the results of your survey. This will need to be done outside of your Incubator work.

Along with these tools are some basic assignments similar to what you have done in previous sessions. Here is a template that has all the questions related to Context.

• Third Way (Download PDF)
• Experience (Download PDF)
• Lifecycle (Download PDF)
• Assessment (Download PDF)
• Context Template (Zip file)