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filler@godaddy.com
Thank you for using our EGI Assess tool. We are excited about the potential impact this information and these questions can have on your church or organisation, enabling you to make a greater, more meaningful, and lasting difference!
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or if you’d like to explore further opportunities to enhance your organisation or church.
How to use this tool:
We encourage you to review the areas that received lower scores (you can refer to your one-page summary for a consolidated view of all your scores) and use these insights as a valuable opportunity for internal reflection and growth. Consider engaging your team for their input, which can provide a deeper understanding of how to improve in these areas.
If you would like additional support, we would be happy to arrange a meeting to discuss your results in detail and help identify the root causes of any challenges you may be facing.
Guiding Questions
1. How could you improve the opportunities people have to engage with you?
2. Could you serve more people? What's holding you back?
3. Could you improve the quality or variety of the programmes or ministry you deliver?
Why is this important? Effectiveness is the ultimate measure by which to evaluate your work. Whether you have access to the people you wish to serve (or they have access to you) is important because this will influence the limits of your ministry. How many you serve is an indication of how well you engage people (and the relevance of your programmes or ministry to them). How well you serve them or provide opportunities to serve, influences the ripple effect of your programmes or ministry on people’s lives and whether they experience transformation as a result.
Guiding Questions
1. How could your finances be managed more efficiently to reduce wastage?
2. Do you have the right people doing the right roles?
3. Where might there be areas where people's time and skills are not being used effectively?
Why is this important? An efficient organisation or church is more able to do a lot with a limited resource, and because it deploys people well, it is more likely to retain and even grow those who want to invest in the organisation or church – those who give and those who serve.
Guiding Questions
1. Are you clear about who the people are you are trying to reach?
2. Are you keeping up with current practices in your field or changes to needs?
3. When did you last seek feedback about your work from those who support you or are served by you?
Why is this important? No matter how well an organisation or church is structured, if there is no perceived or felt need for what it provides, then there will be limited demand for its services. This also indicates a disconnect between the organisation or church and the community it seeks to serve and possibly a lack of adaptability. Without interest in what it offers, there will be a decline in effectiveness, efficiency, and viability. Relevance is a good indicator of whether we are listening to our communities or members. Christian faith communities have so much to offer. Everyone desires hope, fulfilment, and life. How we present those opportunities creatively is important. The strongest, most effective organisations and churches have high relevance to those they wish to reach.
Guiding Questions
1. How much time does your board spend planning for its financial future?
2. How reliant are you on a few income streams?
3. In what way does your organisation or church protect itself from economic shocks?
Why is this important? Every organisation and church will experience challenges. The more viable an organisation or church is, the better it can withstand economic shocks or unforeseen challenges. The more viable it is, the quicker it can respond to opportunities! Sometimes organisations and churches look strong but can be dependent on one or two strong people and their connections. When they leave, the organisation or church suffers. Or if there are economic shocks, the organisation or church has no reserves to fall back on and they have no choice but to scale back or cut staff. The most viable organisations and churches can weather such storms for several years.
Guiding Questions
1. Does your governing body ever review its performance?
2. Do they spend time learning about good governance?
3. What topics take up most of their time?
Why is this important? Good governance provides stability for an organisation or church, and both motivates and inspires trust from internal members, the community, and external stakeholders. This leads to greater satisfaction, buy-in, favour and support, along with increased resourcing opportunities – whilst remaining focused on alignment to strategic goals and mission.
Guiding Questions
1. When did your organisation or church last consider its purpose and identity?
2. When did it last research its environment or survey its various stakeholders?
3. When did it last attempt to identify goals to guide day-to-day operations?
Why is this important? Developing clear and compelling vision, mission, and goals, and corresponding strategies to reach them is critical for an organisation or church’s success. From them, strategic leaders can create alignment within the organisation or church and direct its energies and resources towards them. Strategy provides the basis for pastoral leadership and operational management – for planning, building teams, designing ministry initiatives, and managing relationships.
Guiding Questions
1. How much time do you spend repeating tasks or discussing the same subject when that could be decided once and for all by creating a simple policy?
2. How well do you utilise digital technology to simplify your work?
3. When did you last spend time reviewing, creating, or updating policies and procedures for things like finance management or managing people?
Why is this important? Strong operational practices reflect a commitment to accountable stewardship. This relates to the intent, skills, and practice of developing and maintaining the policies, structures, and systems necessary to effectively manage, track and monitor use of resources efficiently. Organisations and churches are vulnerable to becoming ineffective or inefficient and losing key stakeholders or members because of poor accountability. Transparent accountability is essential for building and sustaining trust.
Guiding Questions
1. How strong is the relationship between your governing body and operational leaders?
2. How well does your organisation or church care for those who work or volunteer within it?
3. How long do people stay committed to your organisation or church on average?
Why is this important? The effectiveness of an organisation or church is heavily influenced by the quality of relationships it maintains internally and externally. Motivation, empowerment, communication, trust, diversity, and influence are key elements of healthy relationships. A commitment to building healthy relationships is critical for building trust and satisfaction among all who engage with an organisation or church. Trust is a key driver of performance.
Guiding Questions
1. What teams do you have in your organisation or church?
2. What could you do to enhance your use of teams and how they are led?
3. What is holding you back from using teams more?
Why is this important? Organisations and churches are simply more effective when they have well-functioning teams that balance good relationships with achieving their goals. Healthy teams can conflict well, build each other up and hold each other accountable. Resources are used more efficiently, communication is enhanced, and trust and satisfaction is increased, leading to more motivation and drive. Senior leaders can then focus more on strategic matters and building more leaders rather than day-to-day operations.
Guiding Questions
1. How do you decide what programmes or ministry you implement?
2. When did you last evaluate the effectiveness of the ones you run currently?
3. What is holding you back?
Why is this important? An organisation or church with a sound theology of biblical justice will inevitably have an emphasis on holistic restoration. A focus on the whole person and their relationships with God, themselves, others, and their environment will help an organisation or church rationalise and design effective holistic services that focus on a combination of spiritual, relational, and physical restoration. An organisation or church that listens to the voices of those they seek to serve, especially the most vulnerable, voiceless, or marginalised, and seeks to meet those needs, will develop or encourage ministry, programmes or initiatives that are highly relevant in the contemporary context in which they seek to serve, leading to higher engagement in and support for them.
Guiding Questions
1. How do you think the beliefs and values of your team might affect operations?
2. How often are your values defined, discussed, and taught at all levels?
3. How is your governing body helping to define, promote, and guard your values?
Why is this important? Our beliefs and values have a disproportionate impact on the health of an organisation or church. How we interact with others and make ethical decisions is based on beliefs about sin, the gospel, the mission of the church, and the nature of God and his will for all relationships. They also drive the vision, strategy, and character of an organisation or church’s service to others. What is believed about authority, autonomy, power, and influence will drive how one leads and builds teams. What is believed about managing resources, and wealth, generosity, stewardship, accountability, and partnership will drive how an organisation or church both acquires and manages what it receives.
Guiding Questions
1. How do you select people for key roles?
2. Do you have good systems that help people set goals and grow their skills?
3. How much do you invest in training and coaching your people?
Why is this important? How competent we are (or perceived to be) is important to understand when attempting to understand causes for the way an organisation or church operates. Competency not only affects actual task outputs, but it can also affect the trust and motivation of other members or stakeholders if not addressed. Competencies on their own are the easiest factor to enhance if other beliefs, values, and character elements are healthy. Competencies can be taught or adapted to by adjusting support structures, and roles, or filling capacity gaps temporarily or permanently with others that do have the required (or desired) competencies.
Guiding Questions
1. What should good character look like in your team?
2. At what levels is the perceived character weakest?
3. How should your values reflect the character you wish to build in your team?
Why is this important? Integrity, genuine concern for others, and godly character influence the levels of trust people have in each other and their leaders. Trust directly impacts the satisfaction and motivation of members and stakeholders to continue participating and giving to the life of the church. Character also influences how power is used, which also impacts the management of teams, delegation of responsibility, and relationships. Lack of integrity, and misuse of power, unchecked, and at any level can lead to serious mismanagement of people and resources and harm to an organisation or church’s reputation.
Guiding Questions
1. Which roles are most critical to be filled right now?
2. What work should be reduced or postponed?
3. Do your current team members have the skills they need to use their time well?
Why is this important? Capacity is crucial because it ensures an organisation or church has the resources and personnel needed to achieve its goals effectively. Without adequate capacity, workloads can become overwhelming, leading to burnout, reduced productivity, and missed opportunities. Proper capacity planning allows teams to work efficiently, maintain high-quality outcomes, and adapt to new challenges as they arise. It also fosters a sustainable and supportive work environment, enabling long-term success.
Guiding Questions
1. How do you identify opportunities, risks, or limitations in your context?
2. What has the greatest impact on your work?
3. Do you develop deliberate strategies to maximise opportunities, or overcome challenges? Consider a mapping exercise with your team to identify the biggest threats or opportunities.
Why is this important? Your external context is a largely uncontrollable factor and yet it wields significant influence on an organisation or church. For example, an organisation or church in a country with very poor education and where Christianity is a minority may struggle to find members who have the competencies they need. This may impact board effectiveness, or pastoral and operational leadership abilities or financial management etc. However, even organisations and churches in very unfavourable contexts can perform very well within their limitations. They understand where they are and develop strategies to overcome challenges or adapt to them. Equally, organisations and churches in favourable contexts often fail to take advantage of the opportunities. Understanding the context is the first step.
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