Church Life Survey Workbook
After completing a Church Life Survey, your church will receive a Church Life Survey Workbook to help your church to explore and understand your survey results.
It offers processes to help your leaders and your church to respond to your results and form future direction.
It is a companion document to your Church Life Profile of survey results. Use your Workbook to evaluate, communicate and act on your survey results.
The Workbook is available as both Protestant and Catholic editions, in print or ebook formats.
The Workbook is free for participating churches who receive it as part of their Church Life Pack following completion of a Church Life Survey.
It is also available for sale as a printed Workbook or ebook with interactive pdf worksheets, via the NCLS Shop. Both Protestant and Catholic editions are available.
Tips for using your Workbook
After the survey, the importance of acting
This Workbook is structured in such a way to encourage you to follow three essential steps after participation in the survey: to evaluate, to communicate and to act. Churches that make a commitment to acting on their results, find it integral to their way of life and not an optional extra. Acting harnesses aspiration and inspiration. It ensures that vision, discernment and the realising of potential are consistently renewed as a church moves forward together.
Respond to your survey results in your own way
Many factors make your church unique so we provide a range of exercises to choose from to help your church move forward. You can use various elements in this Workbook to tailor a process to suit your particular context, life stage and people.
Worksheets, reflections, ideas and processes
The Workbook contains worksheets, reflective exercises, communication ideas and practical processes to enable a leader or team to explore and apply their results.
Choose from options in the Workbook to:
Assess what your church is ready for
- Assess your church’s readiness using the Church Readiness reflections.
- Reflect on the capacity of your church and determine the best approach for your church to respond to their survey results.
Includes: Reflective exercises to gauge your church's readiness to respond to results, and their capacity for action.
Evaluate:
Explore and evaluate your survey results
- Gain An Overview: Review your Summary Profile to gain a brief summary of your key survey results.
- Engage the Detail: Dig deeper into the Detailed Review in your Church Life Profile, to assess specific issues or points that you’d like to explore further.
Includes: Worksheets to Gain an Overview of summary results and Worksheets to Dig Deeper into more comprehensive results.
Communicate:
Identify key points and communicate them
- Read through the communication ideas and decide the best way to inform your church of your survey results and any insights gained.
- Invite churchgoers, leaders or a group to participate in future planning or action.
Includes: Ways to share your Profile, Discussion with leadership team or mentor, Report Presentation Template, and 10 ideas to communicate with your church.
Act:
Plan and act for your future
- Read over the NCLS Planning Principles to inform your approach.
- Choose from several styles of process to respond to your results. Undertake a process of review and planning.
- Move to action together.
Includes: Planning Principles, Workshops and Planning Process Outlines: Short Session, Reflection Action Process and Comprehensive Planning Process.
