Why Every Congregation Needs a Year-End Checkup

“You can’t plan where you’re going if you don’t know where you stand.”

Every fall, congregations prepare for a new season of ministry. Budgets get drafted, calendars fill up, and goals take shape. But amid all that planning, one crucial question often goes unasked: How healthy are we, really?

Before the new year begins, your church deserves a moment of reflection — a spiritual and organizational checkup that reveals not just your numbers, but your pulse.

The Value of a Year-End Checkup A “checkup” isn’t about diagnosing problems. It’s about making sure your church is thriving, not just surviving.

Through the Congregation Assessment Tool (CAT™) or the Conversations™ assessment (for smaller congregations), you can measure:

  • Satisfaction & Energy — Are your members engaged and fulfilled?
  • Culture & Clarity — Do you share the same mission and direction?
  • Readiness for Change — Is your community open to new possibilities?

These insights help you start the new year with confidence — not guesswork.

Why Conversations Aren’t Enough

Leaders talk to people constantly — in hallways, meetings, and fellowship hours. Those moments matter. But they only tell part of the story. Without benchmarked data, it’s easy to mistake a few loud voices for the whole congregation.

“Data gives every person in your pews a voice — not just the ones you hear most often.”

When you listen with both empathy and evidence, you gain a clearer view of where your church truly stands.

What a Healthy Congregation Looks Like

A healthy congregation isn’t one without challenges. It’s one that understands its story — the strengths, struggles, and opportunities that shape its future.

When leadership can say, “Here’s where we’re strong, here’s where we can grow, and here’s where God is calling us next,” that’s when alignment happens.

The CAT™ provides that language.

The Conversations™ assessment makes it accessible even for small congregations with fewer than 35 attendees.

Start the New Year with Clarity January isn’t the time to start asking, “What do our people think?” — it’s the time to act on what you already know.

A year-end checkup with Holy Cow! Consulting helps you:

  • Identify what’s working (and celebrate it!)
  • See where energy is fading
  • Create a focused plan for the year ahead And best of all — it replaces assumptions with clarity.

👉 Learn More About the CAT™

👉 Explore Conversations™ for Small Congregations

From Our Founder “Data doesn’t replace discernment — it strengthens it. When you know the heartbeat of your congregation, you lead with confidence and compassion.”

— Emily Swanson, Owner & President, Holy Cow! Consulting

🐮 Why 6,000+ Congregations Trust the CAT™ Over Standard Surveys

Church leaders are constantly listening to their people. Between worship, meetings, and casual conversations, you hear a lot about what members think and feel. But when it comes time to make big decisions, informal conversations can only take you so far.

That’s why we created the CAT™ (Congregation Assessment Tool) — and why it’s unlike any other survey you’ve ever seen.

What Makes the CAT™ Unique?

The CAT™ is the only assessment of its kind, available exclusively through Holy Cow! Consulting.

Here’s what sets it apart:

🐮 Exclusive: No other organization offers the CAT™.

🐮 Evidence-Based: Built with sociological rigor, grounded in Christian ministry.

🐮 Benchmarked: Your results aren’t floating in isolation — they’re compared against data from more than 6,000 congregations nationwide.

This means when 60% of your members agree on something, you’re not left wondering if that’s “good” or “bad.” With benchmarks, you see what those numbers really mean compared to thousands of churches like yours.

👉 In short: We take the guesswork out of leadership decisions.

Why Not Just Rely on Conversations?

It’s true — leaders are constantly in dialogue with their people. But here’s the problem:

🐮 People often hold back what they really think.

🐮 Leaders usually hear from the same small group of voices.

🐮 Without benchmarks, you can’t see the bigger picture.

The CAT™ gives every member a chance to be heard — not just the most vocal. And it translates those voices into clear, actionable insights.

Real-World Impact

Here’s how one church described their experience:

“Our work with Holy Cow! was insightful and flexible. The CAT™ helped us affirm where we are and gave us clarity on where to grow. It sparked conversations we could never have had without this data.”

– Church of St. Michael & St. George, St. Louis, MO

Stories like this are common. For many churches, the CAT™ becomes the turning point that helps leadership teams move from uncertainty to clarity.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If you’re tired of guessing and ready to start leading with confidence, the CAT™ is here for you.

👉 [Learn More About the CAT™]

👉 [Schedule Your CAT™ Assessment]

Until the cows come home.

Emily Swanson

Owner and President of Holy Cow! Consulting

Beginning the conversation with Vitality – OI and congregation size

I had a Presbytery staff member say to me recently “it just seems like we are always talking about viability and not vitality – they are very different. We need to change the conversation.” This comment and my experience this weekend reminded me yet again that indeed the two are very different. Both also reminded me of why we do what we do at Holy Cow! Consulting.

On Saturday, I worked with a congregation in St. Louis that has an average weekend attendance of 68 people. If we talked about viability or just looked at count data it would give us pause. But that is not our job at Holy Cow! Consulting. We start by looking at vitality.

Out of the 1,855 other congregations this congregation was benchmarked against, it was in the 99 percentile for both energy and satisfaction. Meaning, that only 1% of the churches in our data base had a higher level of morale and vitality. They were also in the 99 percentile for flexibility and in the very high range for conflict management abilities, trust in leadership, readiness for ministry and other performance indices. Where they need to be doing well, they are doing extraordinarily well.

I have written before about the small but mighty congregations. Count data will not help us find our vital congregations. We cannot assume that a church that has 1000 or 500 people in average weekly attendance has the necessary vitality to sustain a healthy congregation even though, on their face, they suggest viability. And, we also cannot assume that the smaller congregations that are hitting the ground running with internal health and external focus do not offer best practices and ideas that can help us better understand what makes a vital congregation. We need to learn from these small but mighty congregations because, equal to vital congregations of larger size, they are the ones to watch over the next five years.

So, as congregations and regional associations, let’s move the conversation past the question of viability. Let’s set aside the count data, we know what it says. Instead, let’s begin our conversations about congregations with vitality and see what God has in store.

Emily Swanson, President of HC!C

*With the congregation’s permission I am sharing that the congregation I wrote about above is First Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, MO. If you are a smaller congregation or assist other small congregations in their work, I would suggest reaching out to these folks for some ideas as you move forward. Their website is http://www.firstpresbyterianstl.com

Organizational Intelligence as a Fearless Moral Inventory

 

In one of her lectures, Dr. Roberta Hestenes challenged her students “not to witness for Jesus until you are fun to be with.”  She got a laugh with that quip, but there is a profound, practical truth for churches at the heart of it.  The quality of the experience that members of a church share is the most decisive factor in the mission of a church, and outweighs the combined impact of all the programs, projects, and personal abilities resident within the congregation.

The research backs that up.  Nearly 90% of churches with poor climate are experiencing losses in worship attendance and no program of “inviting people to church” will be effective until the climate improves.  Whatever their particular theological perspective, the witness of churches to Jesus will be muted until their congregations are communities of purpose, peace, openness, leadership, followship, and joy.

In more liturgical traditions, Lent is a season during which individuals are invited to explore the shadows within their lives that are impeding spiritual progress.  As Hal Elrod put it, “Let today be the day you give up who you’ve been for who you can become.”  We can expect to hear many challenging sermons addressed to us as individuals inviting us to become more aware of our tendencies to fall short of the abundant life Jesus has promised us.

Organizational intelligence takes the experience of Lent to a whole different level.  Instead of focusing on the shadows within individuals, organizational intelligence explores the shadows within congregations as a whole:  tendencies to be conflict-prone, inwardly focused, shallow, ritualized, unfocused, rigid, inhospitable, chaotic, and uninspired.    Only as these shadows are identified, owned, and addressed can a congregation become what God has called it to be.-

While it may sound strange for an entire congregation to engage in the spiritual work of self-reflection and even repentance, it is actually an old idea.  Most of Paul’s letters were addressed to congregations.  In the book of Revelation, the Risen Christ addresses congregations as systems, including the church at Laodicea, which suffers from being neither hot nor cold (read “on the fence”).  When Jesus says he stands at the door and knocks, it is not into individual hearts that he seeks entrance, but an entire church.

In contrast to the New Testament, most of the church’s liturgy is focused on individuals.  Prayers of confession typically address individual failures, not the sins of a congregation as a whole.  The Lord’s Prayer is corporate, but most members would be hard pressed to name a corporate trespass of a particular congregation when they say “forgive us our trespasses.”  Rarely is the passing of the peace linked to a congregational tendency to duke it out.  Creeds are “I” statements.  Much of the hymnody is individualistic as well.  Amazing grace saves wretches like me, not like us.

“They’ll know we are Christians by our love” hits the mark, as long as it is not sentimentalized and used superficially to distract from the ways that congregations are not loving to one another nor to the stranger who enters their communities.  In many
churches, nearly 25% of members indicate they are disturbed by the level of conflict within their congregation.  In a world starving for hope, only 17% of members believe they live in faith communities where members are comfortable sharing faith stories.  Godsgrace-light.gifThese are not simply the shadows of individuals but entire communities.  Churches will not grow and flourish as long as these are unexplored and untouched by the light of God’s grace.

All twelve step programs have, as their fourth step, the exercise of making a fearless moral inventory.  In many ways, organizational intelligence is precisely that same exercise engaged at the congregational level.  It builds on the previous steps of acknowledging powerlessness, believing in God’s ability to help us, and turning our lives over to God.   Congregational sobriety is freedom from the internal demons that unconsciously sabotage its best intentions.  Only when it has done that penitential work can it finally get to the twelfth step:  carrying its message to others.

– J. Russell Crabtree

Skating together – OI and embracing congregational diversity

I had a bit of an unexpected long drive last night from Milwaukee to Columbus.  Along  the way, I heard a TED talk about community and order.  The speaker talked about how if you pitched the concept of the old style roller rink to some friends for the first time it would sound something like this “I want to buy a large warehouse, lay the floor with concrete.  Then I am going to add some hard rails on the sides and have people without certification, training or helmets skate around the floor just in one direction. There will be no pattern just one direction to skate. To music. It will be great.”

It sounds ridiculous when you think of it like that.  But, when you actually go roller skating in a skating rink it works.  Somehow we come together in this community of skaters, skate in one direction, and it is all to music.  Some us skate fast and have to move around others. Some of us fall and make the person behind us fall. We then brush ourselves off and get back to skating.   At the end of the day, it is great.

This weekend I had the opportunity to work with a congregation in Wisconsin. Their descriptive map from the Congregation Assessment Tool (CAT) looked like this:

mIDDLE .png

On paper, they have people who are more conservative in their theology  (scripture is the literal word of God, conversion is the first step in forming a betters society, etc.) and people who are more progressive in their theology.   This congregation has people that are more adaptable to change and those who need more intentional steps to help them move towards change.   Like the roller rink idea, on paper, it might seem like having this community work together may end up in a large pile up of stalemates and divisiveness – skaters in all directions with a hard floor beneath.

Instead, as we worked through all the congregation’s data, we kept this diversity in front of us for a large part of the conversation. There is work to do. This congregation has experienced some tough set-backs.  However, the leadership kept naming their diverse congregation as a strength and coming back to it as a focal point. This type of thoughtful leadership, with a deep care towards their level of internal diversity, will aid the congregation through their time of pastoral transition.   It will also help determine what gifts and skills their next pastor needs to have as well as what strengths and growth edges the leadership needs to focus on while they are in transition.

When Paul wrote I Corinthians he appealed to the church community in Corinth who was experiencing a divisiveness in their leadership and in their thinking.  He wrote “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”  1 Corinthians 1:10. 

What I heard yesterday from the leadership of this congregation was exactly this.  They have fully claimed being a congregation that has folks from differing theologies, adaptability levels and places on the descriptive map.  When they come together in the name of Christ, when they work and worship together with all of the different thoughts, beliefs and ways of moving in community it works.   It is an unexpected unity. For me this was a great reminder that if we all keep our eyes on Christ and work towards our preferred future of ourselves in our congregations, we really can skate quite beautifully – even if you throw in an occasional fall now and again.

 

-Emily Swanson

 

 

 

 

What do we mean by Satisfaction and why do congregations need it?

When taking the Congregation Assessment Tool, we measure how satisfied members are in each congregation. While we might know generally what makes us happy, this look at satisfaction digs deeper.   When we talk about satisfaction we are talking about that sense of peaceful contentment when we sit in the pews with each other and work alongside each other – it is that feeling of belonging, and lack of discord. It is important to understand why we look at this to measure the vitality of congregations.

The word “satisfaction” or “satisfy” gets mixed reviews in the Bible. The Psalms speak of satisfaction as a way that God connects to his people.  In Psalm 90:14, the writer entreats “Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”  Psalms 145:16 expands this thought to include other creatures:  “You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

Other passages are not so sanguine.  Paul sees the desire to satisfy others as an obstacle.  “For do I now seek to satisfy men or God?” he asks in Galatians.  As a tool of political expediency, we stray into the realm of the demonic.  Mark tells us that “Pilate, wishing to satisfy the mob, released Barabbas for them, and after scourging Jesus handed Him over for crucifixion.”

In our experience, satisfaction in a church is rarely achieved by appealing to the mob, primarily because there are multiple mobs.  In truth, we find that what satisfies one mob often alienates another.  Satisfaction is achieved by fulfilling a mission that does not ignore human desires but transcends them. It succinctly answers the question “why do we do what we do the way we do it?”  This is the satisfaction that is coveted as a primary goal in life to be achieved through a direct, frontal assault on the rest of the universe.  It is its own reward.Also importantly, there is another kind of satisfaction that is a by-product of other activities, like happiness is a by-product and can never be achieved by “trying to be happy.”  Churches that land in the transformation quadrant are generally filled with members who have clarity about a mission that transcends them and draws them into an alternative reality where the Gospel is plausible and compelling…and satisfying.

Organizational Intelligence and the development of Evidence Based Congregational Membership

One of the things that we frequently discuss with a congregation’s leadership is the idea of now we have the data, but what do we do with it.  It is here that the conversation turns to not just being leaders but having an evidence-based leadership – encouraging leaders to engage in a discernment process that integrates organizational intelligence into their leadership decision making. This is important for the leadership as they move forward. But, leaders are not the only ones in a congregation cannot work alone.

Organizational intelligence makes something else possible:  an evidence-based membership.  An evidence-based membership is one that has learned how to integrate organizational intelligence into their behaviors. 

Let’s look at why this is so important through the following example:

A church takes the CAT and discovers that it is in the Recovery Quadrant.  In addition, a lack of flexibility appears to be the primary factor inhibiting their vitality.  In a politically-based membership, leaders try to win support for developing a more adaptable culture through their own relational cache.   This is a top-down approach that inevitably invites polarization around the local configuration of relational networks.

In an evidence-based membership, the entire congregation confronts its own lack of flexibility, understands the trajectory of that organizational culture, and wrestles with the likely consequences of choosing to become more adaptable or remain settled.  The focus of the discernment process shifts from how folks relate to a particular leader or leadership team to how they are going to deal with their own corporate and individual behavior.

The implications of this shift are profound and include:

  • Specifying clearer, more concrete changes in behavior for members who are committed to developing a more vital congregation.
  • Relieving pressure on young clergy who are thrust into systems with politically-based memberships that repeatedly cycle through conflicts that have little to do with him/her.
  • Developing change processes that are also bottom-up rather than cascading all change down from the top.

Developing an evidence-based membership requires all the steps of developing an evidence-based leadership, beginning with helping them understand that their biggest problem is that they don’t know what they don’t know.

We are not suggesting that OI will or should eliminate the need for the political and relationally based components of leadership.  These types of components will still exist but having an evidence-based membership frees leaders from spending all their time and energy answering WHY so that they can invest their leadership into WHAT’S NEXT.