Five years ago, Trinity was in the midst of the search for our next dean. As part of the search process, following the best practices in the Episcopal Church, the entire congregation was invited to participate in the CAT (Congregational Assessment Tool) administered by HolyCow! Consulting, a national organization that aids congregations in responding to challenges with data and interpretation. Benchmarked against two thousand congregations across denominations and regions, the CAT is the national leader in providing congregational data. The information we learned from our 2014 survey was the basis not only for Trinity’s Dean Profile and discernment, but also became the genesis for the vestry’s strategic plan. Just about everything we’ve taken on over the past five years, from hiring staff to decisions about property and finance, have been direct results of the information we learned through the CAT survey.
Five years later, it’s time for a check-up…Good decisions often stem from good data, that’s a lesson we’ve learned from our highly-connected, tech-forward world. The more we know, the better we can plan for what lies ahead. (October 2019)