We have designed this ministry review to be read and filled out by the pastor and the elders in a meeting, where discussion and collaboration can happen. This Ministry Review is not meeting its core purpose if it is only filled out by a single person.

RATIONALE: Over the last few years, the General Conference office and regional leadership have heard consistent feedback concerning the length of the Ministry Review, and we’ve heard questions about its usefulness. In response to this feedback, we've made rather large changes to the Ministry Review including its design, the questions it asks, and how you fill it out. Below you’ll find a rationale for this review's design, namely: fostering relationships, increasing accessibility, and contextualizing questions.

FOSTERING RELATIONSHIPS: First, one of our goals is to use this Ministry Review as a tool to help foster relationship between churches and their regional leadership. Regional leaders are best equipped to understand the culture of their region and should have positive relationships with pastors in their region, and we hope this new ministry review can be used as a tool to foster a greater sense of unity and co-operation for God’s Kingdom. We also think the relationships within a church are very important, which is why we've stressed at the top that filling this Ministry Review out as a leadership group is most effective. We hope that pastors, elders, and other leaders can come together to review the ministry efforts of the past year, and together, forge clear goals for the future. We hope this promotes investment not only from the pastor, but from all kinds of leadership in the church.

ACCESSIBILITY: Second, we hope to make the new Ministry Review more accessible and easier to use by reducing length, and by cutting redundant or unfit questions. By trimming off sections like this, we hope to save the local church time and energy, while also encouraging you to fill out the whole Ministry Review. Likewise, we have tried to sharpen the focus on the Ministry Review, so while it is not as encompassing as it was in the past, this new direction should make it more useful to the local church, the regions, and the denomination as a whole.

CONTEXTUALIZING THE QUESTIONS: Finally, our goal was to create questions which allowed churches to be specific about their context. This is why the new Ministry Review starts by asking about the local church’s vision and the different ways they are pursuing or meeting that vision. We recognize that in our big vision of maximizing our collective potential for Kingdom impact, there is a lot of room for different local visions that all add up to Kingdom impact.