Twenty questions your leadership team should be able to answer.

Governing documents. Whether what your constitution says matches how you actually decide things.

Membership. Whether you know who your members are, and what happens when one drifts away.

Leaders and staff. Job descriptions, reviews, and how pay gets set.

Meetings and records. Minutes, follow-up, and the decisions that keep getting made twice.

Money and safeguards. Counting, signing, child protection, and insurance.

• Our roll is current. We know where every member on it is.
• We have a written process, with time frames, for a member who stops attending.
• Every paid person had a written review in the last twelve months.
• Two unrelated people count every offering, and both sign for it.

Twenty of these. Nothing vague, nothing you can answer with a feeling.

You add it up out of 40 and land in one of four plain bands. Most small churches score between 15 and 28 the first time, which is not a failure. It is the normal result of a church that has been busy doing ministry.

The useful number is your lowest section, not your total. A church can score well overall and still have one area that will cause it real trouble. So the second page gives you one concrete next step for each of the five, and every one of them is something you can start at your next meeting for free.

Well Ordered Resources publishes ready-to-adopt governance documents for small churches under the name Decently and In Order. Everything we sell was drafted, argued over, and carried through a real congregation before it was ever offered to yours.

The Health Check is free because the fastest way to know whether we are worth $79 to you is to hand you something useful first.

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