How well do you know your community?

As leaders in your ministry what questions are you asking yourself and others? Here are a few important questions all churches leaders should be wrestling with this season:

• How do we make our church more mission-driven?
• How do we extend our services to those who need them?
• How do we grow our congregation with more engaged individuals?
• Who is God calling us to be in our mission field?
• Who are we reaching now, and who are we missing?

MissionInsite is a powerful tool to help you begin to answer these questions and become the church God is calling us to be. You can test your assumptions and plans against the best demographic data available.

This tool is provided to every church in our conference free of charge. Click HERE to download the easy step-by-step registration instructions to get started.

The following are best practices concerning the use of MissionInsite:

• Each user in your church should have their own unique User Name and Password. Please don’t share it with anyone else.
• Once you register and log into the site, go to the Next Generation PeopleView, on the bottom right corner of the “What Would You Like to Do?” page – click on HELP.
  • Under the Overview Videos section – watch at least the “Where to Begin” and the “How to Upload People for People Plot” videos.
• One person in your church will need to contact MissionInsite at: misupport@missioninsite.com to be designated as an “administrator” for your church.
  • This person should follow the instructions to upload an Excel file (provided by MissionInsite) of all the current attenders in your church.

The demographics reports provided by MissionInsite are powerful tools. But it should all start with your church uploading information for People Plot. This will enable you to best understand who you are reaching now, and where you need to focus your ministry efforts.

Our goal is to equip every church in the West Virginia Annual Conference to be able to utilize MissionInsite as needed for their ministry. But you are not alone. Training and support are available to anyone who needs it. Contact Karen Thaxton at kthaxton@wvumc.org if you need assistance getting registered, there is an issue with where your church is shown on the MissionInsite map, or other basic questions. Contact Ken Willard at kwillard@wvumc.org with questions about how to best utilize the MissionInsite resource to reach your mission field.

Remember, numbers and data never tell the whole story. But they do help us read the signs (see Matthew 16:2-3) all around us and best focus our resources to reach new people for God’s Kingdom.