A Church Assessment Can Change Your Church

Failure to thoroughly or consistently review aspects of the church will have a negative impact on the organisation in multiple ways. In contrast, when a church embraces an intentional review process there are a number of benefits:

1. An intentional church assessment process provides key information that can be catalytic for the growth of the church.

2. An intentional church assessment process ensures the church does not drift from its mission.

3. An intentional church assessment process uses the vision as motivation for change.

4. An intentional church assessment process protects the culture by ensuring it is not neglected in the busyness of activity.

5. An intentional church assessment process will identify when the systems or structure are no longer serving the vision.

6. An intentional church assessment process creates accountability for the achievement of strategic goals.

Bulgarian Churches in North America: Contextual Assessment

After awaking in the morning of the 21st century, the world was rapidly introduced to a new postmodern movement called globalization. At a top political and economic level, globalization is the process of denationalization of markets, politics and legal systems purposing the implementation of a global economy. However, globalization is much more than an economic event as it affects social status and human rights of people worldwide. For the world community the process of globalization is a process of internationalization describing cross-border relations between countries, growth in international exchange and interdependence. It is also viewed as a liberalization process of removing government-imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create a borderless world. Globalization further implements spreading various objects and experiences to people at all corners of the earth creating universalization. In a cultural context, globalization is often seen as Westernization of the world. Finally, globalization carries the meaning of deterritorialization – reconfiguration of geography reforming any social place in new terms of independent territory, distance and borders.

Since the church is a global event, inevitably this process affects the community of believers. The “global believer” seeks to connect with people of similar nature independent of race, location and social status. Thus, church mission and church ministry reclaim its original Biblical global perspective. In this process, the church of postmodernity is liberated from its nationality and reaches toward internationalization establishing a new multicultural identity with a global perspective and mission. As a result multicultural churches gain a contextual new function serving as identity sources. Such is the case with the network of Bulgarian churches in North America.

Established to unite all Protestant Bulgarian churches in North America, it reaffirms the participation of Bulgarian immigrant communities in the global multicultural ministry. This present contextual assessment will explore the process of establishing a network of Bulgarian churches in Northern America. Read the complete paper (PDF)