Next steps
A scorecard with no baseline is just a snapshot. This one is frozen — so from here, the work is movement, not numbers. Three things turn it from a one-time audit into a living instrument.
Three data streams feed it
- Public statistical data — GCFA tables, journals, financials. Annual, pulled independently. This is the spine and depends on no one. already running
- One short annual survey — the only way to get trust, belonging, and voice as felt experience. Identical every year. See the instrument →
- Conference-reported process data — grievance volume, trainings, partnership counts, pipeline. These stay blank in an independent audit, and that blankness is reportable.
What would fill each blank
The contrast between what we can see and what no one is measuring is the most useful thing this audit produces. Each row below is a specific, assignable next step.
Public — fillable by us, with more parsing
| Marker | Priority | What would fill it |
|---|---|---|
| Discipleship Budget Line Public | Discipleship | Is there a named, funded discipleship/formation line in the conference budget, growing as a share of spend? Requires the budget broken out — not derivable from the statistical panel. |
| Representation Audit Public | Belonging | Crowdsource the demographic coding (per the committee-demographics instructions) to compute the representation gap against membership. |
Conference — requires the conference to track & disclose
If the conference adopts the scorecard, assign each of these to a named body and require it to be reported — not just the flattering rows.
| Marker | Priority | What would fill it |
|---|---|---|
| Intentional Pathway Share Conference | Discipleship | Share of churches reporting an intentional discipleship pathway (not just programs). Requires charge-conference reporting or a survey item. |
| Voice Channels Conference | Belonging | Structured channels for lay / youth / young-adult / small-church voice that feed real decisions. Requires governance review. |
| Community Partnership Share Conference | Bridges | Share of churches reporting an active community partnership (food, schools, immigration, neighborhood orgs). Requires charge-conference or survey reporting. |
| New Faith Communities Conference | Bridges | New faith communities started — and still alive 2–3 years on. Requires the conference's new-church/new-place records. |
Survey — requires the annual instrument
| Marker | Priority | What would fill it |
|---|---|---|
| Trust Index Survey | Trust | Anonymous annual clergy + lay survey, identical questions each year. Blank until the instrument runs — see the survey page. |
| Belonging Survey Survey | Belonging | “I feel I belong / my voice is heard,” segmented by demographic. The segmentation is the point — never a single number. |
Annual — the full scorecard, timed to Annual Conference and the release of statistical tables. This is the real review.
Quarterly (optional) — only the few markers that move in real time: apportionment receipts, publication timeliness.
Two fields only: trend vs. baseline (improving / flat / declining) and status (on track / watch / off track), where a target exists.
Resist a composite “trust score.” Roll-ups hide exactly the movement you’re trying to see. A marker that can’t move or can’t be measured should be cut, not faked.
Trust, belonging, and discipleship are partly real in ways no metric reaches, and several markers will move for reasons that have nothing to do with these priorities. Treat them as a smoke detector, not a thermostat — they tell you when to look closer, never the whole truth.