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First Presbyterian Church Savanna Illinois Missional Analysis Process (MAP) Report
Our Vision/Mission
Our Mission Statement is as follows: Our mission is to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in our community and world by: • Promoting spiritual growth through bible study, prayer and Christian education • Offering opportunities for fellowship, friendship, and open communication • Encouraging gr
eater commitment to evangelism, stewardship, and ministries of compassion • Nurturing a sense of "family" among our members • Exemplifying faith, hope, and love in all that we say and do. Who Are We? First Presbyterian Church, Savanna, Illinois, was organized in 1894. The beautiful building we occupy was built between 1902 and 1907. An education wing was added in 1994. This education wing includes a fellowship hall, pastor’s study, meeting room and classrooms. An elevator was also included in the addition. So our total building has two fellowship halls, a certified kitchen, a conference room, bathrooms with showers, an elevator, soundproofed Sunday school rooms, a new copy machine, a pastor’s office, lots of storage space, an updated manse, a pipe organ and two pianos, off street parking lots with handicap parking, great acoustics in sanctuary and air conditioning and heating throughout. We have 121 members as of 2014. Our members are a diverse group with diverse skills such as teachers, musicians-choir, business owners, golf course owner, bank board members, media specialist, lay worship leaders, contractors, plumber, landscaper, realtor, insurance, computer skills, accounting/CPA, farmers, beauticians, social services, college students, health care professionals, and railroad employees. Average Sunday attendance is fifty. Sunday school for both children and adults begins at 9:30 a.m. The Worship service begins at 10:30 a.m. with fellowship following the service. Presbyterian women, the men’s group and the Deacons meet monthly, Our Core Culture We see our congregation as the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:4-31). This is the biblical image for human community that we feel describes First Presbyterian Church, Savanna. We describe being the body of Christ as being close knit ("so close we can finish one another's sentences") but diverse, with everyone having gifts to use and share. No gift is too small or too large to be put to use and the "parts of the body" come together to fill needs. We also see ourselves as ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:16-21), and that as the body of Christ our members go into the world as ambassadors for Christ. We also believe in that the image of the household of God (Ephesians 2:11-22) is important—Christ is the cornerstone.
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We have identified many energizing attributes of our church. The main energizing attributes of the First Presbyterian Church of Savanna that are healthy and help us to thrive are family, caring, acceptance, helping, community and compassion. Several other energizing attributes were used to describe our church and congregation such as friends, love, unity, respect, mission, laughter, spirituality, belonging, stability, continuity and music. De-energizing attributes that are unhealthy and are barriers to thriving have also been identified. These are burning people out, letting others do it, traditionalism, money-centered, cliques, sensitivity and rigidity. Our Enacted Beliefs After discussion we decided that as a congregation we believe that God is our caring, loving creator. We believe that we human beings are to love God, trust in His word, and spread his teachings; therefore this congregation loves God, accepts and loves all people, and brings God into our daily lives. Our Assets We are blessed with many physical assets which include: two fellowship halls, a certified kitchen, a conference room, air conditioning and heating throughout, great acoustics in sanctuary, bathrooms with showers, elevator—handicap accessible at all levels, Sunday school rooms soundproofed, new copier in office, Pastor's office, remodeled manse, good location in town, off street parking, handicap parking, good storage, a pipe organ and two pianos. We are proud that our members and our church is associated with many community organizations which include GRO (Great Rivers Outreach)1, Stronghold, Red Cross, Mission trips—teens, Church World Service/CROP Walk, Salvation Army, Special Offering missions, Interchurch Council-ecumenical, West Carroll School District, Head Start, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), Food Pantry, Pitter Patter Pantry, Carroll County Thrift Shop, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous groups, Scouts—girls and boys, Head Start, Clinton Hospital, Freeport Hospital, Big Meadows Nursing Home, Presbyterian Women, Men's Group, colleges and military. The First Presbyterian church of Savanna financially includes an operating budget in the black. We have restricted funds such as a capital building fund, a memorial fund, a youth fund and a scholarship fund. There is no endowment fund. Our Community and Our Mission/Ministry Field Our Community Savanna, Illinois is a beautiful small community of around 3,000 people. We are nestled below the palisades of the Mississippi River. The entire west edge of our town is the mighty Mississippi. We are called a "Sportsman's Paradise" because of our river access for fishing and hunting. The spectacular Mississippi Palisades State Park with its 241 campsites, its scenic trails and breathtaking
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views is just a few miles north of Savanna. We have several parks along our river and within our city. We are connected to the bike path that runs all along the Mississippi River from Savanna south to the Quad Cities. Savanna is part of the West Carroll School District which is a consolidated school district of three towns: Savanna, Mt. Carroll and Thomson, Illinois. Our school district has two brand new school buildings. The primary school and the high school are located in Savanna. Within the city of Savanna are all essential businesses such as a grocery store, a department store, two hotels and several restaurants. Tourism is a big part of our community. For big city entertainment, we are an hour's drive from the Quad Cities, and hour and a half drive from Rockford, Illinois. In Savanna the average population per household is 2.28. The average age of our community has increased from 41.37 in 2000 to 43.66 in 2013. In the past three years the section of our community that has grown the most has been the age 65 and older, retired individuals. There have been some signs of resurgence in younger children within our community. The current average income in Savanna is $46,283 per household and the per capita is $20,351. Our number of households with a married couple with children under 18 has been decreasing while single parent household numbers have been increasing. Interestingly, in this community a person is more likely to be married than the state average for adults and the percentage of single adults that have never married is lower than the state average. Women in our community are less likely to be divorced, less likely to be single and never married and more likely to be widowed than men in our community. The educational attainment of adults in Savanna has declined over the past few years but this number is expected to rise by 1.4% over the next five years. There are two community colleges that offer classes within Savanna. These are Highland Community College and Sauk Valley College. Our community has a much higher percentage of Blue Collar workers over White Collar workers. Overall we are a struggling community with more 'settled and sensible' people than 'singles and starters.' We believe in praying hard and working hard and we dare to dream about our community growing and thriving. Our Place in Our Community We believe that God is our caring creator of the world and that He loves people and the world as we love people in the world and our community. We believe that human beings should trust in God's word and spread His teachings and our congregations attempts to following this by accepting all people that God brings into our daily lives and by loving God and people and sharing this love of God with all people.
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We are very involved in our community. We have supported youth in our community as they have gone to college or gone into the military. We have special offering for missions. We have healthy leaders that have a passionate spirituality and serve through gift-orientated ministry. Our prayer groups have low attendance and we wonder how to encourage attendance. We worship well with lots of lay leader involvement and lots of talented people. Our Adult Sunday School is not well attended but it is a quality program. Our Children's Sunday school is also a quality program. We are excellent at being appreciative of all that each individual has done and thanking them. What/How Are We Doing Now
We discussed the health of the First Presbyterian Church of Savanna and compared it to the health of thriving faith communities. We found the following strengths and weaknesses:
Building
Our church building is modernized and well maintained. We need to work on better utilizing the storage space and have a set plan for keeping the kitchen updated. Parking
There are two off street parking lots and both are handicap accessible. But the off street parking is limited and there is no place to expand. Our parking lots currently need to be resurfaced. Leadership Structure-Session
The session keeps the church and worship services running smoothly. As things come up they are handled. We do need to improve our communication between the session and the congregation and need to do more in regards to communication than to just have minutes from the meetings available to the congregation. Leadership Structure-Deacons
The Deacons provide several opportunities for fellowship during each year. They also provide a prayer tree when someone requests that prayers be provided to someone in need. More regular communication with the assigned congregation members would be helpful to keep individuals informed. Leadership Structure—Committees: Nominating/Personnel, Mission, Christian Education, Worship, Finance/Budget, Church Growth (membership), Stewardship, Parish Life (fellowship), and Property
Each committee is moderated by one or more session members. All committee members are “appointed” by moderators and there are no defined terms of office. We feel we should improve the communication with the congregation about how to get on a committee and be sure to inform the potential appointee what the needs of the committee will be. Our committees are high-functioning but need to work on communicating between committees better. A possibility would be to utilize email
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more. Another thought was that maybe we should reassess the current committees’ structures and responsibilities to see how well they fit with current mission statement and size of our congregation. Leadership Structure—Presbyterian Women (PW)
This group has limited participation, great events and great support! One item to work on is maybe there is a little too much focus on fundraising and a little more time should be spent on Bible Study. Leadership Structure—Men’s Group
The Men's Group is very supportive of PW. The have great meetings and focus on Bible Study and do very little fund-raising. The do need to meet more regularly. Leadership Structure—Training
The training has been good in past but with several new members serving in leadership roles it might be a good idea to have a Session retreat and a Deacon's Retreat. A little bit more time needs to be spent on training. Leadership Structure—Job Descriptions
We have these for staff and committees. We just need to put them in a central location where they can be easily accessed. Leadership Structure—Policy Manual
We do have one. It needs to be located and maybe updated. Staff Structure
Our staff includes the Pastor and a part-time custodian. We not do have a paid secretary or office manager. We have a music director and a choir director. These positions and our bulletin are done by volunteers. In the future the secretary/ office manager position as a paid position may need to be addressed. All other work in the church is also done by volunteers. Program Structure—Faith Formation for Adults
We have adult Sunday school and Bible Study. The attendance numbers for these programs have been low. Program Structure—Faith Formation for Children/Youth
We have a strong faith formation for children and youth. Our youth have participated in a community-wide youth group and continue to participate in community-wide VBS. We strongly support our youth and have processes in place for youth support and accountability. Financial Structure—Stewardship Program
This is effective in our church.
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Financial Structure—Operating Budget
Church is currently “in the black” and when money is needed it has always been provided. Communication
Bulletin: Our volunteers provide a good bulletin to our congregation. Newsletter: We haven't had one for a long time but a volunteer has begun to print one again monthly. Email: We do not have email at our church. Website: We do not currently have a website
Radio Broadcast: Our service is broadcast for 3 months each year on our local radio station. Bylaws
We do have by-laws. They need to be located and checked to see if they are current with nFOG. Ecumenical Participation
We are very good with this. We participate with GRO1; with the inter-church council and we provide to our community cooperative Thanksgiving and Lenten services. Our inter-church council provides VBS to any children in our area. Fellowship
We have fellowship after church every Sunday and it always good and well attended. Betsy does a good job. We need to provide more opportunities for others to help with Fellowship. Worship
We have great worship services. We involve the congregation but could always include them more in the services. We have a choir and would love to have even more congregational involvement in music and praising through music. Learning new songs would a nice idea too. Overall in this church, when the occasion arises, people rise to it— for giving, for projects, for events. We feel there is a general need for improvements in communication among leadership groups and between leadership and the congregation. Our committees work well but could still benefit from reviewing their responsibilities and training with a view to helping integrate new committee participants and lessening participant burn out. Ministry and Mission Opportunities
We are in need of a leader who is willing to take our Mission Statement to heart. Our community needs a strong leader who is willing to not only lead our congregation but be a leader of
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faith in our community. The Inter-church council, GRO1, Youth Mission, school district, hospitals, nursing homes, etc within and around our community is very important to us. Who is Our Best Match? We are looking for a preaching and worship leader who can be consistently effective. We need someone who is able to inspire from the pulpit and can communicate a clear and consistent message through sermons that are carefully prepared and delivered. This person should project the identity and character of the congregation through worship leadership presence. He or she should be an active listener who has a collaborative team approach. We need someone who can be flexible and will focus on our congregation but also represent the "face" of the Presbyterian Church of Savanna in our community. We need someone who displays an ability to build solid relationships of trust and respect inside and outside of our church. This person should engage people, organizations and partners in developing goals, executing plans and delivering results. They should be flexible and use negotiation skills and adaptability to encourage recognition of joint concerns, collaboration and to influence the success of outcomes. This person should adapt behavior and work methods in response to new information, changing conditions, unexpected obstacles, or ambiguity. He or she should remain open to new ideas and approaches and work on priorities without losing focus or attention. We need a motivator to create and sustain a culture which permits others to provide the quality of service essential to high performance. This person delegates to others and enables them to find the tools and support they need to perform well and influences others towards a spirit of service and meaningful contributions to mission accomplishments. We need someone who can get people to work together, someone who fosters open dialogue and lets each person finish and be responsible for their work. It would be wonderful if this person could create an even stronger feeling of belonging among our congregation and community. We were in agreement that we need someone with spiritual maturity but wanted to stress that we do not believe that a person's actual age has any bearing on their spiritual maturity. We would like to find someone who shows strong personal depth and spiritual grounding and demonstrates integrity by walking the talk and responding with faithfulness of purpose. This person needs to be seen by others as trustworthy and authentic with a rich spiritual life. Of slightly less importance we felt that we need someone who sees ahead clearly and keeps focused on the larger picture. This person would anticipate future consequences and trends and is future orientated. This is someone who sees the possibilities. We also need someone who has a healthy appreciation of self and demonstrates strong and appropriate personal boundaries in relationships. This person would be a less-anxious presence in the midst of turmoil and would not be overly depend on outside affirmation. In our hopes for our best match we feel that this person may be tech-savvy and could help us to have a presence in the computer age with a website, face book, email, etc. But the gifts, skills and characteristics listed previously are of way more importance that being tech savvy. Hopefully the person who fits the above characteristics would be able to work together with individuals within our congregation to meet our technology needs. 1 GRO (Great Rivers Outreach) an organization started in our local community to provide as many services to needy individuals and families as possible. The mission of the Great River Outreach is to serve one person at a time. From those who are homeless in our community, to those who have dysfunctional behavior, to those who find themselves stranded with no place to go; to the elderly in our community; we will provide assistance. The goal is to serve a warm meal a day, 365 days a year to those that are hungry. Provide food in an emergency from the Food Pantry. Offer counseling and help to those that want to start over. Provide clothing and essential items to those who are in need. Offer
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shelter to those who are homeless, and help with re-entry program into the community for those who are released from corrections or jail.
