The Eight Essentials for a
Healthy and Thriving Congregation:
Developing a Strategy for Success

Small Group Follow-Up

Copyright © 2006 Rev. Nancy J. Horvath Zurn
Published by UFMCC

Introduction

Welcome to the second part of a unique study with one purpose: to help your church become a healthy and thriving congregation. 

The Eight Essentials for a Healthy and Thriving Congregation, an eight-week small group study, was launched on the MCC website in January 2006. For those small groups who would like to embrace this study and put a plan of action into place, Developing a Strategy for Success is for you!

While the original The Eight Essentials was developed as a small group study, Developing a Strategy for Success is set up for a larger group, or even congregational study, presented in three day-long sessions. Developing a Strategy for Success takes The Eight Essentials to the next phase and helps move a congregation toward a realistic plan of action.

The large group may consist of all the small groups who went through the eight- week study, church leadership, or even an entire congregation! It is highly recommended that people from the small group study be in attendance.

Although the times can be flexible, it is suggested that these three sessions be set up one Saturday a month, from 9:00am to 3:00pm for three consecutive months. Each session is broken down into sections:

• Scripture
• Skit
• Pocket Reminders
• Small Group Work
• Reporting Back to the Group at Large
• Creating a Plan of Action

You will note in the Leader’s Guide that breaks and a lunch time are built into each day.

The ultimate objective is for your church to have a strategy in place that presents long and short term goals that lead toward developing a healthy and thriving congregation.
 

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Resource Copyright © 2006 Nancy J. Horvath-Zurn, MDiv.
Published by UFMCC

Webpage Copyright © 2006 UFMCC