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We at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) want the MAPchurch process easy to understand and MAPchurch.com very easy to use. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
We have written the following instructions to assist you. These may also be downloaded via a PDF file, allowing you to print the instructions and keep them handy as you use MAPchurch.
If you find that you need further clarification during the process or want to provide feedback to make MAPchurch more user friendly, please contact us toll-free at 1-888-730-5226 or use the MAPchurch “contact us” form.
Jerry Chamness, Church Systems Coordinator
Center for Missional Research, North American Mission Board
E-mail: mapchurch@namb.net
Helpful overview information about MAPchurch is provided at the “What is MAPchurch?” tab. Before you do anything else, we recommend you click on that tab and review that section of material.
After your church determines you want to proceed with the MAPchurch process, a “church administrator” or local MAPchurch coordinator must be selected by your church. Hereafter we will designate this person as your “Survey Administrator”. This person could be a church staff member or volunteer, or even a church consultant working to help your church. This person will serve as a liaison between your church staff, leadership and member participants, and the NAMB MAPchurch administration.
The Survey Administrator should review all the steps below and become familiar with the MAPchurch process before actually beginning Step 3.
To register your church and begin the process, the Survey Administrator should click on the tab entitled, “Sign Up Now”. This tab is only used once during the process, and is only intended for use by the designated Survey Administrator. You cannot “log in” until after your church has completed this step.
The Survey Administrator enters the basic registration data as requested by the registration form shown on that screen. First name and Last Name are those of the Survey Administrator. The system will suggest a Login Name for you and then you proceed with entering the remaining data.
City and State are those for the church itself, not the Survey Administrator or the church Pastor. Select the most appropriate paradigm for your SBC church, and there is a help button to display the paradigm definitions. Right now we are only supporting traditional, progressive, and non-SBC if your church is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The other paradigms will be added later this year.
Worship count would be the typical Sunday morning total attendance during all worship services (if you have more than one), and would also include those participating in children’s church services and nursery activities during the worship services.
The privacy policy may be reviewed by clicking the navigation link at the top right of the screen header. Then check the box agreeing to the terms and privacy policy and click the “Submit” button. You will receive a response message saying, “Thank you for registering. You will receive an e-mail and temporary password when your registration has been reviewed.”
When you submitted your registration data, your church was automatically added to a queue reviewed by the NAMB Administration. If you are a Southern Baptist church, NAMB will plug in your Annual Church Profile (ACP) data from LifeWay for you. If you do not send in the ACP every year, the most recent year from your church will be used. If you have never sent in the ACP or are a non-SBC church, the ACP data area will be left blank.
The NAMB Administration will “approve” your church to complete the registration process. The system will automatically generate an e-mail message and send it to the Survey Administrator e-mail address. The message will include the Survey Administrator’s login name and temporary password for use in later steps.
When the Survey Administrator receives the e-mail message with the login name and temporary password, you may go to the MAPchurch.com Home Page and click the “Log in to MAPchurch” button on the right side of the screen near the top. Everything from this point in the process requires the Survey Administrator to be logged in.
The login screen will appear. Enter your login name and temporary password and click the “Log In” button. The login screen will immediately prompt you to replace the system-generated temporary password with a password of your own choosing. The password you enter will become your permanent password. If your browser supports this option, you can use the “remember me” feature to recall that password in the future.
You will see two tabs. Click on “Church Account Settings”. You will see the “Edit Church Information” screen. The first section shows your contact information (Survey Administrator).
In the next section, you will see a “Church Logo” blank with a “Browse” button. You may click the Browse button and enter the folder and file name of your church logo artwork. Then click the “Upload” button and the logo will be imported and used on your MAPchurch reports.
Below that, you will see the ACP data. Much of the data is “updatable”, and we recommend you update any piece of data that appears to be outdated. Also, if any of the data is blank, this is your opportunity to fill it in. You may leave it blank, but the missional assessment results will be more accurate when you have supplied updated ACP-type data.
When you are finished with the updating process, click the “Save” button.
It is now time for you to build the instructional e-mail text. You will see a box available to you, and you can write the message that your church wants to send to those who will be survey participants.
It is a good idea to mention who you are (the Survey Administrator), what your role is, and why you’re sending the message to them. Let them know what is expected of them, and encourage them to participate because it will be so helpful to the church and its leadership. Remind them their opinions are anonymous, and they have just two weeks to complete the survey.
After the e-mail message text has been entered, it is time for you to “invite” the survey participants. Click on the “Survey Results” tab. You will invite church members and/or staff by entering their e-mail addresses and clicking on the “Add Participant” button. You can add them one at a time; or in groups using the correct format as shown on the screen; or by importing in mass your church e-mail address distribution list from an Excel file if you have one.
Notice that as you add participants, the Participant Type radial button defaults to “Member”. However, your church can do a separate survey for “Church Staff” if desired. Just be sure the correct radial button is selected for each participant you add.
You continue this process for as long as it takes to invite your church’s participants. They are not notified yet and the survey doesn’t actually start yet. You can log off, login, etc., as many times as you want and continue until you finish this process.
You may “invite” a random sample of church members, or invite as many as you desire up to and including the full membership. If you use a random sample, the results will be more accurate if you select a random group of people involving both men and women (and perhaps youth), leaders and non-leaders, new members and long-time members, active and uninvolved, etc. At least 15 members must complete the survey, so you should probably invite more than the minimum in case any do not finish it. There is no minimum, however, on staff surveys—they can be a few as 2 or 3.
After you have invited a random sample of your membership, or all the members you want to participate, it is time to start the survey process. Click on the “Begin Survey” button.
The survey is initiated. The e-mail message is sent to all the participants you invited, and the two-week clock begins ticking. The survey participants have just two weeks to complete their survey. They can start and stop and start again, until they work their way through all the questions. It should take them about 45 minutes or less.
A good Internet connection is necessary. When the member opens the e-mail sent by MAPchurch, it will contain your e-mail message and a link to the survey. The link has the login and password built in, so that members do not have to know that information. They just click on the link, and the survey will be presented to them. If they close their browser before completing the survey, they just need to click the link in the e-mail again and they can resume where they left off.
While the two weeks of survey time is in progress, the Survey Administrator may monitor the progress. Just login to MAPchurch.com and click the “Survey Results” tab.
You will see a Survey Status & Results Summary. It will show you the survey end date, as well as the progress of members or staff in terms of how many you invited and how many have completed the survey.
There is also presented to you a generic login and password. This is for members you want to participate, but they do not have their own e-mail address. Instead, you ask them to use a computer at church and give them the generic login and password for MAPchurch.com login. When they log in with the generic option, they will be presented with a survey just as if they were at home and had received an e-mail invitation. The only difference is that they cannot start and stop—once they start they must answer all the questions and complete the survey. If they close the browser in the middle, their answers will be lost and they must start all over. You can give the generic login and password to any number of people, and this is helpful if you have several members who do not have e-mail addresses—they can still participate!
You will also notice that while the survey is in process, you can still add more participants using their e-mail addresses. These invitation messages are sent immediately upon clicking the “Add Participants” button. However, they do not get two weeks to complete their work—they only get the remaining number of days for your church.
Two weeks after launching your church survey, the system will automatically “complete” it. Anyone who has not done their survey by that time will be locked out. They will receive a warning message three days prior to finish, but once the two weeks has expired, they will not be able to do the survey.
Once the survey is completed, “Report Results” tab will appear. The Survey Administrator may now review all the reports. There are reports for summary level, category level, topic level, and specific question level. All reports can also be downloaded via PDF file so that you may print them and use them in presentations to church leadership or to the church members.
Later in the year, MAPchurch.com will begin to offer recommendations to you regarding training programs, books, websites, coaches and other resources you could use to improve the missional effectiveness of your church. This is in development at this time, and is expected to be available around November, 2007.
NAMB defines a missional church as follows: “A missional church is a biblically faithful and culturally appropriate reproducing community of disciples sent on mission by God to advance His Kingdom among all peoples.”
We affirm and work with diverse kinds of churches that may fit the church paradigm descriptions and support the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 and the NAMB Ecclesiological Guidelines.
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Only one registrant required per church! The survey administrator can be the pastor, a staff member, or a volunteer.
A registrant has only three tasks! Update your church’s profile data, enter email addresses for members and staff to take the survey, and generate reports for your church once the survey has ended.
Click the “Sign Up” tab if you have not already registered to get your login id and password today! If you need help with the survey please refer to the “How does it work?” page.
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