Grantee Directory

The Metropolitan District, a regional district of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, currently supports the growth and vitality of 124 Alliance congregations. While we are planting numerous vibrant churches each year, many existing congregations are experiencing plateauing or declining attendance and lackluster ministry. We face a critical problem of net negative 6 percent growth among established congregations; sadly this is not a phenomenon unique to our Alliance family of churches. The PEAK Survey, created by the Metro District in 2017, fosters a culture of improvement through assessment by creating constructive dialogue and common language around church development. Rather than waiting until they face a plateau, decline, or crisis, PEAK enables our churches to become energized and positioned for healthy growth by unifying around the values it holds dear, its mission critical practices, and the needs of its community. The mission of PEAK is to see churches become thriving, multiplying congregations that promote holistic gospel transformation into communities. Our goal is to see 75 percent of our churches move from a plateaued or declined position into thriving growth through a systematic, strategic change process, using information and data provided by the PEAK Survey. PEAK will provide churches a developmental process to assess their current position (PEAK Survey), navigate sustainable change (PEAK Coaching), and build a thriving mission within their local context (PEAK Summits).

The goal of this program is to see an increased number of thriving Alliance Hispanic congregations. They are growing fast, yet there has been surprisingly little research into how and why they thrive. Using the principles of positive deviance, appreciative inquiry, and other qualitative research, the C&MA wants to discover what makes Hispanic congregations thrive and share these lessons in learning communities (congregational cohorts). The C&MA has been using Anglo church development tools translated into Spanish, but this is not always best. This program strategically identifies resource needs by examining thriving congregations and applying those lessons throughout the United States. This model can also be adapted for non-Hispanic ethnic congregations (610 churches and 75,872 members). The Alliance is excited about the opportunity for growth in community with Hispanic congregations in other Christian denominations through sharing lessons learned from this program.