Description
Surveying Your Church's Missions Potential
By Larry McCrary
This resource is a list of survey questions designed to help churches identify their unique “missions assets”—the skills, experiences, relationships, and passions already present within their members. By gathering this information, missions leaders can better understand their church’s sending potential, celebrate how God has already been at work, and discern strategic next steps for engaging both locally and globally. This guide provides a simple, practical way to align a church’s inherent resources with its unique role in God’s mission.
Every church has more missions potential than it realizes. Hidden within the congregation are experiences, skills, relationships, and passions that, when uncovered, can shape a church’s unique role in God’s global mission. We might call these “missions assets”: the elements that comprise the unique sending potential already present in your people.
Missions assets might include something as simple as a member’s frequent business travel, a past short-term trip to a specific region, fluency in another language, or a profession that could be practiced anywhere in the world. When church leaders take time to identify these resources, they begin to see how God has already set the stage for their people to explore deeper cross-cultural engagement.
Why does discovering these assets matter? Here are some examples to consider:
A church can encourage members who are already traveling abroad to go with a sent identity, thereby transforming business or leisure travel into an opportunity for gospel witness.
If several members have engaged with the same country or people group, the church may discover a natural strategic emphasis for future partnerships.
Recognizing members’ transferable job skills can open doors to marketplace missions and creative access opportunities.
Becoming aware of how church members may already be in cross-cultural relationships locally—such as through ESL classes—may mean the groundwork is already laid for local missions engagement.
One church we know even collected the travel history of its members—whether for work, mission, or vacation—and marked each location on a large world map. This visual display revealed surprising concentrations of engagement, which in turn guided the church toward certain locations for future sending.
How to Use the Survey Questions
The following list of questions is designed to help your church uncover these kinds of missions assets. The goal is to see more clearly how God has already woven exposure to the nations into your congregation and to leverage those connection points for faithful sending. Here are some potential steps for implementing this:
Create an online form and distribute it to all your members via email or QR code. If you are at a larger church, work with your communications person or team to find the best pathway to do this.
Gather your missions team, go over the results, and brainstorm next steps for the church and for individuals.
We have included a pretty exhaustive list, so you may consider trimming these questions to fifteen or twenty that you find relevant for your church context.
Help your members understand the vision. This is not simply data collection—this is a way of seeing how God has already been at work among your people.
If you are utilizing a church database system, like Planning Center, you can word some of the questions to automatically add people to certain online groups based on their answers. The following are some sample questions you can curate for your church context.
Travel & Cross-Cultural Experience
Where have you traveled outside the U.S., and when was your most recent trip?
Do you currently have a U.S. passport?
Do you have a passport from another country? If so, which country?
How often do you travel internationally?
Have you participated in a short-term mission trip? If so:
Where did you go?
What kind of work did you do?
Was it in an urban or rural setting?
Do you personally know any long-term missionaries or nonprofit workers overseas? If so, in what region of the world do they serve? What organization(s) are they connected to?
Have you ever lived overseas for more than one month? If so:
Where did you live?
What best describes your role there?
Did you study abroad as a university student? If so, where?
If you are a current student, are you planning to study abroad? If so, where?
Professional Skills & Education
What is your current profession?
What are your top three hobbies or leisure activities?
Do you hold any professional certifications? If so, please list them.
Are you a member of any international organizations or professional guilds?
Do you have the ability to work abroad remotely?
If so, do you have the ability to serve overseas for one to three months? Is your company a global company with offices outside your passport country?
Are you retired?
If so, do you have the ability to serve overseas for one to three months?
Are you a military veteran? If so:
Were you deployed?
If so, where?
What is your highest level of education?
Are you a current college student?
Have you attended Bible college or seminary? If so, what degree did you pursue/receive?
Have you ever considered working overseas?
If you were to take a job overseas, where would be your first choice to live?
Do you have any job skills that are easily transferable to another country?
Do you know of any multinational corporations that employ multiple members of your church?
Spiritual Gifts & Passions
What are your spiritual gifts?
What kind of brokenness in the world most stirs your heart to help?
Do you have a particular passion for a place or people group in the world?
Business & Financial Assets
Have you ever started a business? If so, what type?
Are you a business owner? If so, what type of business?
Do you have vacation homes or properties in other countries?
Local Community Engagement
Are you currently serving locally in your city? If so, are you serving through a program in the church? Which one?
If it is not within our church, what is the name of the non-profit you serve with?
Do you have internationals living in your neighborhood? If so, where are they from?
Do you know internationals who attend our church? If so, where are they from?
Do you ever invite a group of your neighbors to your house socially?
Would you be interested in a ministry serving migrants, refugees, or international students?
Are you interested in a full-time missions role overseas?
Discover Your Sending Potential
Once the survey responses are collected, take time as a leadership team to prayerfully review them. Look for patterns: Are there places or people groups that keep surfacing? Skills or professions that could be especially useful overseas? Stories of past engagement that show God’s hand at work?
Highlight these themes and major assets, and then celebrate them with your church. This is evidence that God has already been preparing your congregation for participation in the Great Commission.
From there, begin asking how these unique resources might be leveraged for greater impact. No church is expected to do everything in God’s global mission, but every church has a part to play. By uncovering your missions assets, you can discern your church’s distinct contribution to joining God in his work among the nations. Your sending potential may be far greater than you ever imagined!
Next Steps
The journey toward discovering your church’s sending potential happens one step at a time. Here are three ways you can put this resource into practice:
Take the survey yourself. Before sharing it broadly, walk through the questions personally. This will give you a feel for how it works, and it may even reveal missions assets in your own life that you hadn’t seen before.
Share the survey with your church. Encourage participation by explaining that this isn’t just data collection—it’s a way of seeing how God has already been at work among your people.
Review and act on the results. Gather a small group of leaders to prayerfully review the responses. Highlight recurring themes, celebrate God’s provision, and begin considering how these unique assets could shape your church’s mission strategy locally and globally.