S7 Give Generously · Lesson 1 of 4

Lesson 1 — Looking Outward: Naming the Community and the Mission Field

Build a current, specific picture of the needs in the church's surrounding community and its mission field beyond the community.

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Seven Principles curriculum version 1.0 — author-review draft pending Leland Rubin's approval prior to publication. · Leland's Seven Stewardship Principles methodology, content, exercises and deliverables are created by Leland Rubin and remain in author-review draft pending his approval.

Where this lesson sits

Curriculum version 1.0 · Author Review

Module purpose: Build a current picture of community and mission-field need, set an intentional missions and outreach budget with a stated rationale, vet and formalize partner organizations with written agreements, and report outward impact honestly, including shortfalls.

Official outcome: Missions and Community Outreach Giving Plan

This lesson produces: Community and Mission-Field Profile

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Learn

Participant study reading — approximately 80 minutes of learning and shared work.

Learning objective: Build a current, specific picture of the needs in the church's surrounding community and its mission field beyond the community.

Recommended participants: Pastor, missions or outreach team lead, one or two board members, and a community liaison if one exists

Estimated teaching time: 80 minutes

Success indicators

• Leadership can name at least five specific needs in the surrounding community, drawn from more than one source
• Leadership can name at least two mission-field needs beyond the community, whether nearby or at a distance
• The team has identified at least three existing efforts, inside or outside the church, already addressing named needs
• A named owner exists for refreshing the community and mission-field profile on a recurring schedule

Materials and evidence you will use

• Publicly available local demographic and needs data
• Notes or reports from any existing community partners
• Prior missions trip or outreach event summaries, if available
• At least five sourced community needs and two sourced mission-field commitments
• At least one identified overlap or true gap with a next step assigned

What you should be able to produce

• Leadership can name at least five specific needs in the surrounding community, drawn from more than one source
• Leadership can name at least two mission-field needs beyond the community, whether nearby or at a distance
• The team has identified at least three existing efforts, inside or outside the church, already addressing named needs
• A named owner exists for refreshing the community and mission-field profile on a recurring schedule

Foundational ministry principle

Matthew 25:35-40

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

King James Version (KJV) · Public domain

This passage is proposed for the lesson opening because it names concrete, specific human needs — hunger, thirst, homelessness, nakedness, sickness, imprisonment — rather than a vague call to generosity, which sets the tone for the specificity this lesson asks of leadership.

As a draft framing, the facilitator might suggest that looking outward well starts with naming actual, specific needs by name rather than speaking about missions and outreach only in general terms, pending Leland Rubin's review of this specific application.

Understand the concept

Your work in this lesson focuses on this outcome: Build a current, specific picture of the needs in the church's surrounding community and its mission field beyond the community.

A church cannot serve outward needs it has never specifically named; today's Community and Mission-Field Profile grounds every funding, partnership and reporting decision that follows in this module.

Why it matters for your church

Outreach decisions made from impression rather than sourced data risk duplicating existing efforts or missing the community's most pressing needs entirely.

A mission-field commitment inherited from a single past leader, without current reasoning, is difficult to explain to a new generation of givers.

Failing to distinguish local community needs from a distant mission field can lead to a scattered strategy that does neither well.

Examine the evidence

Use Publicly available local demographic and needs data, Notes or reports from any existing community partners, and Prior missions trip or outreach event summaries, if available to compare your church's present practice with its stated intentions. Look for documented patterns, missing information, and differences between what people assume and what the evidence supports.

Your completed work should be supported by At least five sourced community needs and two sourced mission-field commitments, and At least one identified overlap or true gap with a next step assigned. Record uncertainty honestly so your team knows what still needs to be verified.

Prepare for the shared exercise

Build a current, sourced, specific picture of community needs and mission-field commitments to ground every later funding and partnership decision. The Community and Mission-Field Profile produces the Community and Mission-Field Profile, which contributes to the principle's principal deliverable.

Before working with your team, consider this reflection: What is one specific, named need in my church's community or mission field that I could describe today with a source and a story, rather than only a general impression?

Key terms

Mission field: A specific population, region or category of need the church has intentionally committed to serve through prayer, presence or funding, whether nearby or at a distance.
Community needs assessment: A structured review of specific, sourced needs present in a defined geographic community, used to inform outreach priorities rather than relying on impression alone.
Existing-effort mapping: The practice of identifying organizations or ministries already addressing a named need before deciding whether to start something new or partner with what already exists.

What this means for a church

• Outreach decisions made from impression rather than sourced data risk duplicating existing efforts or missing the community's most pressing needs entirely
• A mission-field commitment inherited from a single past leader, without current reasoning, is difficult to explain to a new generation of givers
• Failing to distinguish local community needs from a distant mission field can lead to a scattered strategy that does neither well

Common failure patterns

• Assuming leadership already knows the community well enough that a formal profile is unnecessary
• Naming needs only from personal observation without any outside sourced data
• Continuing to fund a mission field out of loyalty or habit without anyone being able to explain the current rationale

Ministry case

A Neighborhood the Church Thought It Knew

Fictional Cedar Ridge Fellowship, a congregation of about 180 people used here only as an illustrative synthetic example, had described its neighborhood for years as 'working-class families' in its outreach materials. When leadership pulled current public school data for this exercise, they found that the surrounding elementary school now reported nearly forty percent of students experiencing housing instability at some point during the school year, a figure no one on the leadership team had previously known.

Rather than launching a new program immediately, the fictional team discovered a local family resource center already coordinating housing-stability support and simply had never introduced itself to the church. The profile-building exercise led not to a new ministry but to a scheduled meeting with that existing effort, which the team recognized as a more responsible first step than duplicating work already underway.

Lesson takeaway

A church cannot serve outward needs it has never specifically named; today's Community and Mission-Field Profile grounds every funding, partnership and reporting decision that follows in this module.

Discuss

Guided discussion for the leadership table.

Having named specific needs and existing efforts with real sourcing, let's turn next to how the church sets a missions and outreach budget on purpose, rather than as an afterthought once every other line item is funded.

Which named need surprised our team most, and why had we not noticed it before today?
Where did we find an existing effort already addressing a need we assumed no one was working on?
Is our current mission-field commitment something we could explain clearly to a new member, or is it mostly inherited habit?
What would change in our outreach priorities if we revisited this profile every year rather than only occasionally?

Discussion notes

Practice

Applied exercise — produces the Community and Mission-Field Profile.

Community and Mission-Field Profile

Build a current, sourced, specific picture of community needs and mission-field commitments to ground every later funding and partnership decision.

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Participants: Pastor, missions or outreach team lead, one or two board members, and a community liaison if one exists

Artifact produced: Community and Mission-Field Profile

Required inputs

• Publicly available local demographic and needs data
• Notes from any existing community or mission partners
• Prior outreach or missions trip summaries, if available

Instructions

List every specific community need participants can name, together with its data source.
List every specific mission-field need or commitment the church currently holds, together with the reason it was chosen.
For each need listed, research and record any existing effort already addressing it, inside or outside the church.
Flag which needs are closest to the church's current gifts and relationships, and which would require building new capacity.
Identify any overlap between community needs and mission-field commitments.
Assign a named owner and interval for refreshing this profile going forward.
Summarize the profile into a short paragraph suitable for the front of the Missions and Community Outreach Giving Plan.

Complete it online

Community and Mission-Field Profile

Church name: ______________________
Date of review: ______________________
Facilitator: ______________________

Need	Community or mission field	Data source	Existing effort addressing it	Fit with current gifts/relationships

Your response — Community and Mission-Field Profile

Worked example

A fully completed sample using a fictional church. This is illustrative teaching material, not any church's actual data.

Cedar Ridge Fellowship (illustrative example — not actual church data)

Cedar Ridge Fellowship is a fictional congregation of about 180 attendees used here to illustrate what a completed community and mission-field profile looks like.

Need	Community or mission field	Data source	Existing effort addressing it	Fit with current gifts/relationships
Housing instability among elementary families	Community	Local school district data report	Cedar family resource center offers emergency housing support	Close — church already runs a benevolence fund
Clean water access in partner region	Mission field	Long-term missionary relationship, field reports	Missionary team already drilling wells with local labor	Close — church has funded this partner for eight years
Food insecurity near the church campus	Community	County food bank distribution data	No coordinated local effort currently identified	Moderate — would require new capacity

How this leadership team reasoned

• Cedar Ridge's leadership realized their sense of 'working-class families' undersold a specific, measurable housing-instability figure that changed how urgently they viewed the need.
• The team recognized their eight-year mission-field partnership had strong existing documentation, while the food-insecurity need close to campus had no current church or partner effort addressing it.

Decisions recorded

• The outreach lead was assigned to schedule an introductory meeting with the family resource center within three weeks.
• Leadership agreed the food-insecurity gap would be evaluated in the next lesson as a candidate for new funding, rather than assumed to already be covered.

Completed artifact extract — Community and Mission-Field Profile

Profile identifies three priority needs, two with existing efforts the church can partner into and one true gap. Mission-field commitment is well documented; community commitment needs a new relationship built within thirty days.

Illustrative exercise score: 18 of 20. Cedar Ridge's team sourced every need with real data, distinguished existing efforts from true gaps clearly, and assigned specific near-term ownership, though the food-insecurity fit rating could have included more detail on required capacity.

BAG Index complement

Household financial-literacy layer that complements this stewardship principle.

BAG Index complement

Community financial literacy outreach and SMART giving goals

As the church names community needs, financial literacy itself is often one of the underlying gaps behind housing instability, food insecurity and debt distress. This complement equips leaders to consider offering basic, product-neutral financial literacy education as a form of community outreach, and to model SMART goal-setting in the church's own giving planning.

Teaching points

• Financial stress is a leading contributor to family instability in many communities, and basic budgeting or debt-literacy education is a low-cost, high-value outreach offering churches are well positioned to provide
• SMART giving goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound — apply equally to a household's personal generosity plan and to the church's own missions and outreach budget
• Community financial literacy outreach should be offered without any product sale, investment recommendation or insurance pitch attached, to preserve trust and avoid any appearance of self-interest
• Partnering with an existing certified financial education provider or nonprofit credit counseling agency is often more sustainable than a church building its own curriculum from scratch
• Any outreach that touches personal financial information from community members must protect confidentiality with the same care the church applies to its own members' giving records

Household practice step: Identify one existing, reputable financial literacy resource or nonprofit credit counseling partner and record a one-page summary of what it offers, so the church has a concrete, vetted referral ready the next time a financial-stress need surfaces in pastoral care or outreach.

Supports this principle: Supports S7 Give Generously by extending outward generosity beyond direct material aid into equipping the community with durable financial skills, which is itself a form of stewardship discipleship offered outward.

This complement is educational and product-neutral. It does not constitute financial, legal, tax or investment advice, and the church should never recommend a specific financial product, investment or insurance policy; refer households needing personalized advice to a qualified, independent, licensed professional of their own choosing.

Score

Transparent 20-point exercise rubric: four criteria rated 0 to 5 with observable anchors.

Criterion	0 — not evident	3 — acceptable	5 — exemplary	Sample
Completeness (0–5)	Fewer than three needs were named or the worksheet was left mostly blank.	Several needs were named, but data sources or existing-effort research were missing for most rows.	At least five community needs and two mission-field needs were named, each with a data source and existing-effort research recorded.	5
Use of evidence (0–5)	Needs were listed based on impression alone with no outside data source cited.	Some needs cited an outside source; others relied only on personal observation.	Every listed need cited a specific, checkable outside data source or documented partner relationship.	5
Alignment to the module purpose (0–5)	The profile stayed generic and was never connected to any future funding or partnership decision.	The profile named needs but only loosely connected them to what the church might do next.	The profile explicitly flagged fit with current gifts and named a next step tied to each priority need.	4
Actionability and ownership (0–5)	No owner or timeline was assigned to any follow-up action.	An owner was named for some but not all follow-up actions.	Every follow-up action has a specific named owner and a realistic timeline.	4
Worked sample total				18 / 20

Completeness: Cedar Ridge documented multiple needs across both categories with sources and existing-effort notes for every row.
Use of evidence: Every row cited a specific source, including school district data and long-standing missionary field reports.
Alignment to the module purpose: Two of three needs had a clear next step assigned; the food-insecurity gap was flagged for further evaluation rather than immediate action, which is appropriate but slightly less concrete.
Actionability and ownership: The resource-center meeting has a named owner and a three-week deadline; the food-insecurity evaluation was assigned to 'leadership' generally rather than one specific person.

Lesson-exercise scores (20 points each) demonstrate learning and artifact quality. They do not automatically overwrite the official Seven Principles assessment, which remains a separate 100-point rating of five dimensions for each principle.

Submit evidence

What must be submitted for this lesson to count as complete.

Submit

• Completed Community and Mission-Field Profile worksheet with sourced needs, existing-effort notes and a refresh owner

Attach this evidence

At least five sourced community needs and two sourced mission-field commitments
At least one identified overlap or true gap with a next step assigned

File upload is not implemented in this prototype. Ticking a box records that the church can produce the document; it does not store a file.

Contribute to official outcome

How this lesson builds the Missions and Community Outreach Giving Plan.

Artifact produced: Community and Mission-Field Profile

Feeds the community and mission-field awareness section of the Missions and Community Outreach Giving Plan.

Open the module deliverable assembly

Participant reflection and notes

What is one specific, named need in my church's community or mission field that I could describe today with a source and a story, rather than only a general impression?

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