Growth Ideas 101: Sharing Data Details and Story Telling (February 25, 2026)

Are your numbers, names and data current? What do you need others to know about your previous year, and plans going forward? Thank you for all the work you do to ensure accuracy of information. Creating annual reports, nominating people for key roles, completing statistical data forms, and holding annual meetings often take up a lot of the work of the first quarter of our new calendar year. help each other to review your information in your context. It can be especially challenging if everything falls to one or two people. Accurate records are an essential form of stewardship practices. When communities of faith keep statistical information current and complete, we strengthen shared planning, support wise decision-making, and help tell our living story, with reliability, for our present context and as part of historical records for the future. Reviewing membership rolls and all our data, can spark ideas to remember stories and relationships, prompt phone calls to connect with others as people go through lists, and it might generate possibilities for some small thing to do. Perhaps there will be “remember when” moments shared and stories refreshed or heard for the first time. Celebrate why you are, sharing who you are and what you are currently doing. Identify who uses your building. Record what causes your community of faith supports and ensure key contacts in the church and for these places of outreach are current. What is the story and the procedure to honour legacy gifts, memorial funds, trusts and other investments and assets your church holds? Our reports, contributions, statistics all reflect us long after 2025 has slipped from living memory. Update your pastoral charge information and send in your annual report to the region and submit current data forms on churchhub. Reliable data helps us understand participation, leadership, finances, and the many ways faith communities continue to serve and grow.  As you discover some good news stories to share. Reach out and share them with me, Sharon Ballantyne, growth animator, at 506-306-0500 or by email at sballantyne@united-church.ca.  You are also invited to a virtual 30-minute drop-in conversation each Wednesday morning, beginning at 9:45 a.m. Atlantic (10:15 a.m. Newfoundland and Labrador). Contact Sharon for the Zoom link.