M9 Missions · Lesson 1 of 4

Lesson 1 — From Activity to Community Impact

Distinguish isolated outreach events from a mission-aligned impact strategy.

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Nine M curriculum version 1.0 · Nine M methodology, content, exercises and deliverables by Pastor Lee Jenkins.

Where this lesson sits

Curriculum version 1.0 · Pastor Lee Review

Module purpose: Align evangelism, outreach, partnerships, community service, and external mission investment with demonstrated needs and measurable impact.

Official outcome: Missions and Community Impact Plan

This lesson produces: Outreach and Missions Inventory

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Learn

Participant study reading — approximately 75 minutes of learning and shared work.

Learning objective: Distinguish isolated outreach events from a mission-aligned impact strategy.

Recommended participants: Missions team, pastoral staff, finance liaison

Estimated teaching time: 75 minutes

Success indicators

• Leadership can name the difference between an outreach event and a mission-aligned commitment
• A complete Outreach and Missions Inventory exists for the current year
• Each inventory entry states purpose, audience and intended result rather than just activity
• Leadership identifies at least three activities with unclear purpose or unmeasured result

Materials and evidence you will use

• Prior-year outreach and missions calendar
• Financial reports for missions and benevolence line items
• Any existing partner agreements or memoranda of understanding
• Financial records or calendar entries supporting at least 80 percent of listed activities
• Notes from at least one coordinator interview for a flagged activity

What you should be able to produce

• Leadership can name the difference between an outreach event and a mission-aligned commitment
• A complete Outreach and Missions Inventory exists for the current year
• Each inventory entry states purpose, audience and intended result rather than just activity
• Leadership identifies at least three activities with unclear purpose or unmeasured result

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

Draft proposal for Pastor Lee Jenkins' review: this passage's picture of Christ identified with the hungry, the stranger and the imprisoned can frame missions not as programming but as encounter with real, named need.

As a proposed connection for pastoral review, the inventory exercise in this lesson gives that identification concrete form: it forces leadership to name who each activity actually reaches and what changed for them, rather than resting on the fact that an event occurred.

Understand the concept

Your work in this lesson focuses on this outcome: Distinguish isolated outreach events from a mission-aligned impact strategy.

A church cannot build a mission-aligned strategy on top of an inventory it has never honestly examined; naming what is actually happening, and why, is the necessary first step.

Why it matters for your church

Without an honest inventory, leadership cannot tell the difference between fruitful commitments and inherited habits.

Naming intended results, even retroactively, creates accountability that did not exist before.

Patterns in the inventory often reveal an imbalance between local and global investment that no one had noticed.

Examine the evidence

Use Prior-year outreach and missions calendar, Financial reports for missions and benevolence line items, and Any existing partner agreements or memoranda of understanding 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 Financial records or calendar entries supporting at least 80 percent of listed activities, and Notes from at least one coordinator interview for a flagged activity. Record uncertainty honestly so your team knows what still needs to be verified.

Prepare for the shared exercise

Create a complete, honest record of current outreach, evangelism and mission-giving activity as the factual baseline for the module. The Build the Outreach and Missions Inventory produces the Outreach and Missions Inventory, which contributes to the module's principal deliverable.

Before working with your team, consider this reflection: Which activity on our inventory would we most regret continuing without ever asking whether it truly serves the people we say it serves?

Key terms

Outreach activity: A discrete action the church takes to serve, evangelize or partner beyond its membership, such as an event, trip or disbursement.
Mission-aligned strategy: A reasoned set of decisions about which needs a church will address and why, from which specific activities follow.
Intended result: The specific, statable change an activity is designed to produce for the people or partner it serves.

What this means for a church

• Without an honest inventory, leadership cannot tell the difference between fruitful commitments and inherited habits
• Naming intended results, even retroactively, creates accountability that did not exist before
• Patterns in the inventory often reveal an imbalance between local and global investment that no one had noticed

Common failure patterns

• Treating the inventory as a public-relations document rather than an honest internal record
• Skipping small or low-cost activities because they seem too minor to matter
• Letting one strong personality's favorite ministry go unexamined out of deference

Ministry case

Northgate Community Church Finds Its Blind Spot

Northgate Community Church (illustrative example — not actual church data) had run a fall coat drive for eleven years and considered it a signature ministry. When the missions team built its first honest inventory, they discovered the coat drive's actual audience was largely families already connected to the church rather than the surrounding neighborhood, and no one could say how many coats went to people outside the congregation.

Rather than canceling the drive, leadership used the finding to ask a better question in Lesson 2: who in the surrounding community actually needs winter clothing, and how would the church know? The inventory did not deliver the answer, but it delivered the honest question, which is exactly what this lesson is designed to produce.

Lesson takeaway

A church cannot build a mission-aligned strategy on top of an inventory it has never honestly examined; naming what is actually happening, and why, is the necessary first step.

Discuss

Guided discussion for the leadership table.

With the inventory complete, the team is ready to test its assumptions against real community voice and data rather than internal impression, which is the work of the next lesson.

Which activity on our inventory would be hardest to explain to a first-time visitor, and why?
Where did we write down 'we've always done it' as the purpose, and what does that tell us?
Are we more confident about our local activities or our global partnerships? Why might that be?
What would change if every activity had to state its intended result in advance next year?

Discussion notes

Practice

Applied exercise — produces the Outreach and Missions Inventory.

Build the Outreach and Missions Inventory

Create a complete, honest record of current outreach, evangelism and mission-giving activity as the factual baseline for the module.

Estimated time: 40 minutes

Participants: Missions team, pastoral staff, finance liaison

Artifact produced: Outreach and Missions Inventory

Required inputs

• Prior-year outreach and missions calendar
• Financial records for missions and benevolence spending
• Notes or interviews with activity coordinators

Instructions

List every outreach, evangelism, benevolence and partner activity from the past 12 months.
For each, record its purpose in one honest sentence, even if that sentence is 'unclear.'
Record the primary audience served and estimate how many people it reached.
Record total cost, including staff time if it can be reasonably estimated.
Record how many members participated and whether it relied on a small recurring group.
Name the partner organization involved, if any, and the nature of that relationship.
State the intended result the activity was meant to produce, or mark it as undefined.
Circle any entries where purpose, audience or intended result could not be clearly stated.

Complete it online

Outreach and Missions Inventory

Reporting period: ______________________
Prepared by: ______________________
Date reviewed: ______________________

Activity	Purpose	Audience	Cost	Participation	Partner	Intended result

Your response — Outreach and Missions Inventory

Worked example

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

Northgate Community Church (illustrative example — not actual church data)

Northgate's missions team built its first full inventory ahead of its annual missions budget review, expecting a short list and discovering fourteen distinct activities.

Activity	Purpose	Audience	Cost	Participation	Partner	Intended result
Fall coat drive	Provide warm coats before winter	Assumed neighborhood families; actually mostly member families	$1,200	18 volunteers, same group 4 years running	None	Undefined — no target count or follow-up
Guatemala partnership trip	Support partner church's children's ministry building project	Partner congregation and 60 local children	$14,500	9 members traveled	Iglesia Nueva Esperanza (partner church)	Complete phase two of building; deliver two weeks of children's programming
Weekly food pantry shift	Supplement county food bank distribution	Approximately 40 households weekly	$300/month plus staff time	6 rotating volunteers	County Regional Food Bank	Undefined — no measure of household stability change

How this leadership team reasoned

• The team noticed that only the Guatemala partnership had a clearly stated intended result, largely because the partner organization required a report to release the next grant installment.
• The coat drive's audience assumption had never been tested; leadership realized they were guessing rather than knowing who the drive actually served.
• The food pantry shift had run for years as a quiet, faithful commitment, but no one had ever asked whether it should be evaluated for anything beyond consistency.

Decisions recorded

• Flag the coat drive and food pantry shift for community-needs verification in Lesson 2 rather than assuming their value.
• Use the Guatemala partnership's reporting requirement as a model for defining intended results across all major commitments.
• Bring the volunteer-rotation pattern to the participation planning work in Lesson 3.

Completed artifact extract — Outreach and Missions Inventory

Of fourteen active missions and outreach activities reviewed, only three stated a measurable intended result at the outset. Two activities relied on the same small group of volunteers for four or more consecutive years. This inventory will be tested against community-verified need in the next phase of planning.

Illustrative exercise score: 18 of 20. The inventory is complete and unusually candid about gaps, directly setting up the needs-verification work to follow; it loses one point for not yet estimating staff time consistently across entries.

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)	Only a few activities are listed and most fields are blank.	Most known activities are listed with several fields incomplete.	Every known activity from the past year is listed with all fields addressed, including honest 'undefined' entries.	5
Use of evidence (0–5)	Entries are guesses with no reference to records or coordinator input.	Some entries draw on financial records or coordinator notes, others are estimated without basis.	Every entry is grounded in financial records, calendars or direct coordinator input.	4
Alignment to the module purpose (0–5)	The inventory reads as a promotional list with no critical examination.	Some entries note gaps in purpose or result, others avoid the question.	The inventory clearly surfaces which activities lack a stated audience, purpose or intended result.	5
Actionability and ownership (0–5)	No next steps or owners are identified from the inventory findings.	General next steps are mentioned without named owners or timing.	Specific flagged items are assigned to named owners for follow-up in the coming lessons.	4
Worked sample total				18 / 20

Completeness: Northgate listed all fourteen known activities and completed every column, including marking undefined results honestly.
Use of evidence: Most figures came from financial records and coordinator interviews, though the coat drive's audience count remained an estimate.
Alignment to the module purpose: Northgate's team flagged eleven of fourteen entries as missing a clear intended result, exactly the honest signal this exercise is meant to produce.
Actionability and ownership: The team named which flagged activities would go to Lesson 2 verification but had not yet assigned individual owners for that follow-up.

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

Submit evidence

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

Submit

• A completed Outreach and Missions Inventory covering the past 12 months
• A short written note listing which entries were flagged as undefined and why

Attach this evidence

Financial records or calendar entries supporting at least 80 percent of listed activities
Notes from at least one coordinator interview for a flagged activity

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 Impact Plan.

Artifact produced: Outreach and Missions Inventory

Provides the factual baseline inventory that anchors the community-needs assessment and portfolio sections of the Missions and Community Impact Plan.

Open the module deliverable assembly

Participant reflection and notes

Which activity on our inventory would we most regret continuing without ever asking whether it truly serves the people we say it serves?

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