In your church, do a set of common goals or understandings inform all your faith-forming programs and ministries? Have you identified a discipleship pathway that meets people of all ages where they are and assists them in growing as lifelong followers of Jesus Christ? 

If not, consider building a faith formation framework for your church around the Building Blocks of Faith. They can help your congregation 

• develop a common language for understanding how faith is formed.
• assess whether programs and ministries are effectively building faith.
• examine your church culture to see how well it supports faith formation.
• explore how individuals are growing in faith.

Wondering where to start? This step-by-step guide will help.

STEP 1: Assemble and train a team

Gather a team of people who are interested in and willing to explore the topic of faith formation with the goal of creating an overarching framework for your congregation. To maintain momentum, your team should meet at least monthly. A team of four to six people is large enough to share the work but small enough to be nimble. People to include:

• the pastor
• key staff members
• one or two council members
• people of varying ages (teens and young adults will greatly enrich your team)

Your team will need a thorough understanding of the Building Blocks of Faith, so plan at least one training session using these resources. 

Bonus: If you’re part of a Christian Reformed church, one of our team members can train and coach your team!

STEP 2: Introduce the Building Blocks of Faith to your congregation

One of your team’s jobs is to introduce the Building Blocks to your congregation in a clear and encouraging way. Consider presenting at a potluck, a congregational meeting, a council meeting, or a church staff meeting. 

Here are some tools you might use in your presentation: 

• Print and hand out a helpful one-page summary of the Building Blocks.
• Watch this 5-minute video summary of the Building Blocks of Faith together, along with the more in-depth video explorations of the needs for 
  • Belonging
  • Knowing and Understanding
  • Having Hope
  • Being Called and Equipped
• Use our Questions and Conversation Starters resource to start dialogue.
• Debrief by asking some questions like these: What is new to you in these resources? What have you learned? How could you use the Building Blocks of Faith in your life?

STEP 3: Assess your church’s current faith formation efforts

The Building Blocks of Faith provide a lens for assessing how well current programs and ministries are helping to form faith in people of all ages. We’ve developed two easy-to-use tools for you:

1. The Building Blocks Assessment Questionnaire provides 20 questions to ask all or part of your congregation. Use a spreadsheet to summarize the results so that you can identify patterns, strengths, and weaknesses. Here are some tips for using the Assessment tool.
2. The Building Blocks Chart is a worksheet you can use to determine how each Building Block is addressed (or not addressed) in the various ministries of your church. The chart can be adapted to look at different demographics—see these variation examples. And here are some tips for using the Chart effectively.

STEP 4: Communicate your assessment results

The next step is to communicate the results of your assessments to the council and the congregation so that everyone is on the same page. Here’s how two churches did that: 

• Erick Schuringa from Immanuel CRC in Brampton, Ontario, wrote a blog post pointing out areas in which the church would focus their faith formation energy and inviting the congregation to help brainstorm.
• In a newsletter article, Spring Lake (Mich.) CRC’s Faith Nurture Team reported on their Building Blocks work and shared assessment results.

STEP 5: Plan new ministry initiatives

Your assessment will likely lead to a desire to try some new ministry initiatives to incorporate the Building Blocks of Faith into the many facets of your church’s life together. That’s exciting! Check out these tips for using the Building Blocks in ministry planning.

STEP 6: Launch new initiatives

The way you launch a new program or ministry can make all the difference to its success. Check out our 4 Steps for Launching a New Ministry Initiative.

STEP 7: Reassess and fine-tune 

Every new initiative should undergo regular assessment to determine how effective it is and whether adjustments are needed. Check out the tips in this post on reassessing and fine-tuning, and in this post on how a word cloud can be useful in assessment.