CASE STUDY
The Opportunity
We were approached by a real estate company to deliver a systematic data driven plan to for Kingdom action. They were starting a multi-million dollar fund to purchase apartment communities.
Kingdom work in apartment communities is not new. Apartment Life have been trailblazers in this area for decades. It’s a huge missional opportunity.
This fund was going to buy 5 properties across three states at a total cost of approximately $100 million.
Apartment Life reports:
60%
60% of people who live in apartments do not know 2 names of other residents. They are a lonely and isolated collective.
Furthermore, over 90% of people who live in apartments in America do not attend church.
That is approximately 40 million people!
The challenge posed to our team was this:
Can we deliver a robust system both in intensity of focus, but also comprehensive tracking of both leading and lagging KPIs.
The Solution
Using our Mission Flow process, (which is developed out of a Theory of Change), we were able to map out where the opportunities for gospel advancement lined up well with the business case for residents. This helped us discern the scale of the need. Consequently, we recruited larger teams on our sites than comparable other apartment mission projects.
We then created unique training for each of the Kingdom team members, which also tracked each stage of the process from initial contact all the way to full discipleship. We created 10 leading KPIs that we tracked which told us where the teams were performing, and where they need more training. Similar to indicators in a factory conveyor belt system, the Mission Flow process helps us to know if our team members are moving people to the next stage of opportunity to explore and follow Jesus.
In this case, the Kingdom team members initiated events within the community to drive resident interactions. They were then trained with novel ways to have conversations which exposed which residents were being drawn to Jesus by the Father, but done in a way that should someone indicate they were not being drawn, they could graciously change the topic to allow the other person to feel loved. We have found this is essential to maintain relationship for a future opportunity to share about Jesus.
From there we created various goals for our teams. For example, one of our goals is that every resident, every quarter, is invited to an event where they might meet someone who could and would lead them to Jesus should they want to be led. (Typically our teams actually do this monthly not quarterly.)
This is where the important distinction between leading and lagging KPIs is key. Before God, we are only responsible for the leading KPIs: the effort to winsomely create an environment where people being drawn by the Father can explore who Jesus is. Our goal is to be intentional to do everything we reasonably can do. We equip people to be able to stand before God and say ‘I really did everything I could in the company you gave me to run’. Leading KPIs actually demonstrate this.
Lagging KPIs are God’s responsibility. We do not feel responsible for who comes to Christ or not. Who the Father draws and when and how that happen is what He does. However, one caveat to that is that we believe that the Father is ALWAYS drawing people to Jesus and therefore if we see zeros in our lagging KPIs we assume there is a problem and look to intervene!
It’s important to note that there are natural social action items happening all the time in this process. We have found that by focussing on gospel advancement we get both social action and creation care. However, focusing on social action does not necessarily lead to gospel advancement. (Lots of other faiths do social work. Only Christians can introduce people to the life-giving relationship with the one true God!)
The teams are active in their communities to aid people in need and deliver anything from advocacy to generosity. It is through those social actions that the Mission Flow techniques see that the gospel gets revealed and people choose to follow Jesus.
The Results
Within the first 2 years of the project we saw almost 30 people turn to follow Jesus. Either first time commitments or de-churched people who renew their commitment and start discipleship. (We believe that your evangelism strategy is only as good as your discipleship strategy so we try to count whether the person is following through on their decision to turn and follow Jesus.)
our result:
10x
higher
When we compare this project against other apartment ministry projects over the same period we see our result per door was approximately 10X higher. We are grateful to God for His generosity at blessing this model. May he receive all the glory!
It should be noted that the real estate investment fund is delivering market rate returns to their investors even as they create opportunities for these amazing Kingdom outcomes.
Out of respect for other good people doing great work we do not publish the comparison publicly but would be happy to share the actual data with anyone we are working with.
What Mission Flow Can Do for You
Our Mission Flow framework allows us to build similar solutions for very different environments. The stages of gospel movement will be the same independent of context. What changes is the methodology—different folks need different strokes.
Your business we may not need special events for interactions, it may be that the interactions are happening already in your natural business processes.
The language we use at your business may be radically different than the apartment project. We simply would collaborate with you on what you want to see happen, design the right skills to implement, build the right metrics to track, train the Christians in your organization to incorporate some new skills into their every day, and watch God work wonders.
Bauhinia Consulting 