Church Plant Growth Projector The Church Plant Growth Projector (CPGP) provides a strategic plan to accomplish God's task. It supports the People Strategy portion of the PREP process for designing a church planting effort. It is a software tool that calculates estimates of the growth of the church in its early years.

Purpose

The CPGP is designed to present a statistical picture of the careful preparation and strategic thinking for a specific church plant. This picture is a useful tool to help coordinate the growth of the church start with a financial resourcing plan.

Estimates of numerical growth help the leadership anticipate the results of their plans.  The leaders can then:

• determine actions to clarify expectations
• visualize goals
• develop strategic scenarios
• compare ideas with reality
  
  

Items on CD-ROM

The CD-ROM contains an introduction (powerpoint) to the CPGP, a copy of the Technical Help Manual in a pdf format, and three other files: CPGP.XLS, CPGP.HLP, and CPGP.CNT.  The CPGP.XLS is the Excel workbook containing the software needed to create a growth plan.  The CPGP.HLP and CPGP.CNT are the Help and Help Table of Contents files.

System Requirements

This program is intended to run on IBM compatible Pentium PCs, running Microsoft Windows 98 (and later versions), and Microsoft Excel 97 (version 8) and later versions. This program may run on other systems using other versions of software, but results are unknown. This includes Excel 98 sold for Apple computers. It will not run successfully on versions of Excel prior to 97 (version 8). Note that it is necessary to not use a security setting of "high" in Excel. It is recommended that the computer display be in color and at least 640x480 resolution.

User Requirements

Effort was taken to make the CPGP program as simple and easy to use as possible. However, the user will need to have a basic knowledge of using Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Excel software. Such knowledge of Windows would include mouse usage, copying, moving, and saving files. In Excel, the user will need to know how to navigate between worksheets, enter data, resize windows, and print out worksheets. The information found in the Help file provides descriptions, which will familiarize the user with issues specific to the CPGP program with minimal mention of basic Windows and Excel functions.

Installation Steps

Insert the Church Plant Growth Projector CD-ROM into your computer. A navigation screen should be displayed. You can follow the instructions on the display. If the navigation screen does not display, copy the CPGP files from the CD-ROM to the Windows folder of your choice. This is often the My Documents folder, or one of its sub-folders.

Starting CPGP

There are several different ways to run the program. If you use the included setup program, an icon for CPGP is added to your start up window, and you may click on it (another common way is to start Microsoft Excel.)  From the File drop-down menu, select Open. Navigate to the folder containing the CPGP file(s) and open the CPGP.XLS workbook.

Start Up Process

When Excel begins to load the CPGP.XLS workbook, a warning message may be displayed about the workbook containing macros and the potential for some macros to contain viruses. The CPGP.XLS workbook uses macros to generate the growth projections. Precaution is taken to ensure there are no viruses in the released software. Therefore, click on the Enable Macros button to continue loading the software. If you select Disable Macros, the program will not run. The Do Not Open selection will halt further loading of the program. The first time the program is run, it will automatically move the CPGP.HLP and CPGP.CNT Help files to the Windows Help folder after displaying an advisory message. The Welcome Form is then displayed. After clicking on the Continue button, the CPGP program will create some necessary spreadsheets after displaying an advisory message. This may take a few minutes depending on the speed of your system. When this is completed, the Control Form will be displayed. From the Control Form, you have several options from which to choose:

• Program Settings will allow you to customize the look and operation of the CPGP program.
• Step-By-Step is a wizard that will guide you through the initial setup of the growth plan.
• Jump-In will take you directly to the worksheets for your review and modification.
• It is suggested you use the Program Settings and Step-By-Step wizard to enter data the first time.
• Use the included CPGP Help facility to learn more about each element.
  
  

Evaluate and Revise

After entering the requested data, review the worksheets for the Growth Plan, Budget Plan, and Financial Plan. Evaluate the results and revise the input data to reflect specific plans and actions to start and grow the church.

Entering data tip:  It may be helpful to print out the Growth Metrics worksheet and the Budget
Metrics worksheet before entering data. These can then be used to prepare
the data for entry into the CPGP.

Use the estimates to compare expectations to reality.

How to Get Help

There are three avenues to get help in using this tool:

• Use the help text within the CPGP.
• Contact your state convention church planting leaders for guidance.
• Contact the Church Planting Group, NAMB with comments or with questions by e-mail: GroPro@namb.net.
  
  

Credits

Gerald Raynor, for initial development of the concept and processes.
John Kuespert, for enhancement of practical usage of the tool.
Wilson Thomas, for technical development of this tool.

 

To view a sample output from the Church Plant Growth Projector, click here.

To download a copy of the Church Plant Growth Projector, please search for "Growth Projector" in the Church Planting Knowledge Base.

To receive a copy of the Church Plant Growth Projector on CD-ROM, please email your request to:  David Terry, dterry@namb.net