5.11 Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The analysis of any organisation's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) is a subjective exercise based on the perspective of the person appraising the situation. Viewed from the perspective of the central church authorities the major strength of Reader ministry would seem to be that the majority of Readers represent a selected, trained, licensed and committed voluntary group of lay ministers who specialise in the area of preaching and teaching. In addition the existence of Readers enables the church to overcome certain of its resourcing problems.

The major weakness would seem to be that its voluntary nature presents some difficulties to the church leadership both at the local and a national level on when and where the resource is deployed.

The major opportunity for the church is to expand and if necessary constrain the number of Readers to provide the appropriate level of lay participation in the preaching and teaching ministry of the church.

The major threat is that a minority of people see Readers as the Church of England's Lay Ministers not one of many types of Lay Ministers which leads to the view that Readers are the solution to all of the church's resourcing problems.