| Accurate measurements are critical to a congregation's wellbeing. Numbers represent people. A change in membership count means the congregation is serving more or fewer people. A change in Sunday attendance means greater or lesser impact on people's lives. A change in non-Sunday participation means something is at home, or at work, or in how church matters to people. In trying to understand such numbers, you are taking a big step in understanding your people and in understanding your congregation's effectiveness.
Accurate measurements are critical to a congregation's wellbeing. Numbers represent people. A change in membership count means the congregation is serving more or fewer people. A change in Sunday attendance means greater or lesser impact on people's lives. A change in non-Sunday participation means something is at home, or at work, or in how church matters to people. In trying to understand such numbers, you are taking a big step in understanding your people and in understanding your congregation's effectiveness. While every manager in every organization is tempted to fudge the numbers, you gain far more by measuring accurately and consistently. Numbers signal critical transitions. A change in young children's participation, for example, will signal not only next year's Sunday School staffing needs, but long-term space requirements, potentially disruptive shifts in average adult age, and new faces in leadership. Numbers are a key indicator of outcomes. For example, your congregation added a third service to relieve overcrowding. To know if it worked, you need to measure how many you anticipated at the new service and how many participated. Should you be adding space instead? In dealing with limited resources, congregations need to allocate money and staff time to ministries and activities that work. Positive or negative trends in measurable outcomes must guide that assessment. Otherwise, you find yourself in personality conflicts. The measure of a ministry isn't whether a few opinion-setters liked it, but did people respond to it and did their response justify the cost and effort? Long-term trends in key metrics like attendance and membership offer important insights into the overall effectiveness of staff, lay leadership, programs, facilities, and other variables. Decisions about future spending need to take those outcomes into account. For numbers to work for you, two things need to happen. First, parish leaders need to avoid any hint of defensiveness about the numbers. A decline in Sunday attendance could have a dozen explanations. But no causes will be sought, or remedied, unless leaders agree to value the numbers. Second, the numbers need to be painstakingly accurate. "I guess we had 500 in church today" is meaningless. Was it 520 or 475? Numbers should be accurate, consistent, and measured in the same way every time. Over time, numbers tell the congregation's story. I remember a congregation whose leaders were convinced their parish was on a plateau. In fact, by every metric I could examine, they were in a seven-year decline. Big difference. I remember another congregation that thought paying its bills was the best measure of health. In fact, financial giving is a lagging indicator. Attendance changes first, then membership, and then giving. By the time a decline hits giving, the original causes of systemic decline are difficult to discern; blaming and cost cutting follow. This is a good time for churches to train their counters. They need instruction in how to count crowds, methods for assuring accuracy, and appropriate tools for entering data and transmitting it to relevant staff. It's also a good time to get creative about what you measure. In addition to the basics -- attendance, membership, enrollment and giving -- you can measure age makeup of current under-21 population, numbers of baptisms, wedding and funerals, turnover in education staff, no-shows for Sunday duties. And more. Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant, and leader of workshops. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. The church wellness project may be found at www.churchwellness.com .
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Yes, metrics are important in certain applications, such as alloting spaces, buying hymnals, knowing how many bulletins to print, planning locations and sizes of buildings, determining the size of staffs, etc.
But metrics do not measure or determine the quality, success or failure of a ministry. John records that in the middle of Jesus' public career, 'When many of his disciples heard [what Jesus taught], they said, 'This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?' ... Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him' (John 6:60-66). The metrics would say he had failed, just as the metrics said the church I now serve should have closed a year ago when its typical Sunday morning attendance was 7, including 3 visitors. Sell its property and put the money into other mission work where it can have metrical success, was the advice. Today this church is expected to be the cover story for October's Presbyterians Today, was the front page feature story in Easter Sunday's Charlotte Observer, and was a feature story on local Channel 14 TV.
What made the difference? Surely not a study of metrics. Rather, we came to realize in the most practical of ways that all the members had done to save the church had failed for many years, humanly speaking, and all I had done for 4 years as stated supply had failed, humanly speaking. Only God could save it, and we were the people there whom God could use.
Of our 3 regular visitors a year ago, 2 were an interracial couple who had visited many churches in our area, and ours was the only one in which every single person warmly welcomed them. Then their friends came, and the friends of their friends, whether African-American, caucasian, gay, straight, manual laborer, rich attorney, or whatever. Most had become disillusioned with the churches where they were members at least 2 years before and had been visiting other churches all that time or not going to church at all. Now they found a church that genuinely, not just formally, welcomed all kinds of people (Luke 15;1-2, 11-32) and put them to work in Christian service. Now, with a membership of just under 100, including a large number of elderly shut-ins from the older congregation, the church participates in 4 different programs for the homeless plus Habitat for Humanity, 2 programs for feeding the hungry, 1 program for addressing structural causes of poverty and discrimination, houses an AA group, and is seeking other ways to serve God. Naturally, we have an eclectic worship service, a blend of traditional Presbyterian hymns with African American gospel and spirituals.
The metrics I just quoted are immaterial, because they're not the objective and they're not used to measure success. When visitors come, and we have first-time visitors every Sunday, numbers are not quoted, and they're not impressed by numbers. They come back because they receive a much warmer welcome than a polite handshake, because the excitement of the church life permeates the worship, because the blending of styles of worship draws them into worship in ways they had not expected, because a period of joys and concerns before the prayers of the people involves them in the lives of other people, and because announcements by different people involved in the various service activities--not usually formal Minutes for Mission--draws them into participation, too.
I'm reacting against the overuse of metrics in the life of the church. They indicate, when accurately compiled and accurately interpreted, what has already happened and make projections into the future based on the past. Extrapolation is always risky. We need rear view mirrors on our cars, and we need them in churches, but they don't keep the cars on the road, and they are absolutely useless in telling us which branch in the road to take. God is not limited by metrics. God's purposes are not determined by metrics. God's will is not determined by metrics. The metrics of my current church a year ago said, Close it. The metrics of the disciples in the upper room would have never prepared them for Pentecost.