The Data You Collect Is Important
Choose What Data to Collect
If you’re like most people, you probably cringe when you hear the word “data.” The fact is, most people don’t see themselves as “data people”, but we use data every day without realizing it. Most of us stream music, use a GPS, shop online or wear a fitness device. All of these things use data. Services like Spotify and Pandora use data to deliver music that you like. GPS uses map data and location data to deliver our coordinates and calculate how much time is required to travel to our destination. When you search for something online, that data is captured and delivered to your browser in the form of ads. Have you ever realized that something you were just looking for suddenly popped up in the sidebar of your web browser in an ad? That’s data. Even our fitness devices like Fitbit collects data in the form of how many steps we take each day and use it to report our progress toward our goals.
Data is a fact of everyday life. But many churches are still not utilizing data to benefit themselves. Many pastors and leaders just don’t know what data to collect and how to use it to get an indication of their church’s health. When I worked in a customer service call center, my job for a time was to collect data. All kinds of data! If we had a goal or a metric we were attempting to reach, then I collected data to support that goal. The reality is, you can’t fix what you don’t measure. How will you know if you have reached a goal if you don’t collect data about that goal?
I want to give you some guidelines about what data to collect in your church and how to use that data to help your church grow. Most churches have a goal around their attendance. Attendance is one of the goals that nearly every church collects data about. But attendance is not the only data you should be collecting. Numerical growth should not be the only goal, nor should it be the primary goal of a church. I prefer to work on the health of a church. Healthy churches grow. Growing churches are not necessarily healthy.
As part of your campaign of health, some of the data you should be collecting would be:
- Attendance. This gives you a good overview of whether your church is growing or not. I worked with a pastor once who assured me his church was indeed growing. He saw new faces every week, which meant that new people were coming to the church regularly. Since new people were coming, the church must be growing! His attendance report showed something entirely different. The data reported that his church had not grown in the last 3 years. While new people were indeed visiting each week, they were either not connecting and becoming regular attendees, or people were leaving through the back door of the church as fast as they were coming in the front door. Without collecting data on attendance, this church would never have realized that there was no numerical growth. While attendance numbers will give you an indication of how your church is growing, comparing the number of guests who visit to the total number of people who attend will give you an indication of how well your church is growing.
- The ratio of children to overall attendance. Children are a good indication of how many young families your church is attracting. If you are not attracting young families, your church is likely not healthy. The truth is, if a church does not attract younger families, the life of that church will not extend beyond the life of its youngest member. Many churches are full of aging people but will have no one to carry on once the current congregation is gone.
- The ratio of youth to overall attendance. The same is true here as the previous point. Youth are an indication of how well your church is attracting younger families. your church must attract younger people if it is to survive in the long term.
- The ratio of volunteers to overall attendance. Most of us are familiar with the 80/20 rule which states that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. In the typical church, it’s really more like 40% of the people do 100% of the work. The number of people who are actively serving in your church is an indicator as to the health of your church. Healthy churches have a higher percentage of people involved in the ministry.
- The number of salvations. Salvation can be a tricky thing to collect data on. I like to look at the number of baptisms a church has each year compared to the number of people who attend. Baptisms are a good indication that someone has become part of the family. As churches age, they invariably become more inward-focused. They begin to prioritize keeping people over reaching people. Looking at the number of baptisms your church has compared to your total attendance is a good indication of how well you are reaching outside your walls to attract non-believers.
- Giving. I’m not talking about how much is given, but rather how much each person gives as a percentage of the total amount given. This does not involve researching the giving history of each person in your congregation. rather it involves dividing the total amount received each week by the number of people who attended. The spiritual maturity of your congregation can be measured in part by how well they give.
These are some of the data points we want to collect that will help determine the health of our church. I have included a link here to a spreadsheet that I use to collect some of this data on a weekly basis. Download it for free and use it to track your data. The spreadsheet is pretty detailed, including charts and comparison tables. All of the formulas are already calculated for you. All you need to do is enter the data. If you have questions about the spreadsheet or would like some customization, please contact me. For a video on this subject, click this link.
If you would like help in analyzing the data and figuring out which steps to take next to make a difference, please contact me. If you mention this blog in the contact form, I will offer you a free one-hour consultation call, and 90 days of follow-up coaching to help you reach your goals for only $495. That’s nearly a 70% reduction of the normal fee! Click the button below to download the spreadsheet and contact me for your next steps toward a healthy, growing, church!
Download Attendance Template
