The climate of ministry is changing and, for most church leaders, the expectation for results has never been greater. As many feel the added pressure of making the right decision with little forgiveness for making the wrong decision, there are two different paths we can take:
We can continue to go with our gut or we can play The Numbers Game.
As attendance and budgets have fluctuated considerably over the past few years, the demand has increased for church leaders to understand and use numbers as a way to challenge or validate ministry decisions.
Now more than ever, numbers matter. Yet you didn’t get into ministry to look at spreadsheets or to become a data-analysis expert. No one expects that. But as an executive leader in your church, it’s important to know exactly what numbers matter and what to do with those numbers once you’ve gathered them.
Playing the numbers game keeps the focus on the life change that should naturally result from our ministry investments of time, talent, and resources.
What numbers matter?
Numbers will help you in numerous ways such as effective planning, decision making, and prioritizing. Therefore, it’s important to know what numbers matter when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your ministry.
Here are the nine different areas of ministry, that when measured and tracked, offer you valuable intelligence about the health and vitality of your church’s community-building efforts.
- Attendance
- Volunteers
- Missional Participation
- Online Activity
- Financial Giving
- Event Outcomes
- Assimilation
- Growth
- Attrition
If you’re not playing the numbers game and measuring these areas of ministry, you’re not making the most of the information and resources available to you.
How to win the numbers game
Once you understand the basics of measuring these nine areas of ministry, you can start to identify the information that will help you and your ministry team become more effective.
For example:
You may think everything is good because you pack your church facility every weekend. But the numbers tell you that your 7 percent growth overall is balanced by a 5 percent loss of visitors after their second visit. That means your net growth is only 2 percent. Not bad, but definitely not as good as 7 percent.
This should prompt you to ask questions such as: Where are they going? Why are they leaving? The answers to these questions will provide critical information. Left alone, this trend could create a crisis if you don’t know it’s happening or even have a chance to adapt and close the proverbial back door.
The only way to discover details like this is if you have a system and process for monitoring and managing that information. By analyzing assimilation activity through data as mentioned in the example above, you’ll be able to improve your overall assimilation engine and improve the way people connect to your church.
But this is just one example.
Learn more about how data can help you make better, more informed ministry decisions by downloading “The Numbers Game: 9 Measurements that Will Increase Your Church’s Retention Factor” today. Doing so will ensure that your church is set up to win when it comes to facilitating life change and building authentic community.
Do you have a system and process in place to consistently provide the metrics in ministry that matter? How are you setting your church up to win the numbers game?
This is a sponsored post from Church Community Builder, one of our site sponsors at TonyMorganLive.com.
