Church Metrics Dissappoint
I recently presented on some new ideas regarding metrics at the RefreshCache conference at Central Christian Church. Over the course of the last few weeks David and I have been working one some new ways of looking at church metrics. Before I dive into that let me discuss how our current metrics fail us…
First of all I think that the church is the only type of organization that doesn’t have a set of established standardized metrics (think cycle time, defects per million, etc etc in manufacturing). We hope to bring some light to this topic and hopefully provide some strawman metrics that can be discussed in a larger community. But back to our current metrics…
Our two most common measures today are:
- Giving
AttendanceObjects in Seats
A key point above is that what we call attendance really isn’t attendance, at least not at most churches over 1,000. Head counts are not attendance. Attendance assumes you know who the person is. Head counts measure objects in seats. I mean really… picture the usher counting in the back of the room… it’s a pretty safe bet that in most churches this cardboard cutout of Chewy, if left too near a seat, would be counted…. and if left there for the entire weekend would be counted more than once. “1…2…3…4…..(kinda hairy…but…)5….”
Our metrics today are really a measure of quantity (total giving, total attendance… err objects in seats) vs quality (the Edmiston’s are here again for the 8th time in 10 weeks, they’re giving shows that they trust God with their finances). Don’t you think God’s more concerned about the second metric? The problem is that to date these types of metrics are difficult to produce. Models haven’t been devised on how to measure the quality of ministry vs the quantity of it.
So… that’s a bit of a bummer… I’m not one to talk about problems without suggesting possible solutions. I’ll post on those this weekend.
I love how you look at things Jon — envy it even. There is nothing in your job that you don’t look at critically (and by critically, I mean in great detail, not negatively). Its important to remind churches that the ever-present activity of counting attendance is not really an indicator of church performance because, like you said, it’s an impersonal statistic. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this.
Well said. Very well said.
Next question – how does one ‘measure’ spiritual formation. Or, maybe a better question is – how does one measure spiritual formation without making it look like a checklist religion?