When I first started looking into church statistics and measurements I found measurements like the the number of members at a church, the number of weekend attenders, and income for a church on any given week. These numbers give a little detail about the church but they don't provide much insight into how church is doing towards meeting it's goals. They provide some numbers that allow a church to be compared to other churches but they don't provide much detail about an individual church. Let's look at some measurements that can be taken in a church providing insight into how a church is doing at its, God given, mission.
Growth
The bible tells us to go and make disciples of all nations in Matthew 28. This is a mission of growth and something measurements can tell us how we're doing. The mission is to make disciples, that is people going from not having faith and belief to disciples. This measurement doesn't directly relate to the number of new people who come to a church. It's independent of total church growth.
Recent statistics released by a number of church bodies have said this number is about 3% of their growth. Measuring this has caused them to change their outreach model.
Teaching
Another part of the mission supplied to us in Matthew 28 is that we are to make disciples by teaching. This doesn't mean it has to be formal classroom teaching but there is some form of mentoring or teaching going on. This is something we can measure. If you have a class for people who don't know about church you can measure the attendance of the people who are genuinely new to the idea of church. Do you have a bible study? What is the attendance at that?
Another part of this is people being prepared to teach others. It could be parents teaching their children, people leading a book club for Christian books, someone mentoring a friend in their spiritual journey, or someone teaching a formal class. Something to measure is how many people in your congregation have the resources to do that? How many people have the experience to be in one or more of these roles?
Money
Money seems to be a big deal in the church for a lot of people. Money is a personal issue for a lot of people. It's something people tend to want to keep for themselves and keep God out. Measurements here can be very effective. But, all measurements here need to be put in context. What is the income from a group compared to their demographics? Are they giving a tithe or not? This can provide some insight into the members of a church. Not from a money angle but a heart angle. It can show us if people are joyfully giving or not.
Bringing These Things Together
When we start to bring these different measurements together we can get a more well rounded picture of the spiritual model of a local church.
For example, you may have a church full of people who give a tithe but they don't know much about the bible and they don't outreach. Or, you may have a church that is growing at a great rate but there are few, if any, new people becoming disciples.
When we start mashing together these measurements in calculated ways we can start to get a model for our local church. We can start to see what's going on. This is an important step. As we drill down in identifying what's going wrong we can see where we need to work, as a church, to communally grow in our faiths.
Baptisms and conversions are
Baptisms and conversions are two other common church metrics.
But measuring church effectiveness is a very tricky thing to do, because ultimately we are called to "go and make disciples." What is a disciple? If you go by Jesus words, it's someone who loves God and loves people. Just because a person is showing up on Sunday morning or participating in other activities doesn't mean they are growing in their love for God or other people.
So, how do you measure people's hearts to see if they are growing in their love for God and others?
This is the question Willow Creek attempted to answer in the Reveal study they published. They attempted to measure hearts using a state-of-the art survey similar to what political parties and companies use to measure the public's feelings about politicians, produts, and brands.
Ultimately they found that some activites had no correlation to spiritual growth at all while others did. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in measuring church effectiveness.
Measuring Heart
I like their idea of measuring heart. Granted, no measurement method of people is perfect, this could sure give some church leaders insight into their people. If I was a pastor I would be scared to see the results of the survey like this.
The book you point to looks like an interesting read. I'm going to forward it on to my pastors. Thanks for the tip.
Scoring For Change
[ht:JosiahRitchie -- great catch, thanks!]
Absolutely on-target, Matt. Thank you for asking these questions aloud.
If the Church of Jesus Christ were anywhere close to being/doing what Jesus asked of us, I doubt we'd worry too much about the difference between 92% effective and 96% effective. But given that only 4% of Americans apparently hold a 'biblical worldview' (an easy definition used by Barna Research), we're not even close.
The Bible is clear: A tree is known by its fruit. But to date, the American Church has never been accountable for its mission. The ECFA audits our finances, but who audits our mission?
Rick Warren intimates that if our mission statement isn't measurable, it's just a PR piece.
So yes, we should be reviewing our effectiveness (and using objectively verifiable data, so we can avoid kidding ourselves further). The legendary little boy was right -- the king had no clothes. Somebody had to tell him; and those closest to him were too vested in the status quo.
I wrote a piece awhile back, called Scoring For Change", making the case for some key metrics.
More recently I've even considered the concept of surveying neighbors throughout the city, conceivably asking them...
"Your nearest church agrees that Jesus himself commanded them to love their neighbors as themselves. So how are they doing, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars?"
As embarrassing as the results might be in the baseline year, I suspect we'd have a whole lot nicer city just 12 months later when it came survey time again.
I'd be particularly in favor of using per-capita metrics, thus normalizing the effect of church-size. Eg... Gospel Coverage% per member... ie, for every 1 member in your church, count that many neighborhood homes nearest to your church. With what % of those homes have you optimally shared the gospel by deed and Word?
[And obviously we don't mean by dropping leaflets from the Gospel Blimb. LOL]
-Neil