Podcast Episode #555
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There is a pendulum swing in church leadership circles as it relates to the viewpoint of church metrics. Numbers and tracking numbers aren’t inherently bad, but they can be abused. Today, we discuss this swing and the negative sentiments often associated with it.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- If numbers are all you care about at your church, you may end up compromising on principles to get the numbers up.
- What you measure in a church becomes important to the church.
- Tracking metrics will move you to action in certain ways because you have a more accurate picture of reality thanks to the trends shown by the metrics.
- Group participation and attendance is the most important discipleship-related metric to track.
The nine observations we discuss are:
- Emphases on church metrics have been cyclical.
- Understanding the phenomenon through the lens of mainline denominations.
- Metrics engender accountability
- Metrics move leaders to action
- Key metric: worship attendance
- Key metric: groups attendance
- Key metric: total and general giving
- Key metric: conversions
- Trend today: responding to metrics too late
Resources mentioned in today’s podcast
Rainer on Leadership is a member of the LifeWay Leadership Podcast Network
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All good stuff to know, but unimportant, really. They are simply peripheral health indicators. The key metric, how are we at moving others to love Jesus and how are we at being obediently loyal to Him as disciples and making others to be the same?
I agree that is the key metric, Ken. How do you measure it?
As with the development of any metric, you start with what you want and then ask the question, how do I know this is taking place? What are evidences of disciples? Consistency. Growth. Number of conversions and baptisms is good, but how many are still there in 6, 12, 24 months? How many are now serving? How many have replicated and invited others? We are not talking single point in time numbers but, to take something from actuarial science, development of those numbers.
Got it. If I understand you correctly, you will need metrics on retention, number serving, number of people invited per conversion, and number of people discipled or mentored per conversion. Add the initial conversion and you will need five metrics per person.
And at the end of the day, why are numbers even important? Paul never sweated over the metrics.
Paul never sweated the metrics because he had personal relationships with the people in his church plants. Metrics become important when it is no longer possible to personally know all the members of your congregation at a level that will actually allow you to understand their spiritual health.
You could argue that a church that needs metrics is at the point at which the church should plant a daughter church, and I wouldn’t be able to argue with you. However, I believe that there are ways that allow larger congregations to grow and thrive. Better metrics could help us keep from losing track of the people who are the subject of our mission.
Yes to metrics!
I agree that what you measure in a church becomes important to the church.
Here’s a question – When you count people on Sunday morning, are you counting only individuals or do you also count the ‘households’ present?
One subtle way we disengage men, especially husbands and fathers, is by ‘counting’ individuals. This communicates to these same men that the church is taking responsibility for the members of their household. Most men have not been properly equipped by their local church to be the spiritual leader of their household so they are happy and even thankful that the local church takes this on.
What would happen if we looked at ‘our flock’ differently – as households of one, two, four, five, etc. Couples with kids, singles with kids, couples with no kids, singles with no kids, etc.
What would happen if we shepherded ‘God’s flock’ that is under our care differently by changing this important Sunday morning metric from individuals to households?
Would would happen if we began to speak to a husband as if he was the primary man that God would hold accountable for the spiritual growth of his wife?
What would happen if we began to speak to dads and moms as if they were the primary adults who God would hold accountable for the spiritual growth of their own children?
Anyone willing to give this a try?
What would happen if we began to hold pastors and teachers accountable for their sermons and Bible studies? Are they soundly and systematically expounding the scriptures? Are they teaching sound dcotrine. Are they exposing false doctrine? The SBC is a smorgasbord of doctinal viewpoints and no one seems to be concerned or challenging them.
The modern church system is totally backwards on this. Pastors are counting on concerned mothers to bring their children for VBS, youth group, etc and then get the mom plugged in to a home group. Women tend to visit church alone until they convince the husband/boyfriend to come. Instead of a man acting as priest of his home, the woman is the engine that drags them all to church, and the man assumes the kids will learn what they need to learn at youth group.
Men aren’t really wanted in church anyway. It takes a rare breed of speaker aka clergy to craft a sermon to which men will pay attention to and from which men can gain something. The gender of the speaker does not always seem to make a difference here.
The idea of “equipping the saints” seems to have been lost a generation ago,and we are now reaping the rewards I’m afraid.
I remain convinced however that should we open our Bible’s and teach God’s word in a clear and concise manner,the numbers will take care of themselves.
No doubt some will choose to leave should we once again promote sound doctrine,but those that remain will form the nucleus of a strong and vibrant church.
Thom, I really appreciate your balance. Numbers tell us things, but they don’t tell us everything. It seems to me that the best way to use metrics is to measure faithfulness. Are we soul winning? Are we making disciples? Are we faithfully meeting on an regular basis? Are we faithfully giving on a regular basis? The results are up to God. Faithfulness is up to us. We won’t know if we are being faithful if we don’t measure. Thank you for your perspective on this matter.
Thank you, Dennis.
You talked about the pastor who inflated the numbers. How should this be handled when it is discovered that a pastor or ministry leader is skewing numbers so that the congregation and leadership don’t know that there might be a problem i their ministry and/or the church as a whole? I know people who feel that the congregation shouldn’t know that there is a problem in the church body.
Hi Thom,
Metrics are necessary, but not the real point of what we do. Metrics are there to do what the name implies: to measure what we do. As measurement tools, they have to be valid (to actually measure what they are intended to measure – to hit the bull’s eye), reliable (it can be repeated and it will return a similar result of the same event time after time) and the benchmarks accurate (they truly reflect current cultural norms) and adjusted when necessary. They also have to be contextualized. For example, in a flock mostly made of seniors, more traditional metrics may give you an accurate glance at church health. However, in a flock mostly made of millennials, you really ought to be measuring some other things, or at least adjusting benchmarks. Millennials simply don’t approach church like today’s seniors do. Their discipleship practices, attendance habits and giving methods are largely different, as are their expressions of commitment.
I’ve seen too many metrics measure the wrong thing. For example: baptisms. A church in an area of the US (or elsewhere) that has been exposed to the gospel over a long time may return fewer conversions (per whatever unit you want) than one in an area that has scarcely heard the gospel, but may actually be doing better in terms of outreach commitment and participation. In other words, the church seeing fewer baptisms may be sowing and cultivating far more gospel seed than the one in the unreached area, but not seeing the same harvest. Since conversion itself is the act of God, and my responsibility really is to “plant and water,” it seems to me to a more valid metric to track faithfulness to the task – something we can actually control.
Metrics are important, but I’ve seen them abused terribly by churches and denominational leaders. Our response should not be to “toss the baby out with the bath water,” but to make sure we are using them correctly. Otherwise, they can become legalistic traps that distract us from the true work of the Kingdom.
(I should note that I am a bi-vocational church planter and that I experience this type thing regularly. In my bi-vocational work I wrote and now manage the quality management system for a small engineering firm in the aerospace industry. I consult with other companies as well on this. I also sit at least once per year and answer to a certification agency that goes over our metrics and our processes to make sure they are valid, reliable and effective.)
Thanks, Tom, for a good job on this topic today. Just happens to be one of my hot-buttons as you can tell. Hope this is helpful to you and others.
Mark
Thank you, Mark.
I like the term “expressions of commitment.” This to me translates to attends, donates, and keeps quiet. This forms the basis of what made for a “good” Christian.
Dr. Rainer, When are you going to write a post countering long-held marks of a “good” Christian along the lines of doing what Jesus did, Christian “social justice”, going out into the world, etc.?
Not sure what you are actually saying, Mark, but “attends, donates, keeps quiet” is certainly not the expression of commitment that the typical millennial expects to make.
Please explain?
I was saying that for a long time, those were the marks of a good Christian but that today people don’t like churches where they are only to attend, donate, and keep quiet though too many churches today still want people to do that.