We Get More of What We Measure
I've played team sports my whole life like volleyball, baseball, basketball, football and softball. I love a lot of things about that---the physical workouts, the strategy involved, the camaraderie---but I also just love how measurable sports are. In 20 minutes or 60 minutes, we get to a decisive outcome, and all the way along we have points to clarify the progress. I have learned a lot of valuable lessons about life and ministry from team sports.
Alongside sports there is this whole cottage industry of stats: statistics. Millions of stats from so many angles, and some major common categories depending on the sport: like batting average or RBI's (runs batted in), 3 point shooting percentage and rebounds per game, turnovers and so many more. The point is that coaches and players need feedback on meaningful results to improve, to compete, to celebrate. I know from shooting 100 basketball free throws a day in my driveway that I got better at game-winning situations from all that practice: I got more of what I measured. I could see my growth from hitting 50% of the free throws to 60% to 90% eventually. Feedback improved my form, my focus, and my faith that I could do it.
So now we find ourselves in a new era, with the Alliance of Reformed Churches. I'd love to encourage some thinking and discussion about stats that come alongside our ministry and mission actions. Which statistics would help the most to measure for your church? If you measure in timely, accurate, and relevant ways, how will that strengthen your church and the people engaged in ministry? How will it help you improve, to compete with the devil and his angels, to celebrate?
I remember when we tracked the number of new spiritual conversations each week for church planters, with a goal of 20, and then taught the core group members as well to seek out at least 7 divine appointments a week to share the love of Jesus personally with new people...those plants soon had dozens of new people in their circle of faith. More established churches not tracking any such practices, even with so many more people and better buildings and budgets, saw less results in terms of new people coming to Christ per year. Small changes in behavior can make big differences over months and years.
Just to get the discussion going, here's a few examples that could prime the pump for you. Consider what these stats would help in your context:
the number of people in the building each week who are not attending worship (looks at the fishing pond for new contacts)
the ratio of attendees under age 21 to those over 21 (looks at the average age of congregation; younger families engagement)
the number of people engaged in an intentional disciple-making pathway and/or a leadership developing pathway (multiplication and sending capacity)
the number of people in the church who are praying for and building a specific relationship with a person who does not yet know Jesus (again - fishing pond)
worship attendance (can be a leading indicator of the pool of people who can serve in ministries and enter the discipleship pathway)
percentage of people in worship who are serving in ministries according to their spiritual gifts (numbers of volunteer hours that increase enjoyment and effectiveness)
discipleship reproduction rate (number of people who have come to Christ and been added into the church annually divided by the number of people in attendance...I wrote a blog on this here)
For Dan Ackerman and I, our thought is that we will begin to ask congregations to consider how they want to maintain membership and why. For the Alliance, we'd rather see us ask questions about health and growth at the local church level. "Members" as a category really don't tell us that much. Since the Alliance finances are not tied to membership but to congregational income quarter by quarter, we have freedom to move away from mixing ministry with people and money.