Reporting for Churches - Why?

In my first post of this series, I said the first topic would address the question, "Why incorporate effective reporting methods into a church's practices?

To begin with, I think it is currently difficult to use information reporting in churches to gauge the effectiveness of our ministries. Many churches have traditionally used a small number of easily gathered statistics to measure their success: attendance and giving. To these some churches also add baptisms, decisions and other metrics. But what if those statistics don't actually measure whether or not your church is accomplishing its mission?

For example, if your mission is transformed lives, activity-based metrics like attendance, by themselves do not accurately correlate with life change, as Willow Creek's findings with the REVEAL study have shown.

Having said that, this basic information can be useful if we analyze it more deeply. For example, we could dive beneath the surface of typical giving data (total giving per month, per year, etc.) to analyze giving per capita. We may find that per capita giving has decreased, a fact masked because high attendance growth drove overall giving upward. Or what if we look at annual giving increases from year to year? Are individuals and families becoming more generous over time? We can ask many such questions, but answering them takes a lot of effort and maybe some knowledge of Excel and your CM software that goes beyond the basics. I think this will get easier as better tools become available.

In the meantime, churches can and should use effective information reporting for planning purposes. How many people might attend on a particular weekend? In a year? Will our facilities have adequate capacity? Are we making the best use of our existing facilities? Will we have enough staff? How many volunteers will we need? Should we add another service? Should we change our service times? If your church answers these questions and others like them without using available current and historical data, you are flying blind. You need good data to make good decisions. Otherwise you base your plans on perception, emotion, politics or "pastor numbers," which could lead you astray.

Perhaps you are not even tracking some of the data you need to make these decisions. Now is a great time to start!

I leave you with a "made-up verse" (inspired by Romans 10:14-15): How then will you make good decisions without proper analysis? And how are you to properly analyze information you do not have? And how are you do have that information without effective reporting? And how can you effectively report what you do not track? As it is [not] written, "How beautiful is data which reveals the truth!" Selah.

Strategic Dimensions 2009