Originally posted 08-04-09, reposted 06-02-10
A topic that arises nearly every time I’m consulting churches is that of metrics or measurables. Pastors have taken a page from the business world and set measurable goals for their ministries. This is a good practice in my opinion because a wise friend of mine once told me, “Measured performance is improved performance”. However, while setting a metric or measurable is good, sometimes we measure the wrong thing. Small Group ministries seem especially susceptible to this.
Measuring the number of groups is the simplest number to track, but only tells us of the numerical potential we have for discipleship. With this number we can estimate how many people could be in groups.
Measuring the number of people who sign up for a group is also very easy to track, but it only give a slightly better picture of our discipleship potential. We can see how many people expressed serious interest in groups but we don’t know who many people “stuck” to groups.
Measuring the number of people actively attending groups is the toughest number to track but it tells us the most. I’ve tried a hundred tracking methods here, but only found two that I feel remotely good about. One is a quarterly survey to every leader asking for their regular number of group attenders. I then would take the average of the leaders who responded and extrapolate an estimated number of total group participants. This mathematical juggling act was the best I could do for a while then I encountered a much better method: ChurchTeams.
At the risk of sounding like a commercial, ChurchTeams is a group management software that has a simple and effective group attendance tool that leaders actually want to use. Leaders willingly fill out their weekly group reports and I don’t have to nag them! The best part is that ChurchTeams is one of the more affordable products like it on the market. I’m not going to go into any more details because this is a blog post (not an infomercial) but if you’re curious about this product go to www.churchteams.com. Tell them I sent you and you’ll get a 75% discount for your first year! Just kidding about the discount, but you really should check them out.
[Television Announcer Voice] “And now back to your regularly scheduled program.”
Seriously, metrics and measurables are a huge benefit, because they can help us understand how we’re doing. However, we should avoid the danger of making too much of our metrics. Numbers don’t tell us what’s really going on inside our small groups nor do they tell us everything about group health. Numbers don’t tell us if we’re really making disciples. Furthermore, if we set unrealistic numerical goals we can wear out staff members and sacrifice them on the altar of performance.
What are you measuring? How are you measuring it? How have you seen metrics used well/badly?