Mike 
Those who know me will be surprised at the title of this blog. I like numbers, and I’m an advocate for the use of metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of churches and ministries. So what’s behind my apparent change?
I’ve been in several conversations over the last few weeks where I heard an update on a church or ministry. Each time numbers were used to convey progress. And almost every time, I came away from the conversation frustrated. Far too often, a superficial analysis was being used to support a questionable conclusion.
I don’t really want to quit using numbers as an assessment tool. So rather than abandoning the use of quantitative measures, keep these 4 concepts in mind as you analyze your data:
- Use trends, not individual data points. Single data points are rarely helpful. Trends tell much more but they need to be over a long enough time period to be meaningful. Look at year-over-year data, preferably over multiple years.
- Compare apples-to-apples. The data may appear to show promising results when the real story is inconsistent record-keeping. A discipleship metric may count home groups one year, and the next year the metric includes home groups and on-site Bible studies. While the reported growth looks impressive, it’s not accurate.
- Go down a level (or more). The most interesting data is often found beneath the top level numbers. Total worship attendance is interesting, but trends in individual worship services provide better information for leadership decisions. A large number of new members is always encouraging, but it’s important to know if the increase was due to an unusually large confirmation class. Almost any kind of data can be broken down to provide greater detail.
- Discover the “why” behind the numbers. To be useful, data needs to have an accompanying explanation. If participation in local missions is down, leaders need to understand why. Perhaps a charismatic volunteer leader moved away. Or it may be that people had bad experiences with a particular mission partner. Without understanding why (for positive and negative trends), the numbers are worth little more than the paper they’re printed on.
