(This concludes a fresh look at the basics of Church Wellness. The topic is Metric.)

My first glimpse of why metrics matter came on a golf course, when my playing partner showed up angry.

It seems his church had scheduled their annual men’s cleanup day, and he had dutifully shown up to work on the property. He was the only man who came.

As we talked, I learned something: the men’s cleanup day had once drawn a large group of men, but then it was five, last year it was three, and this year it was one.

If any leader had been paying attention to those numbers, they would have changed something: recruited personally, rather than rely on a bulletin blurb; invited men to form teams; or even canceled it altogether. Business as usual – if you knew the numbers – wouldn’t work.

That is why measurements matter. Not to fill boxes on a spreadsheet or official church report, but to avoid hurting people, to know when a program needs refreshing, to see growth as it is happening so that you can support it, or to see early signs of decline so that you can take action. Without metrics, leaders are flying blind.

This is what happened 50 years ago. The tide shifted, easy growth gave way to falling numbers. No one noticed. No one was even counting the things that needed to be counted, and the official numbers became increasingly unmoored from reality. Attendance and membership declines that should have been noticed at the first dip were allowed to worsen steadily, until decline became catastrophe. And then, because good metrics still weren’t available, church folks used decline to blame whatever they didn’t like.

As mainline churches began to lose touch with young adults, for example, no one noticed until half a generation was gone. Even then, few sought to understand it. Now it’s two entire generations gone. As women’s groups drew scant response from younger women, no one thought to ask why or to change the meeting time to evening. When the divorce rate began to spike, churches kept assuming a coupled world. Churches kept offering Sunday Schools as if the 1950s would return.

Leaders shunned outcome-based decision-making and chose, instead, the delusion of desire-based decision-making, sprinkled with resistance by longtime leaders, nostalgia, blame, rumor, pop psychology, and scapegoating, especially of the clergy. People planned programs that had worked before and felt betrayed when they didn’t work another time. People felt pushed to show their loyalty by participating in activities that, by any reasonable measure, had run their course.

As a result, churches kept flogging Sunday worship long after it should have been evident that many weren’t attracted to Sunday worship. It was easy to do Sunday, and maybe if we just did it better, people would “come back.” That single delusion has crippled mainline churches. But without data, no one saw it happening, and without data, they couldn’t justify changing course.

It was like running a business without a complete set of books, no customer surveys, no trends being measured, no studying of the culture, no learning from enterprises doing better, just the vague and increasingly wan hope that if we keep on keeping on, things will get better.

Well, things haven’t gotten better.

What needs to be measured? Anything and everything. Average Sunday Attendance is popular but meaningless as a metric. Instead, measure how often people attend. Measure how early they arrive and how long they stay. Look for changing patterns. Measure how many first-time visitors you have, and then track them as they do or don’t return. Call them all, and learn especially from the ones who don’t return.

Get beyond Sunday. You won’t find a better future by perfecting Sunday morning. Measure how many small groups you have and how regularly people attend. Measure interest in different kinds of groups. Measure response to mission activities. If you have to make ten calls to get one person to chair the bazaar but the Habitat for Humanity build is jammed, kill the bazaar and build more houses.

Study your stewardship closely. Measure not only how much people pledge, but how that pledge correlates to their household income. Don’t just raise funds for a budget; use sophisticated metrics to understand stewardship as a ministry.

Measure indicators that people’s lives are being transformed or not transformed. Is their giving changing? Do you see signs of different personal decisions being made, such as dads spending more time with their children, new ideas being offered, new behaviors like offering to lead?

Measure age distribution so that you can take action to drive down the average age. Measure gender distribution; too many churches have only females up front. Measure your contacts with the outside world, and not just 12-step rentals of your hall. Measure your email distribution lists, and track whether people actually read what you send them. Try A/B testing to see what people read. If you don’t have an adequate CRM app, get one now and use it faithfully. Be smart, not stubborn.

The best metrics are kept consistently and accurately and for years on end. You want to spot trends. One-time measures tell you little. I’m not sure mainline churches will ever recover from the trends they didn’t spot in the 1960s. But we certainly don’t need to keep making that mistake.
 

About the Author

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of Fresh Day online magazine, author of On a Journey and two national newspaper columns. His website is Church Wellness – Morning Walk Media