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In this episode of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg dives into the significance of leveraging data to evaluate your ministry effectiveness and elevate discipleship. We start by shedding light on the Annual Church Profile (ACP), a tool used by the Southern Baptist Convention to gather church data. While recognizing its limitations, it's crucial to have statistical insights into your ministry progress. You might have some reservations about diving into data analysis in ministry, however, be assured that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
Expand your metrics beyond the traditional measures like baptisms, attendance, and finances to encompass spiritual growth, discipleship effectiveness, and church impact more comprehensively. Consider strategies for measuring both financial progress and people's engagement and growth within your church. Instead of just tracking total offerings received, focus instead on discipling your church members in their stewardship of resources, and embrace data-driven approaches as a means to deepen spiritual development and effectively fulfill your disciple-making mandate.
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Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
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Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention. And, yes, that is a new title for me. If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you know that I was for 20 years the president of Gateway Seminary. I have moved on from that responsibility, thought I was moving into retirement, but now I've taken on this role of leading the executive committee for the Southern Baptist Convention.
Jeff Iorg:We are going to continue the podcast, however, and we're going to continue the same theme. The Lead On Podcast is about practical issues related to ministry leadership. And so I'd like to welcome you now to this version of the podcast, where once again, we're going to talk about practical issues related to ministry leadership. You know, a few weeks ago, Southern Baptist released something called the annual church profile results. Now the annual church profile are, as we abbreviate it, the ACP, is an attempt by, the denomination to gather information from the churches to quantify some significant areas of ministry and, financial progress, for our churches and for our denomination.
Jeff Iorg:Now the ACP is definitely not an exhaustive study. Many churches do not fill out the information or send it in for a lot of different reasons, but the ACP does give us a statistical basis by which we can evaluate our work and at least have some data points that help us to understand the work we're doing, how we're doing it, progress we're making, our areas of concern. Now let me be the first to say that the ACP really only measures some big issue items. It measures things like, total baptisms, total worship attendance, total membership. It measures things like, total offerings and offerings given to missions and things like that.
Jeff Iorg:There's, an obvious need to have a lot more granular data if you're going to make a very detailed analysis of an organization, even one like the Southern Baptist Convention. And that's what I wanna talk about today, and that is how you can use data to assist you to improve the ministry where you're currently working. Now this may surprise you because some of you may think, well, I don't really like to talk about data or stats or numbers. I'm in ministry, and and I wanna talk about people and about relationships and about inner transformation. Well, I wanna talk about those things too.
Jeff Iorg:So we're gonna discuss on the podcast today what are some of the kinds of ways that you can measure, your progress as a ministry leader and that you can measure the progress of your church or your organization that really are helpful along the way. Now, of course, typically, we measure what I call the big issue items, so the the the big the big topics, like we measure finances or we measure attendance or we might measure baptisms. But when we measure these things, we typically only look at, 1 or 2 numbers and we look at only totals. Like, we'll say, in our finances, you know, how much money did the church receive in offerings this month or this year? Same thing with attendance.
Jeff Iorg:How many people came this Sunday? How many people came last Sunday? And, of course, with baptisms, how many people were publicly, you know, baptized this year in our church? Now let me say that those are good things to look at, and those are the kinds of things that are asked for by the national, reporting process, the ACP as I mentioned it. And these big numbers can help us because they provide a barometer.
Jeff Iorg:They do reveal something of the spiritual life or vitality of a church or a movement like ours, and they can also be helpful in giving us some indication of trends. So for example, I, baptisms, I believe, have increased now for 3 consecutive years among Southern Baptist, and that's a great trend. It's a it's a positive direction, and we're grateful for that. But I'd also underscore that while it's important to look at these big items, those don't really tell us enough information to be helpful. So what I'm gonna advocate for today on the podcast is that as a ministry leader or as a church leader, you actually develop some metrics that will help you to measure, spiritual growth and discipleship effectiveness and church impact in ways that go beyond these, what I'll call, big ticket numbers or these big general numbers that are often reported.
Jeff Iorg:Now, again, some of you are having some resistance to what I'm saying right now. You're saying, well, I don't know. I all this talk about data and statistics and numbers, I I just don't know that that's really what we ought to be doing in church. In fact, I recently read a person who jokingly said we focus too much in the Bible on the book of numbers and not enough on the book of acts. Well, that's a great way to turn a phrase, and it's true.
Jeff Iorg:Sometimes we do get too caught up in numerical information and forget the spiritual nature of the work we do, But I don't believe these things are in conflict. I don't think that it's wrong to do statistical or data analysis of a ministry organization or a church, and and I also don't believe that doing that, disqualifies us from focusing on the spiritual dynamics and the spiritual re, work that we're doing. So one of the first reasons that people resist any kind of more detailed data analysis of their ministry is because they just say it's not spiritual. It undercuts our spiritual focus and our and our, desire to be led by the spirit and prompted by the spirit, And they don't wanna talk about data or trends or anything like that because they just wanna move with the spirit. So I get that, but again, I don't think that you have to go to that extreme.
Jeff Iorg:I do think you can still use data and statistical information to help you understand how the spirit is moving and to understand the results of the work that you're doing even those that are produced by the spirit. Another pea reason people resist this in ministry is they say, well, it's just not helpful. It's just not worth the hassle. You know, I don't wanna spend all this time gathering up information because quite frankly, at the end of the day, what difference is it gonna make? Well, that's because you don't know how to use the information or you're gathering the wrong information.
Jeff Iorg:And so what I wanna talk today is about how to gather information that truly is helpful. It does give you the ability to really track what really matters and to be able to understand that. And then, frankly, another reason why some people don't like to report data or information is because it's discouraging. It's hard to admit that your church is declining or you haven't baptized very many people or your finances are, in decline. It's hard to admit that.
Jeff Iorg:It's also sometimes hard to to, admit these numbers because they get weaponized against us. People take them and they turn on us and attack us, because of the deficiencies perhaps that this information has shown. And so I understand the reluctance. We're reluctant to use data because it's it's not spiritual, it's not helpful, and it's discouraging or it can be weaponized against us. I get that.
Jeff Iorg:But I come back again to say, I think the advantages far outpay these disadvantages. And, again, if you can find the right information, use it the right way, it can reveal things about the spiritual development of your church and about this work that you need to do as a leader. And even when things are not as positive or hope filled as we might want them to be, the stat that information can still be helpful as it motivates us to move forward. So now having said all that, let me talk about some different ways to measure, different aspects of your church's ministry that really do contribute to the disciple making mandate that you have and to the spiritual transformation that you're trying to affect in the lives of people. And I wanna do this in a couple of different categories.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna talk about measuring things about money and measuring things about people. And I'm just gonna start with the money because I wanna spend less time on that, and then I wanna focus more perhaps on the people side of things. When you think about measuring your church's financial progress, the primary way that most churches do this is by measuring the monthly offering or the annual offering, how much is received. There's certainly nothing wrong with doing that. It's a helpful number, and it, does reveal something about the resources that you have available and the opportunity that you have to do ministry.
Jeff Iorg:It gives you some kind of a sense of what you can spend or how much you can spend, all of those things. So that number is a good number, but it's not necessarily the best number to lead you to do what you're really responsible for doing as a ministry leader related to money in the lives of your followers, and that is to develop them as disciples, people who are discipling their wealth and making a difference with their resources. You have that responsibility. You can't shirk it. You say, well, I don't like to talk about money.
Jeff Iorg:We'll get over that. People are thinking about money all the time. Money is a big issue in the lives of of Christians and non Christians. Just like you're concerned about, the families in your church having a good marriages, doing well in parenting, having good relationships with their, fam with their extended families, being good employees and working well in the community. You're concerned about your, thought your church members developing in their understanding of doctrine and faith and practice and all of that.
Jeff Iorg:You're also responsible to disciple them in their use of resources. And quite frankly, just looking at the total offerings that your church is receiving does not give you the information you need to know how to disciple people effectively. Now I had an incident or a a a a situation a few years ago which really demonstrated this in a very dramatic fashion. There was a church, had an attendance of about a 100, and over about a 3 year period of time, the church grew remarkably. Baptized quite a few people, had some other additions, and over that 3 year period, the average attendance doubled to a little more than 200.
Jeff Iorg:It it was fantastic. And during that same time frame, the giving went up substantially. In fact, it also, about doubled. Well, everyone was thrilled, of course. The church was growing remarkably and the finances were growing amazingly, and the church was able to add staff.
Jeff Iorg:The church was able to, do new programs. The church was able to bring in some, portable, classrooms to enlarge their facilities. Lots of good things were happening. But there was one part of this situation that only the pastor and the financial secretary and the person who was responsible for the giving records knew, and that is that almost all of the financial increase had come from 1 family. There was a family in the church that had, the opportunity to give remarkably more money than they had been giving in the past, and they took advantage of that opportunity and were contributing it through their church.
Jeff Iorg:And that that made the total offerings almost double in that 3 year time frame. But what was happening with all the new people? They weren't giving. They were coming in mostly as either baby Christians or new Christians. They were coming from other churches where they had not perhaps been taught principles of discipleship and stewardship, and so while the church doubled in attendance, the giving of the members, except for the one family, only went up by about 5 to 10%.
Jeff Iorg:Now this was a tremendous challenge for the leadership. Pastor was like, what do I do with this? Well, we had to think that through. What do I do with this? And the challenge was, you really can't reveal what you know about an individual family's giving to the whole church, and you can't even really reveal it to your leadership.
Jeff Iorg:And so you're stuck with this knowledge that you have a very significant need in your church, a very significant need to develop people in their discipleship of their wealth and to teach them stewardship principles, but there's almost no learning readiness, it seems, on the surface at least because everyone in the church is thrilled with the total offerings that are being received by the congregation. 1 of the pastor one of the associate pastors, in that church who was a kind of a bivocational part time guy actually said to me, when we brought up this problem, our leadership actually said, who's not tithing? Look at the giving. It's fantastic. Well, yes, but it's not as strong as you might think.
Jeff Iorg:So the church had a real challenge. It needed to develop a better method of discipling people in their wealth, but it was camouflaged, if you will, the need, at least, hidden because of the amount of giving that was being done and the total receipts that were coming in made it look like the church was not only growing numerically, but also growing in their stewardship. So that was really one of the first times that I had to stop and think, what are some other metrics that should be measured then to help a church understand if it's discipling its people well in the area of money. So let me give you 2 or 3 suggestions. The first thing is to analyze how many giving units you have in your church.
Jeff Iorg:How many giving units? Now what I mean by that is giving households. So a a husband and a wife, they're one giving unit. Even though they may give separately, they're still a giving unit, and if they have children, you start giving that kind of thing. So we tried to our our we've typically, aggregated people by giving unit rather than by giving individual.
Jeff Iorg:And so the first thing that you need to know is how many giving units you had in your church last year, and I would define a giving unit as any household that gave even one gift to our church in the previous 12 months. Now what you wanted instead as a goal is to increase the number of giving units the following year. Right now, you're not worried about amounts. You're not worried about tithing. You're not worried about any kind of discipline.
Jeff Iorg:You're just asking yourself the question, how can I promote biblical stewardship, financial management, and the needs and ministries and opportunities of our church and of the larger work of the kingdom of God through our church? How can I promote this, teach this, lead in this so that more families will begin to contribute financially? And you can track from year to year how many giving units you have. Again, we're not thinking about amounts. We're not thinking about consistency.
Jeff Iorg:We're not thinking about, anything like that. We're just trying to get more families giving and to work toward that as an objective. And that may mean that you need to target, by knowing the families in your church who don't give, you may need to have a targeted way of reaching out to them and challenging them and helping them to grow in their stewardship and in their discipleship in the area of money. Now this raises a whole another question, and that is, should ministry leaders know who and how much, is given in their church? And I know this is controversial and I I I face I admit that right up front, but I say the answer is definitely yes.
Jeff Iorg:If you're a pastor, how can you not, How can you disciple people in their wealth without knowing what's going on with the finances and the families of your church? And you might say, well, yeah, but if I knew, I'm afraid that I would show favoritism or I would let them have influence. Well, that's another problem. And friend, that's your problem. That's not the financial problem.
Jeff Iorg:That's just you having to grow as a leader to the point where you're able to make objective decisions how many giving units do we have in our church and how many, how many giving units do we have in our church and how many, families that we do we have that regularly attend that are not giving at all financially, and how can I strategize a way of developing their discipleship of their wealth so that they begin the process of giving and practicing Christian generosity? K. Here's a second, number that you can, track, and that is how many of the giving units increased their giving year over year? Now, again, we're not talking about amounts here. So someone gave a $100 last year, that's all they gave.
Jeff Iorg:But this year, they gave $300. Well, I see that as a person who's growing in their capacity for giving and in their stewardship and in their understanding of giving. So again, we're not looking at amounts. We're looking at progress. We're looking at steps forward.
Jeff Iorg:We're looking at people who are who are increasing the giving that they're doing. Now you might say, well, yeah, but there's some factors in that. You know, sometimes people get laid off or they retire or they have financial setbacks. I understand all that. You're gonna have some up and down.
Jeff Iorg:Nope. No doubt about it. Not every family is gonna give more every year, but we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about developing a trend line that you understand in your church that you have this many giving units, and next year, you wanna try to increase that. You have this many giving units and next and and the and this year, they gave a percentage of them gave more than they gave last year, and this year, we wanna set a goal to increase that.
Jeff Iorg:And then the 3rd category of this is the number of giving units who are giving consistently. Now in our family, we're a giving unit, my wife and I, and we only give once a month. We're very disciplined about our finances and about our our giving, and so on the 1st day of every month, I, send our church and, and other organizations that we support, I send them our gifts. And we sit down once a year, and my wife and I map this out, make a plan, and then we work that plan for the whole year. So we don't give weekly, we give monthly.
Jeff Iorg:So when I say giving consistently, it's not a matter of who gave every week or anything like that. It's like you look at a giving unit and you say, this person gives once a quarter, okay, or they give once a month or they give every week. That's a consistent pattern. But if you see someone who gives in February and then again in July and then again in August, but then not again until October, you know that person is struggling to establish consistency in their giving. And so if you look at your giving unit record and you see that many giving units are giving consistently, they're giving weekly or monthly, you know that you have developed a pattern of giving in your church and you've discipled people well in understanding their need to have a consistency of giving.
Jeff Iorg:Now you may need to focus on the other things I've already mentioned, increasing their giving year over year or, increasing the number of units who join in that consistency that we've just described. This is the kind of granular data that helps you to know how to disciple people with their wealth. Yes. The total offering matters, But when you're discipling people, and you you do have that responsibility, discipling people about their wealth, then you have to look a little deeper, and I suggest these 3 categories. How many giving units do you have, and do you increase that year over year?
Jeff Iorg:How many giving units do you have that increase their giving year over year? And how many giving units do you have that are giving consistently and that are showing a pattern of discipline in their stewardship and in their giving? This is the kind of data that helps you to grow people in their discipleship of their wealth over time, and this is not the kind of data that you can do just once and it makes a big difference. If You're planning to leave your church in a very short time, I wouldn't spend any time on this. But if you're making a 10 year commitment, if you're saying I'm here and I'm here for the duration, and I'm gonna disciple people in their wealth just like I disciple them in their family, that disciple them in their, marriage, disciple them in their, morality, disciple them in their work ethic, I'm gonna disciple them in their wealth, and in order to do that and how they use resources and how they give and all of the things that go along with that, I need to develop some matrix metrics, some data points, some statistics that help me track, is change really happening in the families or in the giving units of my church.
Jeff Iorg:And if you can track that, then you'll have a better bar barometer of how you're doing in developing people as disciples in this important area. Now let's talk a little bit about the people side of things. Again, we typically measure 1 big number, and that's the grand total attendance, And that's fine. It's a good number to use. It's a good number to measure.
Jeff Iorg:But as we all know, attendance goes up and down week to week, and it can be a little bit of a roller coaster ride. And if you're only measuring that, you may not have the best understanding of what's really happening in your church. Now related to attendance is another number that we often measure in baptist life and that's baptisms. And some people don't like even talking about that because they say, you know, conversion is God's work and baptism is a personal decision, and I really shouldn't measure that or be held accountable for that because, you know, that's god's business. And and I I actually believe that.
Jeff Iorg:I actually think there's something to that argument. So let's talk about though if if if that's not the best way to measure what we're responsible for in the area of people, meaning attendance and baptisms, what can we measure? Well, let's first of all talk about the baptisms one. I do think it's important to count the number of baptisms you have, but that is not the most important number to count because you can't control that number. You can't control how many people are converted.
Jeff Iorg:That is, believe me, totally God's work, and you can't, determine how many people will actually be baptized because that, again, that's a personal choice that people have to make and you can preach about it, teach about it, have experiences about it, but, again, you have to emphasize that and still allow people to make their own decision. Let me give you 2 things you can measure that really are your responsibility. First of all, you can measure what I call gospel conversations. You can measure in your church how many times this week did we have a conversation with another person that mentioned the gospel, mentioned Jesus, mentioned salvation, or mention some other spiritual focus that would be connected to, the gospel or a gospel conversation. And then the second thing you can measure are what I call gospel presentations.
Jeff Iorg:And a gospel presentation is when you have actually presented the gospel of Jesus Christ even up to the point of asking if a person would believe it and commit themselves to Jesus as savior and lord. So a gospel conversation and a gospel presentation are 2 different things. Now I think it's important to measure both of these in your church to find a way, either through your Sunday school classes or your small groups or through some other means to say, let's set a goal of this many gospel conversations and this many gospel presentations every week. Let's pray for the opportunities. Let's pray for boldness to seize the opportunities.
Jeff Iorg:Let's let's celebrate what happens when those opportunities, come to fruition. Let's talk about gospel presentations and gospel conversations. Now, here's what I have observed overwhelmingly. Churches that have a lot of gospel conversations and a lot of gospel presentations typically have a lot of baptisms. So, eventually, you're gonna get to measuring this thing, which is the public evidence of conversion and public statement of faith in Jesus.
Jeff Iorg:Yes. You're gonna measure baptisms. But rather than just focusing on that, let's back up to the part that we can have much more control, and that is how many gospel conversations and how many gospel presentations we initiate. You know, when I was a church planter receiving denominational funding many years ago, I had to fill out a monthly report. It was a 1 page report, but on that report, I had to list how many gospel presentations and how many gospel conversations, and I had to write a narrative explaining a few of those to give my supervisors confidence that they were investing money wisely in me as a church planter because I was focusing on what was really necessary to lead to conversions and people coming into my church.
Jeff Iorg:So, yes, it's important to measure baptisms. But if you wanna measure what will lead to more baptisms, find a way to measure gospel conversations and gospel presentations in your church. Do it through your Sunday school, your small groups, or some other structure where people can submit this information, where you can have goals and challenge people to reach those goals and remind people and pray with people and and, endeavor to make sure the gospel is at the forefront of what you're doing. Now let's talk about attendance and measuring that. Of course, you can count the number of people that are there on a Sunday, and that's a good thing.
Jeff Iorg:But I wanna give you a couple of other ways to count attendance, which are, I think, more helpful in the long run. One way is to use what I call a monthly aggregate attendance, a monthly combined attendance. Now if you're in a church of 1,000, this probably is gonna work, but most of you are not in churches of 1,000. Okay? So this worked very well for me, especially when I was a church planter in Portland, Oregon.
Jeff Iorg:When we moved to Portland, we planted the church and we opened it in the 1st month, and we knew the name of everyone who was at the opening service. We had a list of all the people that were part of the core group, and we had a list of all the visitors who came. And even if they didn't give us their name, I was able to write blue shirt guy, lady with 2 kids. I mean, I was able to identify the people that were there. In fact, when I was a church planter, my church planning partner and I would sit down every Monday, and we would have a total number of attendants and a head count that someone would do from the back of the room.
Jeff Iorg:And then we would sit down and we would use a computerized list of our of our, core group, and then we would look at the people that were visitors that gave us their information and then the other ones that I just had to identify by the color of their shirt or how many kids they had or something. And we would create a list and we would count that, and we would try to come up with a name or an identifier that equaled the total head count that we'd been given from the day before. So if there were 92 people, we tried to come up with 92 names of who was there on that Sunday, and that was on the 1st Sunday of the month. Now the 2nd Sunday of the month, we did the same thing. We got the head count, let's say, it was 85.
Jeff Iorg:And we went down through the list and we come came up with our 85 people that were there on the 2nd Sunday. Now listen, this is where it seems a little complicated, but it's really not, so stay with me. Then we made our monthly list. Everyone who was there on the 1st Sunday, and we added to it the people who were there on the 2nd Sunday, but who had not been there on the 1st Sunday, and then we repeat the process on the 3rd Sunday and the 4th Sunday. So that at the end of the month, we had a list of everyone who had attended our service for that month, and this was our monthly aggregate attendance.
Jeff Iorg:So if our attendance was like 97, 82, 93, and maybe a 101. Well, our aggregate attendance would actually be around a 125 or a 130 because we were looking to see how many different people came at least once to our church this month. Now why is that important? Well, it's important as a church plant because if you're not attracting new people, you're not gonna make it. And so what we wanted to see was not what did our attendants do week to week.
Jeff Iorg:That that really wasn't telling us the story. We needed to know, are we having new people come and so that every month, we have an increase in our aggregate attendance, and we did that. Every month, we showed a little increase in our aggregate attendance so that after the 1st month, let's say that we had an aggregate of a 120, and then the next month, we did the weekly attendance and we wrote down the names or we wrote down the identifiers, and we came up with the number of different people who were there, and we kept that up for the next 3 or 4 weeks. We get to the end of that month. Now maybe the 2nd month, our aggregate attendance is a 127.
Jeff Iorg:Well, we've increased 7, which tells us that we have more new people coming to to visit us and that we have an ever increasing pool of people that we're reaching or that we're attempting to reach with the gospel. This aggregate attendance number was gold for us. Attendance in a church plant especially went up and down. I mean, it was all over the map, and it can get really discouraging if you only look at one good Sunday followed by one bad Sunday followed by one medium Sunday followed by one good Sunday followed by one bad Sunday. But if you were looking instead at the aggregate, you could see this month, we had this many people come to our church, and the following month, we had this many people come, and we saw an increase every month.
Jeff Iorg:Even though sometimes it was small increases, it gave us the confidence to know that while attendance is going up and down, up and down, up and down, that the total number of people who were actually attending our church and actually checking out our church and actually considering our church was actually getting larger month by month. So this monthly aggregate attendance is a is a very important way of tracking, are you really making progress? Are you really going forward? And then another way to track attendance, and this might be better in a larger church, is to track attendance and the growth of attendance by age group. Break your church down by decades.
Jeff Iorg:How many people are in our church, from 20 to 29, 30 to 39, 4049, 50 to 59, 60 60 to 69, 70 and above. How many people are at our church in these different age groups? Now I've been working with a church recently. It's been a very strong church for a number of years, and the pastor has become very concerned after being there himself for many years that his church is declining and doesn't realize it. And one of the statistics that he showed his church, which kind of shocked them, was he showed them the trend line of their attendance by decades.
Jeff Iorg:In other words, how many people in their thirties are coming to our church where how many people in our thirties were here 2 years ago? How many people are here now? How many people are in their fifties 2 years ago, and how many are in their or fifties that are attending now? And what he's showing is that while the church attendance remains strong, while the church attendance remains strong, it's getting older. And the attendance pattern in the twenties thirties and forties has been slowly declining, and the attendance pattern in the older age groups has been slowly increasing.
Jeff Iorg:What this tells the church is that while they once did a really good job of reaching younger families, now those younger families are aging, and they're not replacing them with more younger families. They're just reaching older people. Nothing wrong with that, but that means the church doesn't have a very long future. So one way to track attendance, rather than just looking at the total aggregate number, is to track it by decades, particularly for adults, and to recognize where you are and what that means. Another way to do this is, of course, to track children and teenagers and also to track them by ages because, quite frankly, if those numbers are declining, it probably means your young adult population is declining and it probably means your church is slowly declining.
Jeff Iorg:So tracking attendance by looking at the grand total number, yeah, that's important. But getting these 2, these two numbers, identified can be more helpful. Your aggregate monthly attendance, how many people attended our church at least once? How many different individuals came at least once this month? And if that number's growing every month, while your attendance may go up and down for a lot of different factors, you know that you're making headway in your ministry by reaching out to more people who are continuing to check out your church.
Jeff Iorg:And then check your church attendance by decade and track that over a few years to see if you're really reaching families that are going to poise you for a long term future and long term health. Well, today on the podcast, we've talked about using statistics to look at the dynamics of who we are as congregations and as ministries, and to understand how to use statistics well to really tell us something about what we need to know about making disciples and about reaching people. These big ticket numbers, the baptisms, the attendance, the offerings, the missions giving, that's important to know, and it does have its place. But if you really wanna use good data to motivate you to do a better job of disciple making, evangelism, and building church ministry, you're gonna have to look a little deeper and develop some longitudinal ways of looking year by year at data to help you understand what's really happening as you try to evangelize and disciple in your community. I think you can use data to encourage, strengthen, and support your ministry.
Jeff Iorg:And use the right information to help you, as you lead on.