Speaker 0 00:00:00 For years now, church has been measuring the same things. How many people showed up on Sunday morning? How much did people give those metrics are important, but they're not the only things that we can be measuring. In fact, we think it's important that we start measuring some of those metrics that really matter. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the eight metrics that we think your church should be taking a look at. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast.
Speaker 0 00:00:37 You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 2 00:00:59 I'm ready to get funky.
Speaker 0 00:01:03 Hey guys, welcome to the retry podcast episode number 92. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 4 00:01:12 Ian. Hi, what's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:14 Hey Ian, not much man. Excited to talk today. Uh, we're going to be talking today about how you can track the church metrics that really matter, right? I think church metrics are such an important topic. We've talked about this in the podcast. We did an episode you may want to check out, uh, earlier this year about new metrics to be tracking in 2022. But today we're talking about how you can track the ones that really really matter. Uh, so I think it's going to be a good conversation to, to be digging into, uh, there are so many metrics out there that churches can track, and I think there's been a movement over the last decade or so where we've realized that some of those traditional metrics, uh, are not good are not enough to just write those things that we used to count. Right? Anybody whose primary metric was how many people are sitting in pews on Sunday morning? Right. They really became sad over the last two years because I mean, except for a very small number of them, Many churches saw a huge decline in their normal Sunday attendance. I think, you know, we talked to churches all the time and I I've heard maybe from one or two that said that they immediately grew during the coronavirus pandemic. I've talked to hundreds of them that have said, oh, we're down 20% down. You know, many are still down 60 or 70%. Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 00:02:38 We saw the average. Remember, I remember we covered this. The average church is at 30 to 60% of where they were, uh, pre pandemic. So that, that
Speaker 0 00:02:47 Was crazy, right?
Speaker 4 00:02:48 It is.
Speaker 0 00:02:49 Yeah. So if that was your metric, um, you probably have quit already if that was your only metric that you measured. You're probably not in the ministry anymore because, uh, you know, you, um, you've down. And obviously we were saying this in tongue-in-cheek because a lot of that was out of our control. I know a lot of our audience is really struggling with that. And of course, just as an encouragement, this is, this is you were not responsible for a global pandemic. That wasn't something that you made happen there. Uh, but I think one of the solutions is maybe re-evaluating the things that you're measuring and making sure that you're really measuring what matters. And that's the hope today is that we want to measure those things, helping churches measure the things that really matter. And so for this conversation, we've kind of broken it down a little bit differently from how we've done it before.
Speaker 0 00:03:35 Uh, and it's a different conversation too, but we have four different, basically four categories of measurements for different categories. And then we have a few different ideas for each one of those categories of things that would kind of fit in there. Some of them you're probably measuring already, uh, maybe some of them you're not really measuring, but I think all of them could be really valuable to churches there. So, um, I'll go ahead and start us off though. The first category, uh, is it's important that we measure new engagements. How many new engagements are you making? And this is emphasis on the word new, and then so on the word engagement, this is something that's kind of a buzzword in churches right now. We weren't measuring how often are people engaged with our church that they're, they're having kind of an interaction with our church.
Speaker 0 00:04:20 And I think this is important because recent Barna study says that a third of Americans are what they would, they remain unchurched. De-churched not people that have been in church and have left or are part of a church, but they are never really been involved or had an experienced in a church. So one third of all, adults remain completely unchurched. And so these new engagements as a metric, it's really that measurement of how many, how many people are we able to make an engagement with for the first time. So would you agree? That's an important thing for us to be measuring?
Speaker 4 00:04:56 Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and I think, you know, you, you hit the nail on the head. This has been a buzzword for a little while, the word engagement for, for churches, um, actually even pre pandemic, this had emerged, but the pandemic accelerated obviously, uh, the need to track engagement, uh, because we were engaging in a different way and not engaging physically. So yeah, absolutely agree. It's very important.
Speaker 0 00:05:21 Yeah. So here's some of the things I think that we, we recommend if you're really trying to measure new engagements, um, the best measurements are, so number one, I think the obvious one for churches that are meeting in person, uh, I think which is most churches out there. I know that a lot of us are still doing online services and I think that's fantastic. And I we're all for online campuses. We did a couple of episodes a few weeks ago. Just all about how to, how to really nail that and do that well. Yeah, but I think for most of us are our best discipleship experience is still happening in person. And so measuring first-time guests, uh, that's a lot of things. That's one of those things that is so important to be measuring. Uh, I have argued for a long time that most churches have a front door problem, not a backdoor problem.
Speaker 0 00:06:10 Uh, just the natural ebb and flow of churches. You're going to have people that leave your church, not even for bad reasons. You know, God willing, you won't have mass exoduses in your church, but people will move away. People will pass away. And generally speaking, churches will move towards less people having it, that being there. Then if people aren't coming in the front door, so most churches have a front door problem measuring your number of first-time guests, I think is really, really an important thing to do. And seeing that number regularly increasing is really important. So yeah. Number of unchurched people that you're reaching. Um, so you can, I think that's an important thing to measure. It's a little bit detailed, so you'd have to figure this out and that we find ways to measure whether this person was part of a church before, or are they a transplant from another church?
Speaker 0 00:06:56 Ideally we want to be reaching, you know, mostly unchurched people, right. You know what, I'm going to be the first to tell you that I know there's a lot of stigma around this, but there are a lot of people that are de-churched or hurt by churches that really need a place to call home. So reaching people again, we don't want people that are just, they like your worship team better. So they're going to move after 10 years of this other church, but yeah, there's a lot of hurt out there. And so reaching these kinds of people, uh, with new engagements, that's really important. And then here's what I think that has really grown in importance is online engagement, uh, something that we really need to be measuring now. So this is going to be things like, uh, I think if you're measuring new engagements, you can look at first-time visits to your website. Yeah. Um, that's really important. Um, how many views are you getting on, on YouTube, on, on social media, how many likes and, and this kind of engagement, how many new followers do you have subscribers on YouTube? Um, these kinds of measurements I think are really valuable. What do you have to add to any of that?
Speaker 4 00:07:57 No, I think, uh, one thing that to touch on going back to, um, number of unchurched people, you might be able to find that, uh, when they're filling out a connection card or, uh, checking out your, you know, your new members class or new believers class. So, uh, we didn't maybe touch on that, those, cause that's a kind of unique one there, so that might help some churches out there to know. But no, I think that, you know, w w for online engagements, what you just kind of finished with, we definitely S churches started to track that because they were forced to when the pandemic happened. So I, I think it's, I've been encouraged to hear how many churches are still tracking that. Um, and so it is important even though you don't know, even if you get a video view, if they're watching the whole message or whatever, still good to track, still good to know the number, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:08:45 I think one of the mistakes that churches made, and I don't know if you heard this in the beginning of the pandemic. Um, I think churches, we finally really got a taste of the power of the internet and like these guys, we would all go online the first few days and we would look at it and we we'd have these people that were pastoring churches of a hundred people. And they go online and they look at it and they say we had 700 people watch our service this week online. Like what, what an untapped potential. Now I think the thing to remember is that there is, there's a different value in an online view. Like you can't measure them the same. And I saw all these, like these schemes that people would say to like, raise their, help them feel better about themselves with their metrics and say, well, you know, we have a hundred people coming to our church on Sundays typically, but we had 700 views and those are all families. And there's probably like four people at each TV watching it. So really it's like, it's like 2,800 people were at our church this last week. It's not the same, uh, to
Speaker 4 00:09:45 <inaudible> church.
Speaker 0 00:09:47 We are, our tides are still the same. It's not the biggest size tides, but we, as far as attendance, we are through the roof as far as growth. I think that, uh, you, you, there's no real, there's not a good measurement to compare, you know, three online views as worth one in person view or one in person views is half a and there's, I've seen all kinds of numbers out there. They really are their own category, their own metric. Don't try and meld them together into one number because it really is something different, but all of them are good. Every one of those is engagements. I think what you were saying too is important though, making sure you're when you're measuring, like don't get, um, when you look at just your number of views, that's valuable, but like Facebook, for instance, one of their most important metrics is a three second video view, right?
Speaker 0 00:10:39 So if you're putting your entire live service onto Facebook, and it'll tell you that, oh, you had a 400 views on that. A lot of times it's going to be like 360 of them were three second video views. And while that is still better than zero, you know, not having a view, I suppose don't make the mistake that someone that stayed there and interacted with you the entire time and, uh, had a, a gospel experience necessarily like if they were in person. So again, all that to say, it's, it's a different metric, but all of these are engagements that we should be measuring and trying to see growth in these areas.
Speaker 4 00:11:14 That's good. Uh, I'll, I'll hit the next one, which is a good, next one here, after talking about engagement, that's you need to measure new connections. So engagement is someone's first interaction with your church, kind of a newer visitor and new connections would be someone taking a next step after that, to them taking the action, not just them, seeing you or touching you, but them taking some sort of a next step. And this is very important because if we're not careful, we can end up tracking and measuring the same people cycling in and over and over again, uh, you want to know who are the newer peop the people getting connected for the first time? Um, so yeah, so we have some ideas for that, for sure. Uh, obviously the connection card has been around for a long time, and I hope churches are using the connection card, I should say a long time. Good amount of time. Uh,
Speaker 0 00:12:11 Can I ask, what is your church? Do you guys do a physical connection card or is it a text connection card, QR
Speaker 4 00:12:18 QR code? They could do a physical one or they also, we have a QR code as well. Uh, so for them to scan and then they go to the
Speaker 0 00:12:25 It's up on the screen. They're like, you hold out your phone and scan it if you're new
Speaker 4 00:12:28 And, and the QR code is on the connection card as well. Um, so,
Speaker 0 00:12:32 And I've seen some churches do it on the back of the seats in front of them. Like there's a QR code you can get is that you guys have
Speaker 4 00:12:38 That's it, that's it. Yep, absolutely. So that's the way we do it. So
Speaker 0 00:12:41 Yeah. I have a physical card too, that someone could write their name and number and that instant.
Speaker 4 00:12:45 Yeah, absolutely. Because obviously some people still don't do the QR code or whatever. So
Speaker 0 00:12:51 I think that's right. I think doing all of the above is probably the right way to do it. I we're wrestling with some of this at our church of just like, what do we do? Because our primary way is text. I'm new to this number. And then it's a little bit like sending a text is a little bit more, it takes a little bit more work than putting in your number into a form. It makes them take more initiative than filling out a form or writing their name there. So anyway, I was curious about that,
Speaker 4 00:13:16 Oh, that's, that's what we do. And I think it's the same. I think my mindset and philosophy of saying when you get online giving going, don't, don't take away physical check writing or giving, you know, let there be options for different folks. So, yeah, absolutely. So that, um, obviously if someone, uh, emails or, uh, through email, um, ops in, uh, obviously to start following emails there, um, attendance, obviously at a new members class, um, you know, next steps type class, they register for a small group. Um, they, they, uh, participate or sign up for a service or project, you know, uh, serving or an outreach or something like that. So those are all next physical steps that someone takes after they'd been engaged. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:03 Yep. No, absolutely. Yeah. So I think I'll get all of these are not number of people in the seats, right? These are our different measurements than that. I think these are what they have in common is that they're all very simple steps. Like, so, you know, we, we all know that like no one is like opting into your church's email list. Doesn't lead you into heaven. Jesus made no promise theologically about the opt in there, but it is a super simple thing that helps you measure the number of people that are kind of like are, are putting their toe in the water. Right. So they've come and now they're like ready to just kind of get in there a little bit and see how it's going. And I think that's really important to be looking at how many people are taking those kinds of steps, because it leads to the next one, which I'll kind of start with here, uh, is that we need to be looking at some of the discipleship steps.
Speaker 0 00:14:53 So measuring that was more of like the, um, the practical steps of getting involved, the discipleship steps or more of the, the spiritual markers and measuring some of those. And I think most churches measure a lot of these already. I think that's something that we've, we've been doing for a long time, but, uh, I think that this is even more important than it's ever been again. So it's not measuring number of people watching, uh, but it's measuring the number of people that are, are making actual decisions. And I know that like, so some of them just as ideas, our number of salvation, how many people said yes to Jesus number of baptisms, uh, my 2 cents on this is that the number of baptisms is a lot harder number to, to fudge with than the number of salvation 'cause I I've been in ministry for so long, right. So I I've, I've pastored, I've preached a lot. I've led a lot of people, uh, to make a decision to follow Jesus. And you, and I know we've done ministry together that a lot of times it's, I can count some people that I've led them to Jesus, like 11 times
Speaker 4 00:15:57 They raised their hand. Every time they get saved, every Sunday
Speaker 0 00:16:00 They'll stand up, they'll go to the, I said, yes, booth, they'll do all those things, but over and over again, they'll decide to follow Jesus. And baptism is harder because people will generally not re choose to get dunked over and over and over again. And this only works for our audience. That is, uh, well, I guess it's, it's a helpful measurement, whether you do, uh, a baby baptism or not, or believers baptism. But I think that either way, baptism is one of those things that in general should be done one time for your life, nothing wrong with a second time, if you're recommitting, I suppose, but it is a real measurement. So, uh, salvation, baptism, I think group attendance at the asset. Good kind of discipleship. Like how many people are, are going to groups, how many people are making that decision to join a group for the first time.
Speaker 0 00:16:48 And then here's another unique one that I think is, um, a lot of churches don't really measure this, but I think it's, I think when we have a holistic view of what the function of a church is, it's for all seasons of life. So things like baby dedications, marriages, um, funerals is, you know, as I know, we would likely want to increase our funeral number, no pastors out there saying like, let's try and get more funerals this year. But I think that those kinds of things are important to measure because they, they show you how, um, the kind of impact you have in people's most sacred moments of their lives, dedicated to the baby being married, a Memorial, you know, someone chooses their pastor or their church to be the place where that happens. You don't want to go to a random church for your parents' Memorial service. You don't want some random minister doing that. You want your person, but people that are so measuring those kinds of pastoral care elements, I think those are really valuable. All of them fitting in with kind of that discipleship steps. So looking at some of those, I think are really important.
Speaker 4 00:17:50 Yeah. Because these how to measure people going deeper, which like you said, I mean, that's vital. I mean, that's what every church wants. And, um, yeah, it's funny. You, you mentioned us doing ministry together. I remember when we did, um, a couple of things when we did baby dedications, that was like our highest attended, uh, Sunday. Uh, we, so we just decided we needed to, and we were trying to get the church off the ground. Right. We were planning a church, uh, you and I here in the Austin, Texas area. And, uh, we were like, wow, that worked for getting more people out. We need to do more baby dedications. But yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:23 So we would just stop people on the streets. Hey, is your baby to bed dedicated? Bring on in let's let's do it bring your whole family.
Speaker 4 00:18:29 Yeah. No. So that's good. And then in the baptism thing too, I mean, I agree with you, there's been, even in a small group setting, even in a more intimate setting, I remember helping someone take a step in and, and trusting in Jesus, but, but, but when it came to baptism they'll no, no, no, I'm not ready yet. Uh, so, and, and, and, uh, and to this day they still haven't. Uh, so, and that was years ago. So it is, these are next steps that are deeper commitments. So that's good. Then that's I guess, a good transition to the last one here, which is, and this one's a little interesting, I thought when you and I were talking about this, this one here, but spiritual growth. So we've talked about discipleship steps, but obviously now that people have taken those deeper steps, whether or not it's in a small group, um, they got baptized then are they growing?
Speaker 4 00:19:16 Are they bearing fruit? Um, you know, you want to make sure that, uh, and this is kind of where we talk about closing the back door, right? If someone is in continually, um, you know, serving in your church, staying involved, um, committed to the mission, ongoing that's real growth that's happening. So, um, and this one at first, I was like, well, you know, what, what, what would those metrics be? Um, but, uh, yeah, I think that if we go a little bit deeper with these, so ones that, uh, we see are giving, obviously giving is a big deal. Um, I mean, I think that we've known this for years in ministry that, you know, someone can attend and even, um, you know, be very involved in a small group or serving, but that giving just does not happen. So it is a, it is a big step in, uh, showing an individual spiritual growth that they're trusting the Lord with their finances and being obedient to that.
Speaker 4 00:20:14 Uh, and so that volunteering, of course, obviously if someone's volunteering there, they're not just putting their talents, but they're putting their time and effort and, and they're walking that out. So that's a big, uh, metric of, of spiritual growth. Um, how many leaders do you have number of leaders? Um, you know, that is a big deal, I think too, because how, how many, what is it? What's this disease statistics that I'm botching mentally right now, but, uh, it's, uh, you know, an a hundred percent of people, only 10% of people are doing the work, right. They say it's usually
Speaker 0 00:20:47 80 20. Right. That's what I usually hear is that you have an 80, 20 principle. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 4 00:20:51 So the, you know, if you have, you know, good, healthy amount of leaders that shows that, uh, as well. So these are some, these are some key ones.
Speaker 0 00:21:00 Yeah. I agree. I think that churches have always measured giving. Right. So that's something that that's obvious. I think thinking about it a little bit differently, not just, you know, the thing we usually measure is, Hey, we had X dollars this month. Right. We had more dollars last month and less dollars from the previous quarter. Right. That's it, that's important, you know, so you want to measure that. I think more measuring, um, people, people and their giving. Right. So now I'm of the persuasion the whole time I pastored, I never looked at individual gifts. That was a kind of a commitment I made to the Lord. I'm not saying it's wrong if you do, but I just didn't want the temptation to have to cater to certain people's will, or, um, I didn't want to filter what the holy spirit was saying to me through how much somebody gave to our church.
Speaker 0 00:21:45 So I never knew how much anybody was giving to our church at any given time. But that being said, I think that there is value in looking at the number of people or families that are giving, um, not so much total amounts, but the number that are giving. And then it's probably important to choose an amount in there. Like you don't want to just measure, oh, well, uh, we had, you know, 300 families gave, but a hundred of them gave $10 or less. Right. Cause they, they put in a $5 bill or something like that at one point. So yeah, that's, that's, I mean, that's a valuable number, but I think a more valuable number would be choosing some kind of an amount that represents a, a sacrifice for the average person may be. And again, this is so hard to figure because someone, the sacrifice for someone that makes $200,000 a year is different from the sacrifice of someone making $30,000 a year.
Speaker 0 00:22:39 Right? So it's just a different beast, but trying to find some kind of number. So maybe it's people that gave a thousand dollars over the course of the year here, uh, they gave a thousand dollars this year or a hundred dollars a month or something like that on average, uh, and measuring that number and seeing which direction it's headed in using it as a trend. That's something that we can kind of say, uh, this is these, this number of people are, they really are bought into what we're doing at the church. They are, they have spiritually grown to a place where they're giving an amount. That actually means something. And again, it's not a perfect metric because to someone who makes a million dollars a year, a thousand dollars might not really be that sacrificial for them. It might be like someone else giving a 20.
Speaker 0 00:23:22 But, uh, it's something that, uh, I think is you have to kind of draw some line somewhere. So measuring that I think is great. Volunteering, I think is probably one of the most valuable metrics that you can possibly measure as a church now, because it's something that, uh, if someone is his body and they're going to be giving their time towards what's happening at the church there. So, uh, I think that this is something that every church be really, if I was going to hone in on one metric, I think that would be the one for 20, 22 is how many people in total are volunteering within our church. And how can we see that number grow a great measure of people's spiritual growth there
Speaker 4 00:23:59 It's good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:24:01 Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Good. Anything to add as we close up about things we should measure or Anything he was saying,
Speaker 4 00:24:08 I can't think of anything.
Speaker 0 00:24:09 Okay. All right. Well, we'll leave it at that for this week. Thank you guys so much for being a part of our retried family. We hope this has been helpful to you. Uh, if it has let us know in the comments below rate, review, subscribe, and do all those kinds of things that you can do that just helps us to get the word out there about the right podcast. And we want to help as many churches as possible with this. So helps
Speaker 4 00:24:29 Us, helps us measure things to
Speaker 0 00:24:31 Help us measure yet. We're measuring every bit of it. That's right. So thank you for being a part of our retried family. Uh, we hope to catch you guys next week. We'll see ya. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out
[email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:25:09 Yes,
