TOP 5 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
#2: Don’t over-inflate your attendance numbers.
This is a difficult and sensitive topic. Numbers aren’t everything, but they do matter, because each of those numbers represents a person who God loves. I’ve been in ministry for decades and know how painful it can be to have to acknowledge that your church may be stalled – or shrinking. However, you can’t effectively make things better until you know the truth, and the purpose of metrics (of any kind) is to help you know that truth.
Boosting the count by doing things like counting the staff, worship team, etc… for each service instead of once may seem harmless, but things can get WAY out of control with online numbers. It’s a common practice to count each hit, regardless of time spent, and to assume that each “viewer” is actually multiple people watching. I would go conservative and say 1 = 1. There are certainly families and couples who watch together, but there are also people (hard truth here) who are only semi-engaged – for example, people who are “watching” while they play a game – or who only have the service on in the background.
The bigger issue to me is having a willingness and the courage to face facts – only then will you really have all of the information you need to move forward.
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