How Do You Measure “Church” in A Digital Age?
The things we measure are not always the things that count.
Churches have vital statistics. Most people in the pew pay little attention to them. Pastors often pay little attention, too. Denominations have a hard time collecting parish data and sometimes they make up their own statistics.
Maybe it’s too depressing. Maybe we measure the wrong things.
Typical parish statistics include:
- Worship attendance
- Number of baptized/confirmed members
- Percentage of members attending worship
- Number of members involved in Sunday Schools and VBS programs
- Regular giving by members
- Endowments and property assets
- Operating expenses and debt
- Contributions to benevolence (what the local parish sends to the denomination)
- Contributions to mission
- Ethnic and racial makeup of a congregation
In most congregations, at least in the ELCA, most traditional statistics are dropping dramatically.
Some of these statistics are rather old fashioned.
Once upon a time, a parish had to give money to centralized authority to be dispersed for mission. Today, congregations can and do choose mission efforts in the community and bypass their denominations, which skews that statistic.
Operating expenses assume a pastor’s salary and property as foundational expenses. Neither may be necessary anymore.
There are many other things in a congregation that can be measured (but aren’t) and there are even more things that are difficult to measure.
If we start looking at other sources of data, our view of parish ministry might change.
Internet ministries are very measurable and can be very helpful in directing church ministry. Very few congregations bother or work only half-heartedly in a self-focused way.
2×2 concentrates on internet outreach — and we’ve only begun!
Here are some statistics on our first 10 months of internet ministry.
2×2 published its first post in February 2011. We had practically no traffic for six months. In mid-summer, we began publishing daily and the site has grown since. There was a slight dip at Christmas time but we have already recorded our most traffic ever only four days into 2012, so we expect the statistics to continue to grow — as long as we continue to work at it.
We have recorded 2100 site visits. For the last two months, 2×2 has consistently registered 100-150 views each week. We have about 70 subscribers/followers who receive our posts by email and so are not counted in site visits data. Our average daily on site readership is about 25. So it is fair to say that 2×2 has 100 daily readers.
2×2 has been visited by someone in all but three states with regular viewership in several states. We have viewers around the world with regular readership in several European countries, Canada and Australia.
We can follow our reader’s interests and provide content accordingly. 2×2 readers are most interested in Social Media and the Church and Children’s Sermons. Our articles on Multicultural Ministry were republished by a reader in Texas. The Editorial Calendar we created to correspond to the Lectionary has been downloaded dozens of times.
2×2 has a presence beyond its online ministry that is more difficult to measure (like most ministries), but in 2×2’s case, it is made all the more difficult to measure because the members of 2×2, who are also members of Redeemer, East Falls, have been excommunicated from the ELCA — without discussion or congregational vote — with the denomination claiming our property and financial assets against their own denominational rules.
Imagine what might have been accomplished if our abilities had been measured!
The church needs to take a fresh look at how they measure ministry.