5 reasons to love church data
the dreaded 'parochial report' and why it's so important to know our members
In my denomination, it’s ‘parochial report’ season. Everyone seems to be dreading filling out the required questions about average Sunday attendance, number of members, giving, and the ministries of the church.
I think there’s lots of reasons we don’t like it:
It feels like ‘busywork’ - it’s the first thing most of my clergy friends mention when they talk about what they don’t like about ministry.
It feels like an inadequate way to measure the life of a church - our work is spiritual. How does the number of people in our pews - or the the amount they give - really capture how prayer and worship, service and study, fellowship and hospitality change our lives, and the life of the world?
It feels like bad news - we all know about church decline. When we start really looking at the numbers, we see how unsustainable the current organizational structure of most churches is. The number (and age) of people in the pews + the amount of money given often does not equal a way to keep the whole structure running.
We don’t have a good way to count - You think it would be a straightforward task: How many people are there each Sunday? How many members are there overall?
And yet …. most congregations rely on hand counting heads (or communion received) each Sunday, and then write it in a ledger (our church has a big red book). Then later the ledger gets counted by hand and averaged. There’s lots of room for error there! (and it’s a ton of work).
’Membership’ is even more complicated.
How do you count your members?
Most denominations have formal requirements for membership - baptism, or confirmation, or signing a belief statement, or giving to the church.
But do we know the baptism status of all our members?
Is someone who worships with us and participates in the community a ‘member’, even if they do not formally belong to the congregation? What about someone who is technically a member, but they don’t really attend? How about someone who attends more than one church (which happens more than you might think)? Or someone who ‘just’ writes a check, but isn’t really involved?
I agree that the ‘parochial report’ process can be both cumbersome and inadequate, but I think it’s getting at something essential for communities of faith:
Knowing who your members are is essential - to your church and their lives of faith.
My own passion for digital ministry boils down to this: we have access to tools that help us connect with people and support their relationship with God. We should use them.
When we think of technology and ministry, we often think about social media or church websites: sharing who we are and what we do as the church.
While this is true - and important - I think it is far more transformative to use technology to know ourselves and our members. And to use this knowledge to help our members (and future members) to know the love of God more deeply.
’Reporting’ on our congregation, and counting our members then becomes less an administrative task and more a theological one. Technology makes this much easier.
Using the list of why parochial reports are not beloved, here’s some reasons to love church data:
We have a good way to count - even the smallest churches can use church management software - often for free!- to establish a database of membership, and track every kind of member and how they are engaged with the life of the community. Find out if that person who’s been watching your service online would like an invitation to come in person. Know if the person who’s been a member for years is questioning their faith and needs some encouragement. Count what counts.
It feels like good news - having a true sense of our members helps us to grow relationships with them, and support their relationship with God. It also helps us create membership pathways in many ways, even online. This helps with sustainability - spiritual and financial.
It’s a very good way to measure the life of a church - church management software helps create a nuanced, detailed picture of the community and how it functions. You can keep track of who is part of what ministry, and whether it needs to expand (or be discontinued). Recently I was working with a music minister who realized that some members of her paid choir - who were otherwise not ‘members’ of the church - were becoming more curious about baptism in the church. We used digital tools to help create a ‘music is ministry’ program to support this.
There’s way less busywork. Yes, setting up a digital system is work. You’ll probably need help (you can always call me). But once you get it working, it does the work! The small (but mighty!) congregation I serve with has a church attendance form available through their church app and website that let’s anyone key in who’s there on Sunday (we still use the big red book, for our history). The information is kept in a database, so next’s year’s parochial report will be a snap!
Wait .. that’s only 4 reasons! What’s the fifth reason to love church data?
It helps us serve God and our neighbor. Which is why we’re here.
I hope we can tease apart the concepts of "knowing our community well" and "demarcating who is in and who is not." I've seen membership weaponized in the parish in multiple ways. Are you familiar with "centered set" vs "bounded set" and do you have any thoughts on implementing a centered set model in a binary software system?
My first year at the parish where I’ve now served for twenty years, I took a brutally honest whack at the cushioned headcount of previous years. And did it again the second year. And have continued to require brutal honesty in my counting. So I’d add to your list: It keeps us from going too deep into denial, but makes us say out loud over and over again what our true field of ministry is.