Why Measuring Ministry Matters

Numbers never lie, right? Well, they certainly can be exaggerated. For instance, 880 people in attendance may become, “Wow! We had about 1,000 people.” When you just rely on assumptions and estimations to evaluate the efficacy of something, the end result may be a reliance on fuzzy math. People tend to be optimistic or hopeful when seeking supervisor affirmation, and a bit too conservative when seeking buy-in on a costly program.

Human nature causes people to lean toward reporting what they think we want to hear. That is why we must launch programs with forthright numerical projections and monitor them with actual results. Anything worth launching and sustaining, is also worth measuring. How will you really know if your church is actually in a growth mode, and what to expect in the coming months and years? When you have reliable data, you will have useful information from which you can make intelligent decisions.

Numbers are useful in measuring effectiveness when you have a sense of the norms and benchmarks to use in your evaluation. In baseball, a batting average of .250 is just a number, until you know that the league’s leading hitter is batting .368, and can make a comparison. Do you want to have a true picture of the current status of your church as compared to your hopes or projections? When you consistently track numbers, you can evaluate trends to analyze why some program or ministry endeavor is heading in a negative or positive direction.

We are sharing practical and useful information in this series on why measuring ministry success is what great churches do, and also disclosing extensive and pragmatic details on exactly how to do it.

In this video, we discuss four impactful reasons why numbers matter in measuring ministry success. In addition, we offer four practical suggestions for tracking numbers in your church.