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Who counts your attendance?

For years it was me. I would always have a volunteer count as well, for accountability, but still I would count heads as the students were filing in or as they were sitting down. Even before i would walk up to preach i knew in my head how many had turned out for our ministry event. As the event closed and i walked to my car the evenings success was weighed between one hand representing the actual evenings ministry and the other hand attendance. For years, more than a decade, every evaluation of ministry was based in part on the amount of people who showed up.

As my wife and i would drive away from the church we would discuss the turn out. “Great night, good numbers.” or “Man, where was everybody tonight, it must be the weather, the series, etc. My mood would change depending on the turn out. Even if my sermon stunk when our turn out was high i was pumped about ministry, thinking, we are going to have to add staff or get a bigger room. When my attendance was down i thought what are we doing wrong, how can we increase attendance?

Then it hit me.
My success is a pastor is based in the number of people who show up. I was spending my time praying for butts in seats and rating our success on attendance growth. Numbers are a sign of a growing church. After all if your community is growing in Christ they will be sharing their faith in the world and bringing others to Christ, and your church will grow. Even still, there is a time and place for the numbers talk and it should never be the primary tool of evaluation.

Until God changed my heart on this subject the only time I ever began my evaluation apart from numbers was when my attendance was so horrible i blocked the thought out of my mind. Otherwise, i was a numbers guy.

I realized and then unpacked for my team the sin of judging an evening of ministry on turn out. Together we came up with a new strategy for evaluation. The first step was to release the counting duty. We recruited two volunteers to count the heads and asked them not to let anyone on staff know the attendance until the next day. Once we released the counting we were freed up to ask ourselves a series of questions, you may want to come up with your own.

How did the evening feel?
What was the goal for the evening?
Did the event accomplish our goal?
How did our community respond to the message / music / experience?
What impact will this event have on our church?
What impact will this event have on our community / city / state?
What worked?
What could we have done better?

Only after we walk through these questions will we look @ the numbers. We decided numbers are a 9-5 work week discussion. It is necessary to look @ who showed up. Counting is a part of good stewardship. When we lay out money for buildings, staff, etc we need to ask are we spending in accordance with the number of people who are coming out? Do we need to add or subtract staff based on our offering and attendance?

Unfortunately the world of evaluation is so often based on quick judgments which are emotionally infused and numbers driven. We fail to really take apart the ministry and look at what matters. If we fail to evaluate we will fail to adapt what we do to the changes in culture and grow stale in our ability to offer relevant messages and experiences.