What Do We Do With Statistics? – Part 2

So,  you’ve decided statistics can be important.  Now, how do you use them carefully?

We talked in Part 1 about some general rules.  Now I want to dig into one of those specifically.

You need to decide what statistic is actually important to your ministry.

What numbers actually quantify life change in some way?

What numbers actually communicate to you about what you feel is actually important in ministry?

What number forecast the future health of your ministry?

For us in middle school at North Point, those boil down to really just a few.  This is our dashboard.  These are the numbers we are going to let “bother” us.

Small Group Leader Ratios

Nothing tells me more about the future health of our program than how many great, caring, loving adult Christians we have interacting with our kids…per kid.  Though the number of kids an adult can truly love and care for varies with the person, the general principle applies to all.  And, that number isn’t nearly has high as you think it is.  At North Point we’ve decided we need to “multiply” (split a current group into two groups) a group  when that ratio exceeds 2 adults per 20 active kids. A couple of points to ponder with this…

• Yes…the number reduces.  But, we really want to build each group around 2 adults.
• Notice we didn’t say 20 kids “in attendance” we said “active.”  This means that each pair of adults needs to focus 20 kids.  This usually translates to groups of 12 – 14 on Sundays.
• We are currently not there, our ratios are higher right now, we’ve got work to do.
• This is the most important statistic in my department.

Number of Baptisms

This is a strange one to be honest.  This is also a dangerous one because the last thing you want to do is quantify such an important thing.  BUT, our vision is to create an environment where students can discover a faith of their own.  Tell me a better indicator than a kids personal choice to get on video and tell his friends about his/her personal faith.   A couple more points…

• I look at the trends here but mostly.  I want to see that they’re happening consistently throughout the year.
• I love when we get baptism cards and we haven’t talked about it in a while.  That means kids and small group leaders are having discussions outside of our main discussions.
• Many kids have been baptized as kids so, just because they are not being baptized in our ministry, doesn’t mean that they’re not owning their own faith.  I just don’t have a good way to identify in a quantifiable way, that life change.  That is still something we have to depend on stories in order to gauge.

Attendance

There…I said the “A” word.  Whether you think it’s spiritual or not to think about numbers I will say it is strategic.  Studies have show that the most important thing a student wants in an environment is other kids.  Basically, if you want to create an environment that is appealing to other (or outsider) students, you better have some students there.  That being said, I don’t watch this stat to make sure we hit some sort of minimum.  I watch this stat and look for trends.  Is it trending up or trending down?  Why? A couple of notes about attendance…

• Event attendance and Sunday attendance are both important indicators.
• Often, increased attendance doesn’t mean you are attracting new students, it means that your old kids are coming more often.  Is that a bad thing?
• Decreased attendance numbers shouldn’t panic you but you should “dig in” and figure out why they’re dropping.
• One Sunday’s numbers are pretty useless…many Sunday’s numbers help you see the big picture.

What else matters?  What else matters outside of student ministry?

I think registrations for the New Believers Class might be important.

I think giving trends (I just said the “g” word) might tell you something important.

What else?