Are Churches Counting The Wrong People?

Church metrics.

Yeah, that’s a thing.

Vince Antonucci has a different take on it:

Churches count their “attendance” each week. (Some don’t count very accurately, willing to count people – band, choir, staff, children’s volunteers, etc. – multiple times, but that’s a point for another day.) They count the amount of people from their city who show up at their church each week.

But I’d like to propose counting something different: The amount of people in the city not showing up at any church.

Seriously, a church can say that “This year we grew from 1,000 to 2,000!” but what if, in the same year, the amount of people not going to church in that city grew from 370,000 to 391,000? That gives you a very different picture of what’s happening, doesn’t it?

If the number we counted was how many people in our city are not going to church it would force churches to no longer celebrate growing through stealing people from other churches, it might lead churches to support and celebrate the success of other churches, and it would lead churches to focus on truly reaching the lost instead of focusing on their attendance numbers.

Instead of magazines featuring the “Hundred Fastest Growing Churches” there would be articles on the cities where the most people are coming to Christ, and isn’t that what we want to promote and celebrate?

So, what about it?

Wednesday Link List

Click the image above to learn more about the comic book version of the book In His Steps, where the whole WWJD thing originated.

• A really heartfelt story from Shaun Groves describing the somewhat atypical process whereby their family of five became a family of six. 
• A follow-up report on the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon fire on Navigator’s Eagle Lake Camp and Glen Eyrie Conference Center.
• Tim Stevens introduces a cool church property rebranding that reflects a heart to reach the community: Granger Community Church is now Granger Commons.
  
• The Evangelical church gave thousands of kids their dreams of being a rock star and made up this new staff position called “Worship Leader”.  According to Carlos W., it’s time for some to lose that dream.
  
• Philip Yancey encounters Hanna, a woman both blind and autistic, on her first visit to the United States. 
• Here’s a very well-written look at confronting our fears in the wake of the event in Colorado and similar events elsewhere.
• And in the wake of the shooting, a most unusual good news story about a girl who was saved by a birth defect she never knew she had. 
• Really enjoyed the Pete Wilson podcast, particularly the question from an aspiring pastor who asked if he could come to Cross Point as an intern.
  
• Nearly 15 years ago, ‘print on demand’ technology was supposed to bring back many out of print books, including Christian titles. The technology works, but where are the books? 
• Ouch! Every year dozens of boys in South Africa die from botched circumcisions. I read the article but skipped the video.
  
• A Canadian version of the oft-repeated story wherein the owner of a Bread and Breakfast refuses to rent a room to a gay couple, and pays the price in court.
• Doing camp ministry in North America this summer? Here are six reasons why it would be quite different if you were in Slovakia.
  
• If you like your Christian music LOUD, then you need to visit all the new lyric videos posted last week by the band House of Heroes.
• Randy Morgan finds a great book excerpt from Garrison Keillor, speaking in the voice of Guy Noir, Private Eye; on the subject of modern teenagers.
  
• Zondervan continues its Counterparts series with Four Views on Christian Spirituality, comparing Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Liberal Protestantism.
• A large auditorium is a large auditorium, right? Not in Wisconsin. A Federal court has ruled that school graduations that took place in churches were unconstitutional. 
• Here’s one of my own pieces at Christianity 201, about getting the nerve to ‘pop the question’ to someone with whom you’ve shared your faith.
• And another one at C201 about what kind of people get picked to spread the good news.
  
• Wanna be a priest, a minister or a rabbi? (No this isn’t a bad joke.) Well, if you have a smart phone, you could always download Ordain Thyself. Tony Jones spotted a mention of it at CNN.

200 People Are Skipping Church on Palm Sunday

I’ve never been prouder of an initiative launched by the church we’ve attended — off and on — for 20 years since moving an hour east of Toronto.

Call it “reaching out,” or “community involvement,” or whatever you want.  Cobourg Alliance Church has decided to participate — in a huge way — in the annual walk for Multiple Sclerosis; a walk which just happens to fall on Palm Sunday, what most would consider the third most important Sunday of the year after Easter Sunday and Christmas Sunday.

The church will still hold worship services for those who wish to attend, but the nearly 200 people who have signed up so far is a significant percentage of the regular attendance at church in this town of only 18,500.

Participation also means fundraising, and the pastor, Andre Turcotte, is hoping that the church will be one of the top fundraisers in the area.  Those who can’t walk significant distances will be acting as volunteers. There are five individuals and/or families in the church dealing with MS.

I’m sure that organizers of events like this notice a dearth of participation from churchgoers when the events are held on a Sunday. “Skipping Church” is a big sacrifice for those who grew up believing the place to be on Sunday morning is singing the hymns and listening to a sermon.

Instead, this congregation will be busy “being church.”

Though we will be leading worship at another church that Sunday, we will be watching this with interest, and praying that it shows to the local community that Christ followers are willing to, literally, put feet to their beliefs; not just ‘talking the talk,’ but, literally, ‘walking the walk.’

An Outreach Piece The Smallest Church Can Afford

I first presented this here two years ago, but I remain convinced that it’s an inexpensive mailer concept that can be done by even the smallest church, and one that will especially resonate if your church is located near a mass transit line where people spend hours each week sitting on subways or light rail with their faces stuck inside a newspaper.

It’s a mailing piece that costs virtually nothing to produce, in fact it might work better the closer you can get to black-and-white, photocopy quality. You can also do a four-color enhancement of the idea with background gradients and even a photo of your church on the back page. Furthermore if you actually did photocopy them, you could target individual streets or blocks.

The mailer is a simple 8.5 x 11 piece of paper (an A4 for you Brits) folded in half, producing a four-page layout. Each page contains the grid for the popular newspaper Sudoku game where you fill in the numbers from one to nine without repeating any within any given row, column or sub-square. Only on this the squares are all blank, with the first page bearing the text, “Sudoku Blanks. Because sometimes you just want to start all over.”

Talk about hitting two points of identification at once! This concept identifies with everybody who sees it, but for the exception of Canadian pastors I first shared it with who, for reasons I do not understand, do not read newspapers. (Or if they do, they certainly don’t lower themselves to looking at things on the puzzles and comics page, even though this occupies much of the time of anyone in their congregation who rides a commuter train or kills time in the staff lunchroom at the plant, or whatever, on a daily basis.)

The top two-thirds of each page are simply the blank grid as you see it above.

The rest of the piece’s text can be written as needed with as hard or soft a connection between your church and doing puzzles as you wish, In our sample version (available on request by e-mail if you can open a .pub file attachment) the pages read:

Page two:

You’re just about done and then you see it—two numbers the same in the same row, column or box. You try to backtrack a few steps, but eventually you realize the only way to win is to start over. Given the chance for a do-over, most of us get it right the second time.

Page three:

…If only life were like that; if only there was a way to get a new beginning a new start. But really there is; the Christian concept of grace is just that; the board’s wiped clean, everything begins fresh. We can’t turn back the clock, but we can get our record cleared and allow the scars to heal.

Page four:

The concept of grace isn’t widely talked about these days. If it’s new to you, or you want to unpack the meaning of a fresh start, let’s get together and talk about new beginnings.

Community Village Church
Sunday Mornings at 9:00 or 11:00
or drop by the office anytime during the week
555-555-1234
church@email.dot

I know that personal contact is better than mailing pieces, but if you think this has any merit as a discussion starter and you want to use it; just let me know, mail me a couple of souvenir copies and let me know how it works for you. Sudoku continues to be popular, and people will relate to this. It’s a useful piece of paper that may find itself sticking around long after other mailing pieces have been thrown out, and Joe or Barb or Dave might even find themselves making multiples of it on the copier where they work; hopefully with your church name intact. They may even drop by your church office just to pick up more blanks!