5 CRUCIAL

C H U R C H M E T R I C S

YOU'RE NOT
MEASURING
 TAB L E OF CO N T E NTS

ABOUT PUSHPAY 3

ABOUT TOBIN PERRY 3

WHY METRICS MATTER 4

TIME FOR A NEW SCORECARD 5

TIME WILL TELL 6

5 IMPORTANT CHURCH METRICS YOU’RE NOT MEASURING 7

1. Percentage of Attenders Becoming Members 8

2. Percentage of Neighborhood Flourishing 11

3. Percentage of Members Who Give 14

4. Percentage of Members Engaged 17

5. Percentage of Members Participating in an Outreach Experience 19

WHAT CAN’T BE MEASURED 21

2
 AB OUT T HI S E B O O K

Western society loves to count. From money, to time, to the number of

rebounds a star power forward had in the second half of a meaningless
basketball game; we’ll count anything. The church has become no less a place
for counting than the rest of society. We have tons of metrics to make sure
we’re effective in what we’re doing. This ebook is by no means exhaustive in
describing the metrics you may want to keep track of in your congregation.
Instead, I’ve tried to highlight some metrics you may not be using, but that
are incredibly important for a growing, healthy church. The process for finding
the right metrics to measure what God has called your church to do is ever-
changing. Hopefully, these ideas will help you get started on that journey.

ABOUT TOBI N P E R RY

Tobin Perry has served as a writer and editor for Saddleback Church, the
North American Mission Board, and the International Mission Board, where
he has frequently focused on church leadership issues. He has also served
as a lead pastor of a church in Southern Indiana. He has written for numerous
publications, including Christianity Today, HomeLife, ParentLife, Baptist Press,
and On Mission Magazine. He has ghostwritten for a number of leading Christian
ministry leaders. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism
and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Tobin lives with his wife and
three children in Evansville, Indiana. For more information about Tobin, visit
www.tobinperry.com.
All of the first person pronouns in this book are his.

3
 WH Y M ET RI C S M AT T E R

Numbers don’t matter one bit.

Let’s get that out of the way at the beginning of this ebook.
Numbers won’t win your community to Jesus. Numbers can’t help an addict
find new life. Numbers won’t comfort parents after the loss of their child.
Numbers can’t marry or bury. Numbers won’t even help your church softball
team win the league title.
Numbers can’t help you with squat.
Except when they do.
In fact, there’s really only one reason you should read this ebook about church
metrics. Like my old boss, Rick Warren, has said (and written) many times—
numbers matter because they represent people.
Numbers don’t matter, but metrics can be really important. Numbers by
themselves won’t do you any good. If you’re looking at church metrics to
validate your ministry or win an argument with a fellow pastor, forget about it.
It’s not worth it, and, quite frankly, it’s beneath you.
Yet it’s what numbers tell you that matters most. It’s what numbers measure
that matters. Using metrics to determine how effectively your church is doing
its part to make disciples in the community is critical. In fact, it’s ministry.
You’ll run into two extremes among church leaders when dealing with numbers.
One extreme is being quick to brag about numbers—everything from their
church’s attendance to how many small groups they’ve launched this year.
Everything they do in ministry seems to be predicated on what can measured
and shared in a ministry report or among fellow pastors.
That’s called an idol.
But there’s another extreme, too, that’s equally dangerous. These are the
people who seem to bristle at any mention of metrics. Good ministry can’t be
quantified, they say. Jesus didn’t care about numbers. We shouldn’t either.
But Jesus did care about numbers. Think about His parable of the lost sheep in
Luke 15. You can’t read it without thinking about numbers. In fact, when Jesus
wanted to tell a story to demonstrate His passion to reach those who are lost, He
told a story about metrics. When Jesus talks about the man who would leave 99
sheep to go after the one that is missing, He assumes you’d count your sheep. A
shepherd who doesn’t count his sheep will never know if one is missing!
So, of course, numbers themselves mean nothing for churches. But for any
church that cares for that one missing sheep, metrics (using numbers to
measure what you’re doing) remain incredibly important.
Not any old number will do, though. That’s what the rest of this ebook will try to
get to the bottom of.

4
 TIME FO R A NE W
SCO REC A RD

Numbers have always ruled baseball—from three strikes and four balls, to
Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs, to the legendary .400 batting average—more than
any other American sport. The most significant numbers, like home runs and
batting averages, have been so important that they’ve moved into other areas
of pop-culture language.
But in the last decade and a half, baseball executives have re-written the book
on which numbers matter. Starting with the Oakland Athletics of the early 2000s
(as chronicled by the bestselling book and Brad Pitt movie Moneyball), those
who spent the money in baseball began to realize that there were different
metrics that better measured whether they were investing in players who
actually helped them win games rather than ones who padded the back of their
baseball cards. Instead of the old-school stats like RBIs, homeruns, pitcher
wins, and batting averages, baseball execs turned to statistics with weird
acronyms like WHIP and WAR.
The verdict? Baseball teams that have embraced these so-called “advanced
statistics” dominate baseball. The Kansas City Royals, the Boston Red Sox, and
the San Francisco Giants have been some of the best teams in baseball over the
past decade. Advanced baseball metrics have been a part—though not all—of
their stories. Most of baseball now has now caught on to this new scorecard.
Ministry leaders are beginning to engage a new scorecard for the church as well.
When I was a kid, I remember small wooden attendance boards on the walls
of most churches I attended. They had three or four basic statistics on them:
last week’s attendance, last week’s giving, and last week’s Sunday School
attendance. Often, the same info could have been in the bulletin as well. For the
vast majority of churches a generation or two ago, that’s as in-depth as church
metrics got. Maybe the largest one percent of North American churches delved
more deeply into metrics, but most didn’t.
Yet, in the last two decades, society has changed exponentially. Our churches
have had to change with it. In an era where most churches are re-calibrating
away from a program-driven ministry and toward a mission-driven ministry,
measuring only noses and nickels (attendance and giving) makes less sense
today than ever.
Why? At the end of the day, you can’t control how many people show up on a
given weekend or how much money they drop into the offering plate. Shawn
Lovejoy, who planted and pastored Mountain Lake Church in Cumming,
Georgia for 17 years, says it like this: “We’ve focused on measuring the process
rather than the scoreboard. We’ve just figured that if we measure the process—
and see what’s blocking those processes—eventually the score will take care
of itself.”
We need a new scorecard.

5
 TI M E W I L L T E L L

We love numbers partially because we love comparisons. Take sports again,

for example. One of the most important reasons to know that Babe Ruth had
714 home runs is so that we were prepared when Hank Aaron passed him in
April of 1974 for the home run record. Or in business, we need to know what
share we have of our market because we need to know how we compare to our
competitors. It gives us a business advantage. In many aspects of our lives, we
measure so we can compare.
The problem is, ministry doesn’t work like that. We don’t compete with
other churches. We work together to serve the world in greater kingdom
effectiveness.
On the other hand, metrics by themselves—with very little context—tell us very
little. To really understand what metrics mean, we need to measure ourselves
against ourselves. We need to measure our current effectiveness against our
past effectiveness—and note which direction we’re headed.
For the metrics in this ebook to be helpful to your ministry, you have to continue
to measure them month after month, year after year, and decade after decade.
Stay consistent with what you measure. Measure the same thing each time.
As you do this, you’ll see trends. You’ll notice what direction you’re headed. You’ll
notice what you’re becoming better at and what you’re not. You’ll find holes.
That’s when metrics can help you.

6
 5 I M P O RTA N T
CH URC H M ET R I C S

Some of you may already be using church metrics. Most churches use some
form of metrics to evaluate their effectiveness—even if they are “old-school”
metrics like attendance and giving. You may even be using effective metrics
that really get at the heart of what your church hopes to do.
But in the rest of this book, I hope I can introduce you to some metrics you
might not have thought about—metrics that will give you real insight into
how effective your ministry is. The best part: your church won’t need to hire a
statistician to dive into these statistics. (In fact, your smartphone’s calculator
app can handle most of them—I promise.)

1. Percentage of Church Attenders Who Become Members

2. Percentage of Neighborhood Flourishing

3. Percentage of Attenders Who Give

4. Percentage of Members Who Engage Weekly

5. Percentage of Members Participating in an Outreach Experience

7
 1. P E RC EN TAG E O F
ATTEN D E RS BECO MI N G
M E M BERS

8
For years, church attendance has been the holy grail of church metrics. It’s how
we determine what to pay our pastors. It’s what pastors not-so-subtly mention
to one another at denominational gatherings. It’s the number one question we
ask when we’re looking for information about another church.
But let’s face it. Anyone can gather a crowd. The church has been called to
make disciples. Instead of trying to discern how many people show up each
week, what if you asked how many of those who show up actually enter into a
discipleship pathway?
For most churches, the pathway into disciple-making starts with church
membership. Why? First, church membership requires commitment—which is a
starting point for discipleship anyway. Also, members are much more trackable
than attenders. Most discipleship pathways in our churches assume church
membership as a starting point.
Pastor and author, Ed Stetzer, says it this way: “Membership doesn’t save us.
But it enables us to grow and become spiritually mature in Christ.”
So instead of tracking church membership, add this one question to it: How
many of those attending our church are committing to the church through
membership? You get this figure by simply dividing the number of active
members by the number of church attenders.
What does this metric tell you? You’ll learn how effective your church has been
at assimilating those who attend into the fuller life of the body.

Things to Consider:
ÎÎ The qualifier “active” is incredibly important in this metric. If your church
hasn’t spent the time to remove inactive (or dead) members from its roll,
this statistic will be worthless.

ÎÎ This metric is only helpful if you have meaningful church membership,

where your church can provide spiritual oversight in some capacity over
members.

ÎÎ Consistency in how you measure attendance is critical. Do you include

children? Do you count heads or make estimates? Do you count those
volunteering? What about people who attend one service and volunteer
in a second? It really doesn’t matter how you count attendance as long
as you do it the same way each time. (Remember, you’re measuring
against yourself over time instead of against other churches.)

ÎÎ This is one stat where zero percent and 100 percent are both bad. Only
you can define where this number should fall. If 25 percent of your
attendees are church members, you may not be assimilating people
into the life of your church well. But if 100 percent of your attendees are
members, then you have no guests at your church. It means you’re not
growing.

9
How to Improve This Metric:
ÎÎ Celebrate church membership. After a membership class, introduce
the people who committed themselves to the church to the rest of the
congregation.

ÎÎ Consistently teach about the value and biblical significance of church

membership.

ÎÎ Make sure that church membership means something at your church.

The more you raise the bar in church membership, the more people will
join what you’re doing.

10
2. NEI G HBORHO O D
FLO URI SHI NG

11
Most statistics churches track relate to what’s going on inside. That’s
understandable. Those are the numbers that are easiest to track. But Mark
Clifton, the senior director of the North American Mission Board’s rePlanting
team, suggests that one of the most important proofs for the health and vitality of
any church is whether the community would miss the congregation if it were gone.
Making disciples who make disciples must lead to a transformed
neighborhood around the church. While this kind of metric frees us from
an over-reliance on numbers, it raises the bar significantly as far as
discipleship. Instead of attendance, let’s think instead of decreased crime
in the neighborhood, improved schools, and an increase in intact families.
No, the neighborhood surrounding your church will never reach perfection
this side of eternity, but I’ve seen firsthand that normative-sized rePlanted
neighborhood churches can impact communities in amazing ways.
Progress will be slow, but it will come. (Reclaiming Glory, pgs. 112-113,
B&H Publishing, 2016)
Clifton saw this at Wornall Road Baptist Church, a church he revitalized in
inner-city Kansas City, Missouri. The church had withered down to less than 20
in attendance before his arrival. As part of his strategy to “rePlant” the church,
Clifton focused on serving the neighborhood around it. The church adopted
the local high school, reached out to mothers in the neighborhood whose sons
had been murdered, and invited local nonprofits to use its building. Though the
church grew impressively (to about 150 in attendance at its later high), it never
became a megachurch by any stretch of the definition, yet it made a significant
impact upon the community.
So what are some metrics the leaders of this church considered when they asked
themselves whether the neighborhood would miss them if the church disappeared?

ÎÎ Crime rate: When your church engages and begins to disciple your
neighborhood, you should see fewer people committing crimes.

ÎÎ Graduation rate: Your local high school should graduate more of the
neighborhood’s youth.

ÎÎ Divorce rate: You should expect to see more families staying together.
Yet remember, these metrics will look different in every church—and in
every community. Wornall Road found itself in the midst of a financially and
relationally desperate urban neighborhood. Suburban churches that reside in
more affluent situations would use different metrics.
Only your church can properly define the change you hope your congregation
will be for your community and how you’ll become indispensable in the
process. Neighborhood flourishing metrics are big-picture numbers you
discover together with your leadership team—or ideally your whole church.
Dream together. Ask yourselves how you’d hope the community would be
different in five, 10, and 15 years as God does a new work.
The prophet Jeremiah told the people of Jerusalem as they headed off into a
Babylonian exile, “Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to
the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper” (Jeremiah
29:7, HCSB). Discover what it takes for your neighborhood to prosper—
materially, relationally, spiritually, etc. Then figure out how to measure it.

12
For example, maybe you’re in an affluent community. As you consider how the
community would change if God got a hold of it, you might come to the conclusion
that the people would become more generous. You’d then search for some metrics
to track it—like the percentage of income given to charitable causes.
What do these metrics tell you? Neighborhood flourishing statistics tell you
how well you are positively impacting the community surrounding your church.

Things to Consider:
ÎÎ Unlike internal metrics, you have less control over these. Obviously, there
are simply too many variables to completely attribute every increase or
decrease to your church’s efforts.

ÎÎ You should think long term with all metrics, but particularly for this set.
You want to at least look at these numbers over a five-year span. The
most telling stats will only be discernible a decade or even a generation
from now.

ÎÎ These stats will be more helpful the nearer to your church that you draw
them from. Think in terms of a census block typically. Larger regional
churches will need to expand their research.

ÎÎ Neighborhood stats will likely be more difficult to track than internal

numbers. You may have to do more intensive research to discover these
numbers. But they are well worth the effort!

How to Improve This Metric:

ÎÎ Tightly define the neighborhood that would flourish if your church
flourishes.

ÎÎ Do an audit of your church’s ministries and the budgets attached to

them. Take a piece of paper and draw a line through the middle of it. On
one side, write down all the ministries in your church that are designed
to meet the needs of the congregation. On the other side, write down
the ministries that are designed to meet the needs of the broader
community. Your church needs to meet a balance of both. Be honest
about what you’re doing to impact your surrounding neighborhood.

ÎÎ Invest your people and your resources in your surrounding

neighborhood. Invite nonprofits to use your building. Challenge groups in
your church to adopt streets.

ÎÎ Adopt a local school. Ask the principal what your church can do to
support the school. Leave your agenda at the school doors. Don’t work
off of your vision—work off the principal’s vision.

ÎÎ Depending upon your neighborhood, partner with other churches that

have a passion for serving the community.

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 3 . P ERC EN TAG E O F
M EMBERS WHO GI V E

14
Few church metrics come with so much baggage as those centered around
giving. We simply don’t know how far to delve into the generosity (or lack
thereof) of our congregation. Often, it comes from a very honest and well-
intentioned desire not to prejudice ourselves for or against people based
upon how much they give.
But it’s a mistake not to measure giving. In 21st-century North America,
generosity gives us a bird’s-eye view into the human heart like no other church
metric. Johnny Hunt, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock,
Georgia, puts it this way: “You’re never more like Jesus than when you give.”
If Jesus is the spiritual-maturity barometer of a discipled Christian, then
generosity has to be a critical part of the equation.
That’s why you want a giving metric that measures the breadth of your giving
across your church membership. If your congregation as a whole isn’t giving—
or giving is relegated to a relative few—you can assume you have people who
need additional discipleship in the area of generosity.
“It’s incredibly valuable to know that we have 40 committed families, and we
have 30 committed givers. That tells us we probably have 25 percent of our
church [that] has not been discipled in that area or doesn’t have the means [to
give],” said Brandon Cox, who serves as the managing editor for Pastors.com
and the founding pastor of Grace Hills Church in northwest Arkansas.
Depending upon how your church tracks giving, this shouldn’t be tough to
figure either. Whoever manages your accounting can simply isolate all your
members’ giving records and count up the number of people who have given in
the past month. Divide that number by your church’s total number of givers.
But here’s where technology can come into play and really help you see the
facts and figures. We are living in a time where technology has evolved at an
amazing rate, and the latest version of a computer or smartphone is outdated
in a matter of months, not years. But in the church, we are often behind when it
comes to technology. Whether it’s fear of change or an overwhelming number
of options to choose from, decisions about technology seem to paralyze
church leaders into indecision. But technology can be an extremely beneficial
element to your ministry, particularly when it comes to generosity.
Did you know that the percentage of people using their smartphones to shop
on Amazon just cracked the 70 percent mark in December of 2015? Facebook
sees similar mobile use. In fact, in April of 2016, Facebook reported that 79
percent of its advertising revenue came through mobile ads.
There are even articles being published on the importance of mobile giving for
churches that cite some very important metrics, such as, 3 Reasons Why Your
Church Needs to Consider Mobile Giving for Offering & Tithes.
At the end of the day, when it comes to trends like this, the numbers don’t lie.
My point of sharing these metrics is that the world today regularly interacts
via smartphone, and that number is only growing as smartphones become
more and more integrated into our daily lives. If your church is not taking
advantage of this shift, you are not only missing out on connecting more with
your community, but you are also missing out on the valuable metrics that
come with it. These metrics can help measure the percentage of members who
give, determine how effective and useful your current technology is, and make

15
educated decisions about how well your technology serves your ministry.
Unbelievable metrics can be accessed when using a mobile solution like
Pushpay’s custom mobile apps that are powered by Pushpay’s mobile giving
platform. If you’re using this technology, giving metrics like the percentage of
members who give are a snap to calculate. You’ll have this number and more
at your fingertips. You’ll even be able to zero in on specific segments of your
membership’s giving patterns. Want to know what percentage of your young
families are giving? No problem. Want to know how many of your church’s new
members over the past year have become givers? Done. Want to know the
percentage of members in leadership positions who gave last month? It’s easy.
What does this metric tell you? You’ll learn how well you’ve discipled your
congregation in the area of generosity.

Things to Consider:
ÎÎ Obviously, if you have a high percentage of members who give in cash,
this metric becomes very difficult to figure. Pushpay can help with this
by consistently driving your congregation to mobile giving. Churches
that have adopted Pushpay technology have received 76 percent of their
giving through mobile technology on average—that alone can give you a
lot of data.

ÎÎ Everyone who gives between $1 and $10,000 in a given month will

count toward this figure. You can’t determine how well your members
understand the concept of tithing through this metric. Couple it with
per capita giving to understand the breadth and depth of giving in your
congregation.

ÎÎ Remember the cautions described earlier about numbers related to

church membership. Make sure you have accurate church membership
figures. (That goes for any of the metrics in this ebook related to church
membership.)

How to Improve This Metric:

Get plugged into a mobile giving solution. We live in a mobile world where
your congregants expect to be able to give on the run. By encouraging mobile
giving, this platform can increase the number of people in your church who
give—and how quickly they give after joining your church.

ÎÎ Develop a comprehensive plan to teach stewardship to your congregation.

Preach about stewardship on an annual basis at a minimum. Offer classes
that help your members get on top of their debt.

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4. P ERC EN TAG E O F
MEMBERS EN G AGE D

17
Churches that can’t engage members in Sunday School classes, small groups,
and ministries will find they can’t keep members long term. Thom Rainer,
president of LifeWay Christian Resources, writes about church members who
become disconnected from groups within their congregation: “It is almost
inevitable that, without the accountability and fellowship a small group brings,
that person is headed to be a complete church dropout.”
People come to your church for a variety of reasons—the preaching, the music,
and sometimes to be a part of your ministry efforts. But people stay at your
church because they’ve built relationships. In other words, people stay because
someone will miss them if they drop out of church life.
Often, those relationships come from small groups or Sunday School classes
whose members are trying to live life together. But that’s not the only place
people build relationships within a local church. Groups also form around
ministries and outreach efforts as well. You can’t (or shouldn’t) dismiss the
relationships that form within your church choir, children’s ministry, greeter
minister, or after-school ministry.
To discern how engaged members of your congregation are in your church, use
this simple metric: divide the number of church members involved in teams or
groups by your total number of church members.
What does this metric tell you? You’ll learn how connected your members are
to your church body.

Things to Consider:
ÎÎ You’ll need to define what engagement looks like at your church.
Obviously, small groups fit the metric nicely, as do most ministry groups.
Depending upon how you have them set up, you might want to include
midweek services or larger Bible study classes. The big question to ask is,
“Would this group miss participants if they weren’t there for a few weeks?”

ÎÎ You might want to include additional metrics built around the same idea.
In other words, figure out how many of your members are part of multiple
groups. Obviously, the more plugged in people are to the life of your
church, the more likely they are to stay connected.

How to Improve This Metric:

ÎÎ Urge church leaders—including the pastor—to model engagement
by talking about the groups and ministries of which they are a part.
Celebrate the life change and relationships that are formed in these
groups by having people share testimonies, either live or via video,
during weekend worship services.

ÎÎ Use up-to-date technology and communication techniques to tell your

members about opportunities to engage with your church. The Pushpay
custom church app is designed to give you consistent opportunities to
connect with your members. You’ll be able to send push notifications to your
congregation in an instant and allow your members to sign up for events, get
plugged into groups, and find helpful sermons right from their smartphones.

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 5. P ERC EN TAG E O F
MEMBERS PA RT I C I PAT I NG
IN A N O UT REAC H
E XP ERI EN C E

19
Rick Warren has said, “You measure a church’s strength not by its seating
capacity but by its sending capacity.” The Great Commission calls our
churches to be disciple-makers above and beyond anything else we try to do
as a congregation.
Disciples reproduce themselves. At its heart, that’s the mission that Jesus has
given His Church through the Great Commission. Yet, measuring missions has
never been easy. Measuring how many people come to faith in Christ or join the
church captures a metric for which only the Holy Spirit can truly take credit.
Instead, we can measure how effective we are at preparing our congregation
to pursue the Great Commission. That’s where defining the percentage of your
members who participate annually in an outreach experience can help. To
figure this metric, simply divide the number of members who have participated
in outreach by the number of your church members (making sure you remove
duplicates in the process).
What does this metric tell you? You’ll discover how effective your church has
been at mobilizing the entire congregation for outreach.

Things to Consider:
ÎÎ You’ll have to be able to define what defines an outreach experience for
your church. Does it only include church-related mission trips? What
if a member participates in something organized by a para-church
organization?

How to Improve This Metric:

ÎÎ Don’t just encourage participation in outreach. Teach your members why they
need to be involved. Teach it as a part of Sunday sermons and Bible studies.

ÎÎ Offer your members “crawl, walk, and run” outreach experiences to be a

part of through your church. Crawl experiences can be serving one night
at a homeless shelter or passing out water and praying for people on a
hot day. Walk experiences might be a weekend trip across your state to
help a new church get started. Run experiences may take members to
another country to live out and proclaim the gospel.

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 W HAT C A N ’ T B E
M EASURE D

Let’s face it. Metrics aren’t everything. Too many churches look at metrics and
use them to prove their own value to the community and to themselves.
Much of what your church does each and every week that’s both good and
Jesus-honoring can’t be defined simply by putting a number on it. That’s the
danger in church metrics. While metrics should matter to churches, they can’t
be all that matters. No matter how valuable metrics are to the work of your
church, don’t let them become an idol.
Here are a few things your church should pursue despite the fact you can’t
easily measure them:

1. Lives transformed: Just because you know that 75 percent of your

attendees have become members of the church doesn’t mean you
know how being a part of your congregation has impacted a person’s
life. Finding out the percentage of members who are giving can’t tell
you how biblical generosity and stewardship have reshaped a person’s
way of looking at the world. Dig deep to find the best stories in your
congregation that demonstrate the values that drive your church’s
ministry. When you do, share them and celebrate them. Next time
someone asks you what you’re excited about at your church, don’t
respond with a number. Respond with a person. Respond with a story.

2. Relationships reconciled: Your church likely puts quite a bit of energy

into bringing people together—whether that’s troubled spouses, parents
and children, or disgruntled neighbors. No stat can tell you how many of
those relationships your church has been a part of healing.

3. Faithful ministry executed: Metrics measure outcomes. God calls the

church to be faithful to Him. At times, a call to faithfulness is a call to
prune (see John 15:2). At times, you have to shrink to grow. Though God
also calls us to fruitfulness, we can never measure our church’s ministry
value by whether we’re growing or not. You can’t always control your
fruitfulness. You can always control your faithfulness. Focusing on your
faithfulness will, in time, make you more fruitful.
No, metrics aren’t the answer to all your ministry woes. Even using the five
metrics described in this book won’t automatically lead to ministry wins for
your church. Metrics don’t minister; they measure.
No Major League Baseball team had more to do with the explosive use of
metrics in the sport over the past 15 to 20 years than the Oakland A’s. They
literally wrote the book on the use of sabermetrics—or had the book written on
them (see Moneyball). Just last year, ESPN ranked the A’s ninth among all major
league professional sports teams on their use of statistics to make decisions
in their front office. Yet the A’s haven’t won or even played in a World Series
in more than 25 years. In fact, the number one team on that ESPN list was the

21
NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. Last year, they finished with a record of 10-72, one
win better than the worst record in NBA history.
Yet for every team like the A’s or the 76ers, there’s a Boston Red Sox or San
Antonio Spurs team that has flourished using advanced stats.
Picking the right metrics—and I believe the ones outlined in this book will be
a great start—can help you see what God is doing in your church and in your
neighborhood. Though numbers can’t win your community to Jesus, they can
tell you whether the outreach efforts you’re currently employing are bearing any
fruit. After all, if you don’t have metrics for at least some parts of your ministry,
you’ll never be able to measure your progress. What you do with those metrics
is then up to you.

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C HU RC H TO G R OW.

G E T I N TOUCH
W I T H US HE R E .

VISIT US

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