The important thing is to make a baseline guess at what a tithe looks like for a member of your church. Or, you can use the baseline poverty level income if you like. Your city and county websites will tell you the average per household income for your area. Tracking your ratio of givers to attenders year by year will objectify your church’s financial maturity. It’s useful to compare this number to your total attendance. This is a measure of the maturity and generosity of your church, and the key indicator of how much ministry you will be able to do. How many churches have you planted or partnered in planting in the last ten years? 7. Aggressively healthy churches try to plant or support the planting of a new church every year. Healthy families usually give birth every two or three years. Other times they assist and partner with another church that’s sending out a group to plant. Sometimes they send out a group to plant. Healthy churches intentionally participate in church planting. Dogs reproduce dogs, people reproduce people, and churches reproduce churches. Healthy things reproduce, and they reproduce after their own kind. If you’d like help improving your Outreach System, I’ve written about it in Ebook #2: Attracting More Newcomers. A healthy ratio for your church is to baptize about one for every three who make a public profession. Number of Baptisms.īaptism is a step of obedience as well as a public declaration of faith. How many adults, teens and children made that decision in your church last year? How many did your church help led to Christ outside your church (on missions trips and evangelistic ventures) last year? Compare this year’s number to prior year’s numbers and you’ll be able to see if you are becoming a more fruitful church. Jesus said to go and make disciples, and a disciple starts with a decision to follow. But charting this statistic is your most important measure of fruitfulness. Only the Holy Spirit knows for sure whether a person who indicates a first time decision for Christ represents fruit that will remain. Number of First Time Decisions for Christ. I’ve written about how to improve your assimilation system in Ebook #1: Keeping your Guests Coming Back. Note: these three numbers are indicators of the health of your Assimilation System. Outstanding churches see as many as 30% become regulars. Percentage of Guests who Stick.Īverage churches see 6-10% of their first timers become regular attenders. The average church sees 6 to 10% of their first-time guests return for a second visit, 25% of their second-time guests return for a third visit, and 35% of their third-time guests become regular attenders. To grow, you’ll need to average five first-time guests per week. To maintain your current size, you’ll need three first-time guests each week for every hundred regular attenders. Here are eighteen indicators you may want to pay attention to. Likewise, we now know enough about what a healthy church looks like to be able to tell a lot about a church from its numbers. If my blood pressure is too high, that’s a sign of bad health. I can argue with the numbers, but they don’t lie. When I go to my doctor, he measures things in numbers: my weight, blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc. I’ll give you great questions to ask when doing qualitative evaluations here. Healthy churches evaluate by both quality and quantity. Numbers need to be interpreted, but they tell a story, and that story is usually very accurate. Quantity measures tend to be more objective. They rely on taste, perception, anecdote and intuition. One is by quality the other, by quantity. There are two ways to measure the health of an organization. Then he takes action to enable them to bear more fruit. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.Ī good farmer inspects his vines for fruit. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. We’re not supposed to judge the people around us, but we are supposed to evaluate the fruit we are producing.ĭuring Jesus’ talk with his Disciples in the Upper Room, Jesus said, Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. In Genesis 1, we find God giving himself a grade every day.Įvery good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. We can’t help ourselves we are made in the image of a God who has evaluated everything he’s ever made. If it’s really bad, even more “others” hear about it. If it’s really good, others hear about it. They share their impressions between friends. They talk about it afterwards in the lobby. Whether you’ve thought it or not, your church has an evaluation system.Įvery service is evaluated by every attendee.
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