Those digerati geniuses at LifeChurch.tv have created a free, web-based application to track church statistics, ChurchMetrics. It’s a pretty simple tool that only tracks four core areas: attendance, giving, salvations and baptisms. It creates charts and reports for the infographic geek in all of us and also has a mobile version.
They pitch it as “ChurchMetrics is here to take care of the numbers, so you can focus on taking care of people.” You can read more about the launch from Bobby Gruenewald.
Jon
October 30, 2008
That’s pretty cool of LifeChurch. But, I wonder if alot of churches will find it useful, or if they already have systems of their own in place.
Doug
October 31, 2008
I’m honestly not trying to be a hater, I think LifeChurch continues to be innovative and I’m always loved how they share everything and make it simple. Here’s my issue: A fundamental leadership principle is that you measure what you value. For the past 30 years, this is what we measure b/c these 4 stats are what we care about.
Isn’t the problem that all of our mechanisms for measuring success revolve around measuring things that have nothing to do with how effective we are at making (that is an active very) disciples?
Matt Farina
November 3, 2008
There seems to be a lot of useful metrics missing. For example, level of biblical education. How many Christians know much of scripture? That is an easy to measure thing.
There are a lot of things we should be measuring if we are going to go that route. I hope they add more things to the mix or this tool isn’t all that useful.
Patrick
November 4, 2008
We are a start up network church of LifeChurch.tv. If it wasn’t for this free program we would have no way to measure or track these things at such a cheap (free) cost to us.
No, these measurements don’t measure what is most important like the discipleship process, but I think it’s somewhat laziness and uneducated to keep up with these things.
What’s wrong with knowing your tithing trend? How about how many attend on Sundays? If your not knowing these things how can you see how God is growing things and see where He is taking you financially and in your attendance growth, etc…
All I am saying is that, No, it’s not everything to us (salvation, spiritual growth and discipleship is) but it’s very useful info.
Ben
March 25, 2009
There’s still no way to track how many new guests attend a service. That’s kind of a deal breaker for us at the moment.
Though, this is a great start in the right direction. Can’t believe they are doing this at no cost.