About Church Metrics
All organizations want to make good decisions. The best way that you can make good decisions for the future is by sometimes looking at the past. By seeing what has happened, often times we can get a good picture of what will happen in the future, or we can see what might need to change so we can see what could happen.
As a local church pastor a great tool that we have found useful for our purposes is called ChurchMetrics, put out by lifechurch.tv (the same organization who makes the bible app). Metrics in churches are something that (for lack of understanding) are underused in most cases.
Why Church Metrics is useful
Church Metrics is a useful tool because it allows you to setup various methods of keep statistics that give you the ability to show trends overtime. These statistics can be in any area that you would like to track. They can include adult attendance, children attendance, servants, giving, etc. Over the course of a year or more you can then take this data and look at different trends within your church. You can see what age groups are growing and also which ones aren’t. As you can imagine this can be very helpful when making decisions for the future about where the areas of focus need to be for your organization.
Another great thing about church metrics (other than the fact that it is FREE), is that it allows for multiple users to have access to this program across all devices. To count a church of roughly 200 people Sunday to Sunday and keep track of all financials and the like, takes about 15 minutes during a Sunday service.
Whats lacking in this app:
I have found that the only things lacking in this app are website integration and individual tracking. It would be great if this program integrated directly in with our website platform and allowed for a central hub of activity from this point. They are working on developing this side of things from my understanding and have some tools already available, but they are in their infancy stage. Regarding individual tracking, it would be great to be able to generate a report, much like you can with a paid version ChMS (Church Management System). This would allow for an increased ability to serve the needs of people and to not lose track of people over time. I guess you can’t get everything for FREE. Overall though church metrics has provided our organization with some very valuable information over the last several years.
For more information about Church Metrics, check out their website.
