No service attendance is not the best measure of health!
When considering how healthy your congregation is, it can be tempting to focus on how many people are coming. However, while attendance is a measure of health, it’s one you can go mad over while looking at the ups and downs week to week.
Trends over time while looking at your membership base are a more accurate and impactful way to track health. GHC is built around monitoring the health of your membership (those who call your church home).
Start by looking at your membership number and ask, is your membership increasing, decreasing or plateauing? You can find this data at the top of your checkup or toolkit dashboard in GHC.
Your numbers on membership will be most useful if you have a clear system for categorising members. We find it helpful to use language for GHC membership categorisation like "those who call your church home".
There are two extremes to avoid in defining membership:
As you work this out for your church be prepared to see lower health measures than you might like as you include people who call your church home but have a way to go in their discipleship journey. Let GHC help you know how to reach out to and walk alongside in this way as you seek grow in health for the sake of maturing people in Christ.
We also encourage you to track the membership over time. Report quarterly to your staff and parish council/eldership board on how your membership is changing. This in time will show a deeper measure of the health and growth of your church.
For improving your membership, one area of focus might be discipleship groups. In the Q1 2023 Unstuck Church Report, it was noted that "Growing churches are more likely to have small groups and more people connected to those smaller groups”.
Use our core dashboards or the Group Health Add-ons (available to subscribers) to consider:
