How do you know if your church is healthy?

In my experience, it all comes down to engagement. Church attenders who are engaged are typically growing in their faith. When more and more of your attenders are growing in their faith, you are likely becoming a healthier church. 

How do you measure engagement? Sometimes we measure the wrong things or measure the right things incompletely. For example, video views…that’s not engagement. Or, weekend attendance…that’s a good measurement for engagement, but it’s incomplete. 

Here are five areas you can measure to determine engagement. 

5 Ways to Measure Engagement in Your Church

1. Weekend Attendance

Although I just said that this is an incomplete measurement, weekend attendance still a critical piece of the engagement puzzle. It’s also a standard measurement that most churches use to determine appropriate staffing and budgeting ratios. 

It may be more helpful for your church to add attendance frequency to this measurement. Church attendance habits changed dramatically through COVID. Before COVID, on average, people attended church three out of four weeks. Now, it’s closer to two out of four weeks. Even if your weekly attendance is roughly the same as it was before COVID, your congregation size is likely larger than it was before COVID. 

Although it’s an incomplete measure, weekend attendance is still an important part of measuring engagement and determining health. 

2. Giving 

A key indicator of engagement is giving. People who regularly give to their church are engaged in the life of their church. They are all in. 

The most accurate way to measure engagement through giving is not adding up all of your one-time givers, or adding up your annual giving total, but rather is measuring recurring gifts. In other words, how many people give on a regular basis? That is the number you want to watch and influence because it reflects church engagement. 

Here’s a number to focus on influencing:  What % of your weekend attendance gives regularly? 

3. Serving 

Another accurate measurement for church engagement is volunteering. How many people are serving regularly? Again, if you measure how many people served at least once last year, you’ll probably feel pretty good about the number. “Wow, our church is great at volunteering!” But, a more accurate measurement for true engagement is how many people serve regularly. Attenders who serve regularly are engaged attenders. They are committed to the life of the church. 

Of course, post-COVID, this number has changed as well. People are volunteering less often than they used to. You will have to decide what constitutes “regularly serving” in your church. Personally, I think that monthly or more often is a good starting place. 

4. Connection 

My church’s strategy for relational discipleship and connection is small groups. Perhaps your church’s strategy is focused on educational classes. Whatever your connection strategy, the key is to measure it. 

“How many people are actively engaged in a small group?” is a key engagement measurable for us. Maybe for you it’s the same, or perhaps it’s adult Sunday School attendance or Wednesday night discipleship class attendance. Whatever it is, measure it and attempt to increase it. 

5. Discipleship Content

This last one may not apply to your church and if it does, it probably looks different than my church. Every church is unique in this area.  

My church produces a weekly devotional that is connected to our weekend sermon and focused on personal time with God. We measure subscriptions and downloads because attenders who actively utilize our discipleship materials are engaged attenders. 

If your church has something like this–a resource, a devotional or a take home Bible study–measure engagement with it.  People who actively use your discipleship content are engaged attenders. 

Wrap Up

These five areas—attendance, giving, serving, connection, and content–are key indicators for engagement. Something that may be helpful for your church is to combine these areas as you measure. In other words, what percentage of your congregation is fully engaged with all five areas? This can give you a clear picture of the health of your congregation.

I hope this has been helpful. Breeze can be a powerful tool in measuring these five areas. Don’t hesitate to reach out for help in creating easy and automated measurements.