When it comes to engagement, churches have a lot of data at their disposal and a slew of metrics to choose from. As Harvard Business Review puts it, “Metrics are what you measure. And what you measure is what you manage too.” That’s why it’s so important to stop and ask yourself: What church metrics review will help us more deeply connect + minister our people?
If the goal is to measure + facilitate church member engagement, connection, and spiritual growth, then we can’t just measure things like sermon views, attendance numbers, and Facebook likes. These kinds of metrics are only the tip of the iceberg–it’s helpful to see them but to get to the really substantial, meaningful stuff, you have to go deeper.
After all, we know that not every church member who tunes in or likes a social post is truly engaged, so how do we shift our church metrics review to tell us what we really want to know? Things like:
What church members are (or aren’t) actively participating? What members are showing interest in a small group? What types of sermon topics does my congregation need right now?
5 Ways to Use Church Metrics Review for Deeper Engagement
#1. Centralize for a more complete picture.
If you’re streaming from one place, communicating from another, and offering spiritual resources all over the place, it’s nearly impossible to get a full picture of engagement at your church. Centralizing your software not only makes it easier for your members to get everything they need in one place, it also puts all that data in one place, allowing you to “connect the dots” of engagement quickly and easily.
#2. Try advanced filtering.
Sometimes one metric alone is helpful, but other times it’s not quite enough. Having a system that provides advanced data collecting and filtering will help you dig deeper and answer those tougher, more specific questions.
Together+ powered by aware3 is a totally connected engagement platform that enables you to do just that. Specifically, the platform feature, Advanced People Filtering lets you see where different metrics overlap to get a more complete picture of where your people are and pinpoint opportunities for engagement.
#3. Ask for feedback.
Whether you want to get feedback from first-time visitors, do a mental health check in, or gauge interest in an upcoming volunteer opportunity, surveys and polls are a fast and easy way to collect valuable feedback and really focus your metrics (Ask the questions you really want to know!)
#4. Get a visual of your data.
Dashboards are a great way to visualize your data. They allow you to SEE breakdowns, key analytics, insights, and trends about a specific area of your church from one place. So instead of just seeing total giving numbers for the month, you can see giving trends over time, one-time or recurring giving trends, monthly giving breakdowns to see where people are engaging in giving, and more.
#5. Create digital pathways.
If you want people to do more than consume your content, if you want them to connect with each other, participate and take meaningful steps forward, you have to give them a clear pathway to do so.
Our church partner, Pastor Paul Little shares how his church uses text messaging to do just that. He says, “We use Text-to-act for what we call direct engagement. A website is something a little bit more secondary. You have to go to a particular site, click a button, search here, scroll here.
But, if we say, text the word “conference” to sign up for our Virtual Leadership Conference then you could send that text message in your own time at your own convenience and all the information is right there in your hands. Again, that takes engagement to a whole new level, because it is more convenient. It is more efficient. It limits me having to go through 2 or 3 steps to do 1 thing. Eliminating the steps really does help people to engage more. We’ve seen that in our congregation. We’ve seen that in other congregations and nonprofits and schools that we work with throughout the US. It’s the same conversation regardless of who you talk to.”
We know measuring + facilitating engagement is no easy feat. You don’t always get the face-to-face time with your people that you’d like, resources are tight, and many metrics lead to dead ends. Having the right platform and team to help you through it can make all the difference. If you’d like to talk through specific ways to use a church metrics review to deepen engagement at your church and see how Together+ can help, we’d love to chat with you.
