Data mining has certainly been in the news a lot lately. Every time you turn around another company has been hacked and more of our personal information has been exposed. In addition, many of our favorite social networks are selling our data to big companies who in turn monetize it for profit. It’s no wonder why data mining has such a negative connotation.
Is Data Mining Ethical for Churches?
While data mining can certainly be used for nefarious purposes it can also be used for good. Churches also collect tons of data (much like social networks and your favorite online shopping website) that can be used for greater Kingdom impact. It might be good to spend some time evaluating the data you already have. Many questions about attendance, giving, and serving trends can be found in the data you are already collecting.
RELATED: How Prayer Apps Use Your Data
Data about giving patterns can help reveal a lot more than just how much money was given. Giving data can be used to help track attendance and correlated with children’s check-in data, it can show a lot about how a family interacts with your ministries. What does it say if kids are checking in but there is no giving data? What about giving data with no children’s check-in history?
