How Data Can Help You Create More Relevant Church Programs

As human beings, for better or worse, we all have biases. Based on the experiences we’ve had, we see things a certain way. When it comes time to make a decision, we run things through our mental filters, which spit out a conclusion—often influenced by those biases.

For church leaders, biases play a part in decision-making too. Because every individual sees things in a certain way, it’s impossible to make a completely objective decision. There are always going to be different perspectives your missing out on when creating programs for your church.

This is an area where data can help enhance the discipleship process. Data is objective. Data allows church leaders to break through biases and quantify the decision-making process.

Examples of Ways Data Can Inform Class or Program Creation

Knowing more about your congregation at an individual level allows you to create classes or programs to help them in each stage of life. Here are a few examples:

• If your church is seeing an uptick in the number of unemployed members, you can offer support groups with classes on building resumes and mock interviews.
• If you have a large number of young families in your congregation, you can use that data to offer childcare for date nights.
• If you notice that your contributions are not where they should be, you can offer Financial Peace courses to help your congregation better manage their money.

Your Church Management System should not only enable you to find these people, but also support granular communication—allowing you to target specific groups of people with information that is more relevant to them. Many systems include built-in email and text messaging capabilities, so you can let the right people know about a new program or class.

Use Data About Church Members’ Behavior to Guide the Discipleship Journey

Once you analyze the numbers, it may surprise you to find that a certain class or ministry is accounting for a large number of people starting down the path of membership and deeper involvement.

Having a Church Management System in place that tracks individuals’ progress from new visitor all the way to disciple-maker will help you get an accurate picture of what that journey generally looks like. Then you can use the power of that knowledge to properly resource the people and ministries that are driving the most growth.

Learn more about how your church can harness the power of data—download our free resource, “4 Ways Data Can Help You Make Better Ministry Decisions” today.