Nickels or noses?

If you're a pastor, or if you've ever spent time around pastors, you've heard this question: "How many folks did you have this weekend?" or "How are your offerings?" It seems that every pastor everywhere wants to know the answer to these questions. And they secretly want to know how they measure up!

Sometimes this is referred to as counting "nickels and noses" or "bucks and butts" (I apologize to my Baptist friends if "butts" is offensive).

In our experience, these two data points only scratch the surface of the kinds of questions to which pastors are seeking answers.

Are you curious about what makes churches tick? If you're a layman and could sit down with your pastor, what kinds of questions would you ask about your church? Or if you're a pastor and could sit down with, say, Furtick, Chandler, Morris, or even Osteen, what would you ask? What about the pastor of the church down the street? Or across town? Or in another state? Are Baptist metrics the same as Methodists? What do Independent Christian Churches measure that Assembly of God churches do not?

What kinds of questions are you asking yourself? What are your key performance indicators? Baptisms? Conversions? Giving numbers? Small group attendance? What are you tracking and measuring? What do you want to know about your church?

Maybe our geek is showing, but this stuff fascinates us! We'd love to know, besides nickels and noses, what are you counting?