Did you count this week?

Did you count your attendees at church this week?

You might be thinking to yourself, "Duh! Of course we counted. We counted in the worship service, in the children's area, in Bible study classes and small groups. We counted our volunteers, cars in the parking lot, and anyone else who would stand still long enough to be counted."

Or, maybe you're in another camp. "Count? We don't care about numbers. We just want to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit. Numbers don't really matter."

Or maybe some of you had a third response, like this one I once heard from a thoughtful pastor. "No, we didn't count this week. We use a cycle count system. We only count the worship service once a month. We count Bible study classes and small groups at their first meeting, last meeting, and maybe once or twice in between. You see, for us, we don't take attendance…it's more like a census. We want to know how effective we are at reaching new people, and that we're retaining visitors, and that our members are getting involved, but counting everyone who can fog a mirror every single week is unnecessary overhead. If it doesn't change the way we operate, or create an actionable metric, we don't bother."

So, what did your church do? Is your way the right way, or is there a better way? 

“If it doesn’t change the way we operate, or create an actionable metric, we don’t bother.”