The Church Answers Podcast
Why the Conversion Growth Metric Is the Most Important Health Metric for Churches
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Numbers, numbers, numbers, everybody gets... Either board of numbers or they get frustrated about numbers, maybe even a little cranky about numbers. I'm not that way. I've always loved numbers. The Book of Numbers was always one of my favorite books of the Bible. Numbers is... math was my favorite subject. Now, this is really weird. I had a double major in finance and economics and college. And for fun, I took statistics for my electives, for my general electives. And then even though I got a minor in statistics accidentally, I just love numbers. Am I good at them better than average? But there are a lot of people who are better than I am. And so we start talking about numbers for churches. And we start talking about ratios and metrics and scorecards. And people say, "Ah, this is God's Word. This is God's Church." Don't talk about numbers. We'll be talking about numbers in this episode. But I think I can give you a little balance in it. As we go to the church as a podcast sponsored by Chaney & Associates, the CPA firm for the church. Over 1,100 churches that they serve with accounting, payroll, bookkeeping, you name it. Get that stuff out of your church and give it to someone all the time that just has been good. So you'll like it. And you'll like everything that they do. So that's what's going on. And I just want to let you know that that's going on. And Chaney & Associates are the best. Now let's talk about numbers. I am a student of the church growth movement. Most people, when you say church growth movement, they have a visceral reaction, usually negative. Negative reaction, and they have an assumption about what the church growth movement is. Oh, church growth movement is all about mega churches. It's all about large churches. It's about all of those things. And they just, they say, "I don't want church growth movement, just numbers crazy." Well, I am a student of the church growth movement. It's actually a formal movement that started in 1955, which happens to be my birth year, coincidentally, which happens to be the beginning of rock and roll, maybe sovereignly. But 1955, the church growth movement began when a man by the name of Donald McGovern wrote a book called "The Bridges of God." I am what is considered a third generation church growth person. McGovern had those that he taught, and then one of those that he taught taught me. And as a result, I became kind of a third generation. And they even thought I would be the stand of the McGovern and then Wagner thought I would be the standard bearer for the church growth movement. I'm not kind of in a way wise, but that's not the point. I just want you to know that church growth movement started when Donald McGovern was asking, "Why don't we send more people one to Christ?" He wasn't talking about transfer of growth. He wasn't talking about the mega church. He was talking about growing the kingdom. And if you read books like "Bridges of God" that magnum opus that began the church growth movement or the 1970 edition of "Understanding Church Growth" by McGovern. He's not a fluid writer, but boy was he a smart man. And we could see that. And so we have numbers for a reason. As a matter of fact, at church answers, we have a brand new resource out called the Church Health Scorecard. The Church Health Scorecard. And it's basically helping to measure how healthy your church is. And we do it in different ways. And the one that's coming out or has just recently come out, the Church Health Scorecard, has 12 different metrics. We give a video on it. We give examples. We give the rationale behind each of these. Or we consider the 12 most important metrics in the Church today. But number one, we'll give you a link to that. So you can go look at this resource that we have. But number one in this is the conversion metric or the conversion growth metric. The conversion metric. Now what does that mean? The conversion metric is how many people you or your church is reaching for Christ relative to your attendance. Let me say that again. The church, the conversion growth metric is that number that tells you how many people you're reaching for Christ relative to the attendance of the church. With all of these metrics, we have red light, yellow light, green light. We not only explain them and give examples. We show you exactly how to calculate them. But we lead off with conversion metric. Why do we lead off with conversion metric? Because we know, and we have the data, that churches as a general rule are neglecting the Great Commission, the evangelism aspect of the Great Commission. And we think that churches are going to have to get serious about the Great Commission about conversion. And they're going to have to look at these numbers anew. And they're going to have to ask the question, "God, to God, God, why am I not? Why am I not leading my church evangelistically?" So my prayer when this church health scorecard was released recently, my prayer was that it would open eyes because that's what we want to do. Are you opposed to say thermometers or blood pressure monitors or any of those things? Probably not. But when you take your temperature, it's not that the number has intrinsic value of itself. It's what it points to. If it's 98.6, by the way, that was a 60 song. I'm not going to sing it for you. But if it was 98.6, you're going to be in the normal range. If it's 98.2, you're probably normal. If it's 99, you're probably normal. But right there, 98.6, it's the normal range. But if you put this thermometer wherever to your child and they have 103.5, that tells you something. That number says that child needs some medical type of help. It may mean calling the doctor, it may mean going to some intermediate care place or the emergency room or calling your doctor. But that number points you to something for good or bad. And the conversion growth metric is the number that can tell you whether or not your church is reaching people relative to the population or not reaching people. And we do it as a percent of attendance. And what we are finding is that we've got fewer and fewer people reaching within the church than we have at any time in our known history. We don't have data precisely going all the way back to 1776 or even before. But we have enough anecdotal information and enough data from the late 18th century until now, I'm sorry, the late 19th century until now, that we can say that churches are not reaching people for Christ. The reason that we put together the church health scorecard and the reason that we've put it out there for pastors and staff and consultants, whatever, is not just to have some type of checklist or report card, this is scorecard, so you can know how to help your church get healthier and if your church needs to get healthier. Now, let me say a thing about or two about conversions. Number one, we measure conversions with this metric about how many people your church is reaching within your community that you are bringing into your church. I just want to be clear about that is how many people you're reaching within your community that you're bringing to your church. So we are looking at a both an evangelism and somewhat of a church discipleship model of conversion. We do not count into this number. Say you went on the mission field and you preach to your taught and you saw 300 people become followers of Christ. We celebrate that, that is absolutely terrific, but that's not your church's conversion growth. You don't add that into your numbers, if you will. You pray that those people, if they're in another culture or another country, that they will find a church, you try to point them to another church. One of the times, I've been, I've had the fortune to meet with Billy Graham on a few occasions and, no, we weren't close friends and I'm not going to claim that, especially now it'll be a posthumous claim on his part, but I have talked to him enough. And one of the things we talked about in one of our discussions, when I went to his home, I said, "Dr. Graham, what is the one thing that you think about when you're doing a crusade?" I probably didn't word it that way, okay, but you get the picture. But his response was, Tom, I'm not going to try to imitate his voice, it was, it was, it was, it was just so North Carolinian, he'd say, "Tom, one of the things I worry about is these people who are coming forward during the invitation time, that their decision is genuine, and secondly, that they find a local church." He says, "We do everything we can with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to connect into a local church. We partner with local churches, we have follow up with local churches." And he said, "Because if someone becomes a follower of Christ, truly, they are going to want to fellowship with their family, they're going to want to be a part of a family. And if they don't, maybe their conversion is not real." He said, "Well, I cannot know their hearts. I know that the chances that they became true followers of Christ are much higher if they are in a local church." So when we calculate the conversion growth metric, we're looking at conversions. We're looking at it relative attendance. I'm not going to go through the different metrics that we have now. You can get that in the church health scorecard. But simply to say, we lean off with conversion growth because, frankly, we're not talking about it enough, and we're not measuring it enough. And believe me, you do want to measure it because even though the number in itself is not the issue, it is the faithfulness that is reflected in that number. And we need to be more faithful in the work of evangelism. My name is Tom Rayder. This is the Church Answers Podcast. We have been sponsored by Chaney and Associates. The accounting firm for the church is always YouTubers. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being willing to subscribe to the Church Answers channel. And for all of you who are watching, thank you for watching this. For those of you who own your favorite podcasting out, thank you as well. We don't take you for granted. It's always great to have the audience who listens and who is so appreciative. We appreciate you. We'll see you in the next podcast. You have been listening to the Church Answers Podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. We need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also please subscribe and give a review to the Church Answers Podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]