Know Your Youth Ministry Stats

As a blogger I’m pretty addicted to my website stats. I want to know who is visiting, what is drawing them in, where they are reading from and why. This allows me to improve the content of my blog and hopefully become a better blogger.

Courtesy of Sean MacEntee/Creative Commons License

Stats in youth ministry sounds a lot like mixing water and oil; but, it’s quite the opposite. Keep stats and you can track it’s health and impact. Track your health and impact, you’ll grow more disciples. Know your youth ministry stats especially when it comes to:

• Attendance: While attendance isn’t everything it is something big. You not only want to grow the overall size of your ministry, but you want to make sure it’s consistent. Tracking attendance also gives you a better feel of what schools, neighborhoods and age groups you are impacting. Don’t just count heads, take names and learn more about who each person is.

• Spiritual Growth: While you cannot see into the heart of a student you can track how they are moving through your church. That means having a vision for the teens and milestones for reaching it. Are teens idle and consumeristic of your ministry or are they growing to be contributing disciples. Track their growth.

• Minister Tenure: Tracking your volunteers will help you keep them happy and healthy in ministry. You’ll avoid complacency and resentfulness by knowing how long and at what capacity they’ve been serving. Keeping stats on their tenure will enable you to train and equip them better. This might mean doing reviews with your key leaders, having end of the year evaluations and having them sign a commitment form.

• Minister Turnover: If you feel like you are constantly looking for new volunteers it’s because you are not tracking the turnover rate in your ministry. People will leave your ministry for good reasons and bad; however, if you do not have the stats you’ll never know how to set them up for success. Have leaving volunteers do an exit interview so you can determine what needs and can be changed.

• Stewardship: As a youth minister you have a budget and resources that demand your attention. You cannot ask for more if you do not have the data to prove that you need more. Being a responsible steward means having account of all that you manage. Keep a budget and if you do not feel equipped in this area find someone who is.

Stats will tell the story of your ministry. They might not give personal details; however, statistics will show how, where and even why you’ve grown. Know your stats and you can look back at what’s worked and what hasn’t. Know your stats and you will know your ministry better.

How are you tracking the stats in your ministry?