I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was about 30 years old, had been a senior pastor for 3 years, and God was doing good things in our ministry.<\/p>\n
I was asked to preach at what would be the largest gathering of people that I had ever been in front of. It was for a “plenary session” (the big gathering, not a breakout classroom) at our denominational conference in Honolulu, Hawaii (just us pastors suffering for Jesus!).<\/p>\n
These were the days in Christendom when the preachers sat on the platform, often in high back chairs, looking out into the congregation. Ah, ol’ school Pentecostal church services! During worship my wife and I stood there alongside a few denominational officials. I would have liked to have been in a less conspicuous place, so I could review my notes and get my bearings, but alas.<\/p>\n
During worship the organizer of that particular service kept whispering to me instructions. Every few minutes he would tell me that my speaking time was being shortened. “Hey, John, you were given 20 minutes to share your message, but it’s being cut to 15 now.”<\/em> Then a little bit later, “You’ve got 11 minutes to say what you’re gonna say.”<\/em> Then again, “Hey, just letting you know you have 8 minutes. Don’t worry, it’s gonna be great!”<\/em> All of this was transpiring in real time in front of a couple thousand people.<\/p>\n I blame the worship team.<\/strong><\/p>\n Then, this happened…as the last song was concluding, the leader leaned over to me, and asked me two questions. First, he asked me to pronounce my last name. “It’s Fehlen. Sounds like “failing,”<\/em> I said. And then, he asked me how many people were at church on Easter, which had been only two days prior. I quickly recalled our Resurrection Sunday attendance and told him, “Just over 500 people.”<\/em> The song concluded, he stepped to the microphone, and proceeded to introduce, “John Failing, who has an incredible church that is running over 500 people every week. Welcome him as he comes!”<\/em><\/p>\n I was dumbfounded. I stepped to the microphone, took a breath, and looked at the applauding crowd. The first people I saw in the middle section were my closest friends that knew me very well, and also knew that our church was nowhere near 500 people. They glared at me, shaking their heads from side to side, visibly expressing their their distain for what they deemed to be a blatant lie on my behalf.<\/p>\n You see, attendance usually increases on Easter (that’s what we hope for, at least). Normally our church would have an attendance of less than half, say around 200-ish. I had to correct the misinformation, and I had to use precious time from my 8 minutes to do so!<\/p>\n This was an eccessiastical case of spouting off “anecdotal evidence” (Chivers, chapter 2). As well, it rubbed up against the question Chivers asked in chapter 9, “Is That a Big Number?”<\/em> You see, the majority of Foursquare Churches have an average attendance of less than 75 people. The convention host could have introduced me as having 200 people in average attendance and it still would have been a “big deal!” Instead, he went for the “wow factor” of Easter, and had my closet friends and wife not been in the convention center, I might have let that particular ego boost slide right on by.<\/p>\n This would not be the last time I would be stymied by numerical data at church. You see, counting people goes back a long way. A saying that had taken on an almost biblical proportions for me was “We count people because people count to God.” Inherently I don’t disagree that people matter the Lord. Of course they do<\/strong>. But am I supposed to be compulsive about counting them, because of that, or are there other potentially dubious motives afoot?<\/p>\n A number of years ago, with great passion, I told the church that we “would grow to be a congregation of 2500 by next year.” Chivers touched on this in Chapter 17 on forecasting. At the time we were approximately 1200. We did not grow to 2500, we actually shrunk in size. But we (OK, me) tried to figure out how to express the numbers in such a way that it didn’t look like we were shrinking. Chivers spotlighted the “Goodhart’s Law” in which the measure becomes the target, and therefore is no longer a good measure. “What it means it that whatever metrics you use to assess how well you are doing at something, people will game those metrics” (Chivers, 158).<\/p>\n Guilty, as charged.<\/p>\n In 1 Chronicles 21, King David asked that his army be counted. It actually says that “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census…”<\/em> (21:1). Obviously, God was not pleased with this decision. I was convicted by this passage of Scripture, and vowed to the Lord to be very careful in the future when it comes to numerical projections, and “pride-inflating” goal setting.<\/p>\n Little did I know that in the year 2020 until the present, I would have that inflated pride beat out of me. Enter COVID-19<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In chapter 12, Chivers asked the question “Has What We’re Measuring Changed?” Absolutely it has. In-person attendance. Online viewers. Are those unique IP addresses? Does each view represent one person or an average family attendance? Do we count Sunday streaming views, or On-Demand throughout the week?<\/p>\n And, what about in-person attenders? The average congregant now attends church an average of 1.4 times a month. If that is true, then perhaps a plateaued congregation, might be actually be growing. Food for thought.<\/p>\n Chivers says “Changes in how statistics are recorded can hugely affect the apparent trend in those statistics”<\/em> (Chivers, 86). In my denomination there is one particular church that reports on average, over 5000 people. However, we know in actuality that the church is much, much smaller than that. Are they counting every person in the room, while doubling up on the worship and tech teams at multiple services? Are they including every person that watches online, and for all we know, every person that has ever walked by their church building, or lives within city limits, or has access to the internet?????<\/p>\n Who knows? The numbers are confusing at best, and deceiving at worst.<\/p>\n Perhaps we need an “Ecclesiastical Statistical Style Guide.” I would suggest a couple key points:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was about 30 years old, had been a senior pastor for 3 years, and God was doing good things in our ministry. I was asked to preach at what would be the largest gathering of people that I had ever been in front of. 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