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Four Speedometers to Watch as a Groups Pastor

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This past Sunday was a great Sunday for Small Group Bible Study at the church I serve. Let me give you a few reasons why:
  • We had over 1,000 people in small group Bible study. That’s good!
  • We had 58 more people in small group Bible study than we did on the first Sunday of May last year. That’s really good!
  • We only had 100 fewer people in small group Bible study than we had in worship attendance. That’s spectacular!! 
Why am I so excited about that last number? Every week, I keep track of how many people are in Sunday school relative to the number of people in worship. Why? Because our strategy is to move people from Worship to Grow (Small Groups) to Serve (Missions and Service opportunities). Getting bigger in any one of those areas isn’t a bad thing. But when we see the gap between those three begin to shrink, it tells me that we are doing a better job of moving people from one step to the next. It tells me we are growing in a balanced way.
May 1 was the smallest gap from worship attendance to small group attendance we’ve had since I got here. By a lot. Just to give you a frame of reference, in April we had an average of 204 more people in worship than in small groups. So, whatever you guys are doing to encourage people in your class to go to worship, keep it up! And whatever our worship leadership is doing to encourage people to go to Sunday school, keep it up!
As an education minister, I try to keep in mind four speedometers:
  1. Enrollment: The number of people we can potentially influence with our small group ministry
  2. Attendance: The number of people who are in a small group Bible study on a given week
  3. Engagement: The number of weeks per month someone attends a small group Bible study
  4. Movement: The number of people in small groups relative to the number of people in worship, and the number involved in serving relative to the number in small groups.

It’s that fourth speedometer that has me most excited today. The closer that number gets to zero, the more indication that our strategy is effective.

Please remember that every single person in your small group is more than a number. They are a person with needs, hurts, challenges, and victories. Every Sunday you teach, you are not standing before a “group.” You are standing before individuals who are sitting together. But we keep track of numbers so we can have some indication of how we are doing in meeting those needs, mending those hurts, facing those challenges, and celebrating those victories. To borrow the old cliche, we count people because people count!  

If you are in education ministry, how do you measure the effectiveness of your ministry? 

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James

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4 responses to “Four Speedometers to Watch as a Groups Pastor”

  1. Richard Ray Avatar
    Richard Ray

    Good blog. Good work. Good leadership. Be encouraged.

    Reply
    1. jamesleejackson Avatar
      jamesleejackson

      Thank you for the encouragement!

      Reply
  2. The Isaiah 53:5 Project Avatar
    The Isaiah 53:5 Project

    I am not in education ministry but I am director of outreach and missions.

    I measure the success of our outreach by how many people volunteer to help with our outreach efforts.

    Simple really but numbers are really the best way to measure.

    Anecdotally, people do come to me with ideas on outreach efforts they think we should try. I like this because it means outreach isn’t something we just do but something people want to do, which is awesome.

    Reply
    1. jamesleejackson Avatar
      jamesleejackson

      Agreed. We measure what we treasure.

      Reply

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