I’m often asked for examples or templates of what our church and staff set as goals and targets. I’m always hesitant to provide this because it needs to be understood in light of a certain theological and philosophical framework.

First, let’s be clear on the purpose of even doing this in the first place. The reason you’d even want to consider this is to workout some refined, helpful and thoughtful prayers for your team. We want to set some prayers, not goals. We want to make requests to our heavenly Father, not issue targets. We’re bringing these hopes to God and planning them for His glory. (And then we work hard towards them!)

We also want to start with trend data. Trend data is the objective details about how things have been going in your church. You need to know what’s happening as of today, before you can know what to ask God to do tomorrow.

But what type of data should you have? Here’s some basic ones.

1. Members
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids who you consider have committed to your church family (as of today). Please note that membership here is defined by your opinion of them, not their opinion of themselves. That means that while a non-Christian might attended your church every week, and they may even be in a group of sorts, they are not a member of your church because the church is a spiritual reality, and they are not part of that. Similarly; you might have people who are sick and unable to attend, but who are faithful Christians who you consider part of your church family. They are members, even though they might feel like they’re never together with you.
   
2. Average Sunday Attendance (per term)
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids in person at church services on average (calculate average based on the previous term / 12 weeks).
   
3. Conversions (per calendar year)
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids who you think have made a real and personal commitment to follow Jesus last year. (This gives you a prayer to aim towards this year, and to plan towards for next year).
   
4. Visitors (per calendar year)
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids who have turned up at least once to a church event (include the parents who sign in their kids).
   
5. Growth Group members
   This is the total number of adults and youth who are committed to a weekly growth group (as of today). Some churches encourage non-members to be in groups; if that’s you, I would try to filter those two numbers apart; Members who are in a Growth Group, Non-members who are in a Growth Group.
   
6. Volunteers
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids who are members of a formal ministry team (as of today).
   
7. Joiners and Leavers (per calendar year)
   This is the total number of adults, youth and kids who have moved in and moved out of being Members since the beginning of the year.
   
8. Survey data
   This is the high level results of some subjective survey questions. While the NCLS survey is a helpful start, we’ve found their questions to be generally unhelpful because they are too vague.

Once you have this data, what do you do with it? I’ll address that in the next post, but until then; Look at it. Just look at the trend data you’ve got and maybe ask yourself “is that what I thought it was?”