What is Your Church Dashboard Telling You? – Part 1
If your church had a dashboard, like your car, what gauges and warning lights would fill the instrument cluster? What kind of indicators could assure you, as a leader, that things are going well? What would effectively tell you if there was a problem developing?
Of all the things I don’t want to have fail on my car, the check engine light and the gas gauge are near the top of the list. Imagine, if you suddenly had no oil pressure, or something catastrophic was about to take place in your engine. If that check engine light failed to come on, a much worse reality could be just around the next corner. If you were just passing the only gas station for miles, and your gas gauge failed to warn you that you were running on fumes, your plans could quickly be upended, and you might fail to reach your destination.
We may dread seeing that check engine light come on, but it is critical to notifying us of potential problems before significant damage occurs. As a leader, we can serve our congregations much more effectively when we have the right gauges in front of us. This is the purpose of a dashboard. This is the beginning of a series of articles to help pastors consider the idea of creating and using a dashboard for churches.
Let’s define what a dashboard is for a church. A dashboard is a visual summary of key indicators of church health, as well as significant data points to help leaders assess the current conditions and what actions to take.
I must admit, that as a pastor, for many years I balked at investing too much time in measurements and collecting data. After all, God measures us on faithfulness rather than our ideas of success. But here is what I have discovered: Your leaders are all measuring the health of your church. If you don’t have a shared set of data to work from, they may all be measuring different things or worse working on little more than their perceptions of the church and perhaps even you.
A dashboard provides a shared set of data, from which all your leaders can assess the church’s health. Additionally, if created effectively, it can help you as a pastor gauge where help is needed most. On a personal level, in the intangible world of ministry, an effective dashboard can provide something rare: concrete feedback not driven by perception or emotion. A well-created dashboard can make you more effective over time, and likely help your church remain consistently faithful to its mission.
In the next Insights, we will consider what to measure; what data to track as key indicators of church health. We will also consider how to and how often to measure. We will put this all together with an example dashboard that shows the most critical information and trends to assess the current state of your congregation. I will also share various resources available for this task.
The best part? While it will take some time investment to set up initially, it will likely take very little time to maintain and will provide benefits that will grow.
As a beginning point, spend a few minutes considering what you believe is important to measure; what data could help take the pulse of your congregation’s spiritual health, commitment to the Gospel, and faithfulness to one another.