An Even Better Way to Track Attendance in the New Year
by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

One of the key roles of a leader is to help define reality. But leaders must themselves interpret reality in meaningful ways. Understanding worship attendance trends is critical to defining reality for congregations, but often churches do not maintain worship statistics in ways that facilitate the most helpful comparisons.

A year ago, Leading Ideas offered a model for tracking worship attendance. Instead of the usual Sunday-by-Sunday comparison, this model uses year-to-date figures. The key advantage of this system is that it avoids looking at one Sunday in isolation. As the year progresses, the trends become more and more accurate, but also more difficult to change by the end of the year. The flip side of this, however, is that the early weeks of the year are still subject to atypical variations.

Following the publication of this article, Chris Fieber, a member of a church near Richmond, Virginia, suggested an even more accurate way of monitoring worship attendance by using a 52-week running average. Since there are always 52 weeks in the average, it reflects the broad array of highs and lows that come in a year. Each week, you add the worship attendance for the past weekend and drop the most distant week that comprised the previous 52-week running average.

The first step toward using this system is to record your weekly worship attendance for the previous two years. Examples, illustrations, and an Excel file with a pre-programmed template are provided with this issue of Leading Ideas. In addition to the 52-week version, a 53-week version is included for churches to use if they want to include Christmas Eve services.

Once you enter your own numbers, the Excel template will permit you to view:

• Weekly Attn. – This records your weekly attendance for the past two years.
• Compare Yr. Ago – This shows your current year 52-week running average (or 53 if you use the Christmas Eve version).
• 104 Wk. Trend – This chart shows your 52-week running average for the past 104 weeks so you can see the longer term trends.
• Wkly. and Running Avg. – This chart shows the worship attendance for the last 52 Sundays along with the running average so you can see which Sundays run above the average and which below.

Using a 52-week average will demonstrate the flow of the year in a much more precise way. But ultimately, no amount of tracking matters unless you give attention to the results and address whatever concerns the statistics reveal.

Download a Sample of 52-Week Running Average

Download the 52-Week Running Average Template

Download the 53-Week Running Average Template

Charts and templates are by Joe Arnold.

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