Monday Morning Insights

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    POLL:  Do Pastors Exaggerate Attendance and Conversion Numbers

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    FOR DISCUSSION:  What do you think?  Is this accurate?  Do most pastors always exaggerate their numbers and conversions?  Do you?  Why or why not?

    (I think the best answer to a question of how many people go to your church is:  “Oh somewhere between two and three thousand”.  (that’s 2 and 3000) smile

    Here’s the link to the poll...

    Todd

    OneNewsNow.com asked whether evangelical pastors always, often, sometimes, or never exaggerate their attendance and conversion numbers. Find out how their readers responded....

    Comments

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    1. Gary Sweeten on Mon, February 05, 2007

      When average church attendance is 80 to 100 in the USA I suppose it might not surprise us to hear a pastor of a church with 90 in attendance say he has almost 100.  It also reminds me of many of my friends in high school who bragged about their romantic conquests. We all knew they were lying but it made our wild eyed estimates sound plausable as well.

    2. Peter Hamm on Mon, February 05, 2007

      We “barely” exaggerate… Some people who are at all three services (I’m thinking the worship team and Children’s ministry teams) are counted all three times. That’s it. We’re pretty careful.


      I have no idea what “most” pastors do, the ones I’ve known well don’t do this.

    3. Andy Sikora on Mon, February 05, 2007

      I think the answer depends on the type of church that a person is in.  If the church measures success based on attendance I think that a pastor will often times fudge the numbers to look more successful.  I think the biggest way this plays out is pastors who use their highest attended service for that year as “the number”. 


      It’s all about the win.

    4. Leonard on Mon, February 05, 2007

      This poll was not necessarily take of pastors but readers of the OneNewNow readers.  I think it is telling that most say their pastors exaggerate. 


      The pastors I know do not intentionally exaggerate.   I personally leave all the counting to someone else, I stay in the reporting side of the equation.  I do have 2-3 counters, their numbers rarely match but are always within 2-5 people.  We average the numbers and that is our number.  I have rounded up in attendance numbers but only when it is less than three and I have rounded down under the same rules for speaking purposes.  I do not exaggerate the number of conversions, I do not round them either.

    5. Jade on Mon, February 05, 2007

      I think many pastors round up.  WAY UP! 


      I hope I never get in a habit of doing this.

    6. Randy Ehle on Mon, February 05, 2007

      I haven’t had math in my seminary program yet, but I suspect that when I do, I will find the elusive answer to this question!  Back when I was setting up the gym for our church’s contemporary service, I was always surprised to see the attendance higher than the number of chairs I’d set up!  The pastor would say, “well, we added a bunch during the service.”  To which I would reply, “true, but there were a lot of empties, too.”  On the whole, I figure the “official” numbers were about 10% high. 

      Whenever I suggested we have the ushers count as they take the offering, I was told it would be too difficult.  (Hmmm…these were mostly college students; I counted heads when I ushered in high school and in the Air Force, and I never found it too hard.  But I guess this was an apparently-math-challenged pastor I was talking with!)

       

      I’m curious: in your churches, do you physically count people during some opportune point (e.g., offering) or from a vantage point that allows you to do so (e.g., from the balcony)?  Or do you estimate based on “capacity” less an estimation of how many seats are empty?

       

    7. Wendi on Mon, February 05, 2007

      At the church where I previously worked, we counted decisions which were mostly products of our EE teams.  When we decided to assess “conversion growth” – we came up with a criteria we called “prayed and stayed.”  In other words, if we could not account for the people at the end of a quarter / year . . . we didn’t count a person who had made a decision into our conversion growth.  Some (not all) of us were shocked, appalled, ashamed to learn that our conversion growth was .08%. 


      As to attendance, someone stood in the balcony and counted heads, we didn’t add in the kids and counted the choir and worship team once.  Tried very hard to be accurate.


      Wendi

    8. Peter Hamm on Tue, February 06, 2007

      we have someone in the balcony/media booth. I think their counts are very accurate. When they are low, they don’t make stuff up.

    9. Gary Sweeten on Tue, February 06, 2007

      As noted by one of the respondents, this post has to do with the perceptions of people in the pew about whether leaders offer “Evangelistic Estimates” of attendance. The answer is!!! 92 percent say, “Yes, Pastors often lie about attendance.” They don’t think we do it all the time but accumulatively they seem to think we exaggerate at least some of the time.  Over 40 percent say we lie “Always or Often”.


      The real issue is about why so many Christians think we who so often carry the message about ethics and values do not have much of the ethics and values we preach. Why do people believe we would lie about such a mundane issue?  Perhaps they think we think attendance is really, really important.


      I suggest we do a series on the Ten Commandments and ask our people anonymously if they think we break any or all of them.  We might be shocked to see what folks really believe about us.  If this many people see us as liars then it is no wonder we are not really affecting the culture.

    10. Jan on Tue, February 06, 2007

      I think it’s a temptation, especially in a difficult ministry, where fruit is slow to come.


      I do think there is a bigger issue here, of people believing pastors pad the numbers.  Do they equate ministers to sales people?

    11. Dan Moore on Tue, February 06, 2007

      I prefer to count the number of those who are not upset with me!

    12. Peter Hamm on Tue, February 06, 2007

      Dan,


      LOL. That’s often a pretty low number. http://www.mondaymorninginsight.com/images/smileys/wink.gif


      Peter

    13. Leonard on Tue, February 06, 2007

      Of the 72 people who have posted here, I counted you as attending my church.  Actually I think that this is a really silly poll to take.  It is not something our people think about unless asked.  No one left our church Sunday morning wondering if I was going to pad the numbers of attendee’s or conversions.  This IMO is about sowing seed of discord.  Not because pastors shouldn’t pad numbers but becasue it feeds a question to people they do not ask and serves to do so at the expense of pastors. 


      How many pastors lie about their numbers?  How many pastors lie about ...Come on, is that the kind of questions we need anyone fed.  Leadership is hard enough without someone sowing seeds of mistrust in the people we serve.


      How many pastors work when no one is looking, doing things only heaven will reveal?  How many pastors get paid less, live on less and still stay faithful to their call?  I guess the longer this post sits here the more it bothers me.  Sorry for the rant.

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