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g'day i'm scott sanders and welcome to the reach australia podcast this podcast is all about seeing churches become healthy evangelistic and multiplying now you have pressed play on how do you measure the ecosystem and i've got dave moore who's the executive pastor at hunter bible church and greg lee who's the lead pastor at hunter bible church in newcastle which is just a bit north of sydney good day scott so that that's a reference to sydney you know nova castro's probably don't

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there's a town south of us yeah yeah yeah we want to push in to this episode all about measures how do you actually measure stuff uh greg healthy has talked about the four ps on a number of occasions through this sort of podcast series you want to have uh purpose people programs and performance and so we want to really understand how do you actually measure what's going on so greg can you tell us what's the the biblical basis for measuring you know should we measure is it biblical oh well we could go to all sorts of

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things we've got a census no definitely not biblical let's go with love as shepherds we want to love our sheep which means we we need to know what's going on so um why does a parent measure the growth of their child of their baby it's because they want to know what's going on why why do schools test kids at the end of the year it's because we want to know that the teaching has actually had some impact we measure what's happening at

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church because we love the sheep enough to want to know what's going on out there rather than just hoping for the best and guessing so dave i want you to help us sort of uh push into some of the headline goals for each of the purpose areas yeah so when you're you know looking across hunter bible church what are the headline goals for each purpose here well uh yeah each each purpose area has particular ones there's going to have really really kind of your normal ones so you want your attendance on a summary you wonder how many people

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are there and you want to track that really well because it's too often that uh we'll go oh that seemed really full you know there's lots of lots of people there and uh one of the things i think that we can do is we can remember the days that are full and the highlights and go that's how many people we've got there rather than actually the true the trend is this um one that's actually counting counting here number of people actually knowing people who are in the room yes that's right so um we count at a particular time so time so we we count during the sermon so

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how many people in chairs during the sermon because you've got people coming in and out with kids programs and that type of thing and so that's that's a helpful kind of baseline for us there but the other thing you want to count is how many new people in the room so uh this is one of the ones that i think as a team we're like uh it seems like heaps of work but then we decided no this is actually really important we need to on this peak of the day how many people are here for the very first time and gee it's been good it's been one of those things that's been a great joy because you know oh we

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actually had 12 new people at that service on that day okay well because one of the things that does that then leads to your performance one of how are we going following up those 12. so you've gotten numbers like that on around yes sunday um things like uh immission purpose we want to have an idea of how many people we'd love to know how many people were invited along to a particular program but that's kind of hard to do uh what so what we measure is the number

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of people who come along at least once and the number of people who stay for at least three of the series or at least five of the series that type of thing those two numbers help us work out how well the series is so performing when you talk about a series you mean a like a preaching series or you're talking about like a membership course or a mission course yeah we're talking about those those courses that happen throughout the week that type of thing yeah so the life course yeah yeah so pushing into um the purpose area so what are some uh key measures for say the deep inward purpose area yeah so we

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want to see a percentage of people who are in close groups uh so that's one of the the key ones but not only that we want to see how many leaders do we have being trained up so if we're expecting growth in as people come along church that type of thing that means we're going to need to put those people into growth groups afterwards but we can't put people into growth groups afterwards unless we've got leaders who are being trained to lead those growth groups for next year so it's not just number of people in growth groups it's how many people have been trying to lead those growth groups for next year what about mission

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uh so that's where we're going how many people have uh come along to this course and how many people have stayed for some of it and how many people have gone to the pollop course uh one of the things uh just from a mission perspective uh is that people very rarely become a christian in that course it normally takes three to six months and so you've got a pop-up course you want to go through and their likelihood of going to the follow-up course we found out increases the more times they come to the first course so if we can get people to come second third time to this course then they're likely of staying for the follow course

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increases which increases the likelihood of them becoming christians so this is where uh data's you know data is really important you can actually start to assess and evaluate and actually start to see trends and patterns and see where there are problems uh you know in the in the system that you've created as well okay what about uh for community life that seems like a really hard area to measure oh well is it i don't know we want to see that people so partly it's the number of people in our growth groups gives us an idea of that

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that thing but part of thing we'll do is we'll do a survey of how people finding their their growth group how they connecting with each other so that gives us a little bit of a measure there but also we're looking at um how many um how many new people uh are joining church and we also uh this took us a while to get good numbers to make sure we're chasing the number but how many people are leaving so you've got the front door and the back door and so having an idea of how many people are walking out the back door that actually gives us a picture of what's

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happening in the community as well and learning to chase down every person every person who leaves and working out why that is why so that's really helped the importance of surveying uh doing uh focus analysis to understand actually reasons why because you'll you'll probably identify there are a number of actually good reasons why people leave you know they've changed for job reasons they're going to be part of a church plan um there also some bad reasons as well and they can actually inform how you can improve your insurance life

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as well it kind of comes back to love you want to love people even as they're leaving which means that if they're going to leave us we want to help them leave well and we want to help them to find a church and if they're leaving happily we might want to help them to find a new church in the city that they're moving to the only way we're going to know that is if we measure it so push into the surf purpose area what are you measuring there well uh we want to we want to record when people are serving the particular thing and so that gives us a percentage of how many people we we can we look at how many people in growth

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groups and how many of those people in growth groups who serve so we have a particular thing that we want to encourage people to serve a growth group first and then serve in another area of church life because i think yeah we can go into that but we want to see that percentage to be as high as we can and give us an idea how many people are involved in church but are not serving because a good indication is if they're not serving in their growth group it's then probably not going to serve in another area well and the very best way they can start serving

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they can serve a few people really well in lots of ways before we get them to serve lots of people in a few ways now i love i love how there's a language around your measurements as well you know you've just used a phrase that i've heard greg used a number of times as we've been talking you know loving a few people so you can you know serve serve the many yeah yeah this is where sort of you know you say it regularly enough that's right people start to get this habit of it's almost like we actually believe that that's right yeah i've saved the i think the hardest one to measure last you know try and grab a you know sort of a a mag

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pasta you know and hold him down and say howdy what do you measure yeah yeah often they they look at you blankly yeah uh so god would attentiveness tell us about how you measure god what attentiveness that's right how many eyes are closed yeah during steering which is very hard to count monitors that's right that's right well i think part of this is there's it's not um it's not bad to use anecdotal evidence for from measurements and so we actually want to

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so this is where surveys are helpful as well so how have you grown as a christian um uh has your christian life been hard have you have you been compared to three months so we did a survey wrestling we said compared to three months ago do you think you're more prayerful or the same or less or i'm i'm more preferable than three months ago agreed disagree that type of thing that gives us anecdotal evidence from people where they think they're at but also by having good team structures actually provides good anecdotal evidence coming up we get

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to hear the stories from people about how they've found that particular thing and yeah so that helps as well so seeking out those stories not just the positive but the ones that are challenging so this is this is where yeah like i can see your energy around this you know you're you're you know you're a data guy but actually you're a data guy because you're a loving church and you're a loving guy but there's energy around hearing the stories so again these are being closed not just in brutal numbers but the stats are a people and

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stories of of change so how important is it as a staff team to be celebrating you know these statistics well yeah the two work hand-in-hand so when you see a number you go looking for stories that that represent that number and so for instance if the number of people at church is starting to decline we want to go asking people why um likewise if you hear a story you then think well is this really widespread is it just

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this person who's got this issue um or are there a whole bunch of people so the anecdotes and the numbers aren't opposed to each other they feed into each other and they inform each other okay i want to i want to just press in dave into you know sort of what do you measure on a weekly basis a monthly basis a quarterly basis and an annual basis yeah uh yeah so till yeah so from a weekly basis is that attendance so whatever you do weekly that's the thing you want to measure it's that classic thing of you care about the things you measure and so if so for youth and church

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and growth groups more and more moving to a weekly thing we want to know exactly how many people that type of thing to a monthly thing monthly is where we're going okay how are we looking at bnc trends so i think for things like serve you want to see a monthly change it's hard to do a weekly change with things like serve and a monthly change on on community and having people joining the community and leaving the community anything more than a month on community

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i think would be dangerous because people matter and in our world four weeks might not feel that long but if someone's not if someone said i'm i'm not sure i'm going to come to church anymore or i'm going to join church and we don't contact them for four weeks that's poor form and so we want to love those people well so that kind of monthly review for that uh we do our finances every month so how are we going this month in finances for the sixth twelve month one i think that's where the the

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godward attentiveness one kind of fits in because it's more hammock title it's how people we're seeing change over over that time i think um six months is a good point to look back and go how many people have become become christians in this period partly because it seems to be one of those things that you'll get certain weeks three people became christians this week and as a staff team we hear the stories and pray and then you don't do that for a little bit but being able to look back

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for a while and go look this this season and what about the the big trends you know sort of looking at back on five years oh yeah we should do that well yeah why don't you tell us what are the things that we measure year on year yeah so this this last year the number was this this year the number is this what are those things that we compare year and year yeah so there that's really the the number of people so number of people in close group the number of people we've got coming on sunday our number of people who who were converted

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uh some people who joined so they're the big year and new ones because then we can go we can compare that that period to the one before which then helps you to get to the five years so five years ago this number was this five years ago now greg how do you uh deal with sort of the just the emotion of numbers and not seeing your worth tied up in numbers and your identity tied up in your growth of your church or lack of growth in your church um it could be by hiding yourself from numbers so that's that's one way to do it um

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the more i insulate myself from seeing the reality the less i have to face it yep um another one is um when i see the number if the number is bad it drives me to it drives me to um to ask god to help us to fix it and it galvanizes me when we see the number and the numbers exciting it drives us to thanksgiving um and so it's god what attentiveness is the answer to that excellent that's really that's really helpful um one one sort of final final question that i want to want to push into

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how do you uh how do you get the individual outcomes to be aligning with the overall church outcomes and how to how to measures and thinking about performance help in that alignment process explain that some more yeah that was a big question it is a big question i guess you said that the question's gone what the question should be scott what do you want me to say that's that's really quite like can you what am i trying to say how do you help your staff team understand that

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their day-to-day task is aligned with their purpose area is aligned with the overall outcomes of the whole church so this is where this is where measures you know job descriptions uh asking these bigger questions but but i think sometimes we can be so well some people can be so abstracted and lost in the big picture and not then have the certainty what am i meant to be doing today in this time yeah okay i i think you see both of you guys yeah you're both very different yeah i'm

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interesting how he answers this yeah i think you do it with vision so all of the staff team is aligned around a particular vision and then having really clear goals about what each of our areas is trying to achieve this year and therefore a clear set of input goals we're going to do these things so that this week i know that the things that i'm doing are helping to achieve those input goals so that we can achieve those output

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goals so that we're reaching the vision that is um the key is from vision right down to today they all actually have to be aligned and make sense um i'd kind of hope that none of our staff wake up in the morning and go you know i've got no idea what i'm doing today yeah so i think one of the things with that um is that it's i think one of the things i see you do greg is going um taking that idea and applying it to each staff member specifically so different staff members

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are going to have different motivators that help them see that thing and so some staff members are going to look at the numbers and they're going to go they're rookie numbers you've got to get those numbers you know that's the thing some people are going to be like and other people are not going to respond to that but they need to be shown how the numbers some people if they're going to be like if they're driven by the vision more that's what captures them you want to show them you want to connect the numbers to that vision for them and i think that's one of the things you do well is help people go from where you're at what do you need to get your job done in this structure and then going okay

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well let's make sure you understand how this bit fits this bit fits and leverage those things for that particular person because if you try and um motivate i suppose everyone exactly the same well that's actually not understanding that where everyone's at could you just give us an example of a number that everyone owns across the whole of church life number of conversions okay so explain how uh the serve pastor owns number of

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conversions um because here's the thing um he may be employed in serve but he's a disciple of jesus and so he wants jesus kingdom to grow and he's convinced that working in the surf thing is the best way for him to contribute but he wants the kingdom to grow he's passionately committed to people becoming christians and so it's not just the staff team the whole of the church feels this sense of commitment to the number of conversions whether they're employed in that area or not um this is one of those things you may be

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employed in a particular area of church but you're a disciple of jesus and so you'll do whatever it takes and you'll love it that is i would say it's not one number that is in the same way the mission guy loves number of conversions he's got to love the number of people who serve and if he goes i don't care about a lot of people sort of all i care about number people convert it you know no you're not doing your job yeah your job is to care about people and yeah you're particularly responsible for this one but you have to care for

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all of them yeah that's right every point in the ecosystem is important so you want everyone working in the ecosystem to care about all those things that's the classic thing we're talking about with siloing um yeah yeah so you want you want your staff so this is one of the things we haven't been able to because of covert that type of thing but we would sit down and everyone's got their numbers on a piece of page and we can all see each other's numbers and we get that awkward thing where numbers look good number looks good ministry and we all kind of sheepishly look at the ministry guy

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and he's like yeah and it's not greg telling his staff you've got to do this it's the peer thing the other m guys the other the everyone in the room all the staff going hey we care about this we want you to do this well because we know it affects our thing as well and and we we care about them for our church as well and when it when it's brilliant is when they say can i come and help yes so what time happened yeah what do you need for me to help this grow

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because not only do they care about each of the parts of the ecosystem work they know that the better ministry works the better deep in the world will work the better missional work they're actually relying on each other as well as caring about each other yeah so the great conversations are the ones after the meeting where uh someone will go up to to serve guy and say hey i just heard you discussing there can i raise with you a couple of ideas that or have you thought about how you're doing this at the moment i've got this guy on my team he's really good at this can we sit down with you

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and help you with that simply because they want that area of church to work really well that's really helpful thanks for helping us press into how to measure uh pastoring with purpose across the church ecosystem now if you like what you've heard today please write us on itunes share share this episode with someone as well uh measurement is such an important aspect of church life and so share this episode with someone that you think could uh value this now if you're looking to move your church towards implementing an ecosystem approach you'd benefit from reach

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australia's church health consultation uh one of the things uh we've loved over the years is getting a church consult so uh having someone come in and sit in our staff team and ask us the particularly pointed questions uh and one of the things i loved about it is they spent the first half the time understanding us and getting us to express stuff that i think we had struggled to articulate for a while getting us to articulate the right way helping us realize that these are the areas we need to work on and think

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through and then helping us to create a pathway forward i think that's one thing i loved about the consult is that um it wasn't someone coming in telling us what to do it was someone coming in helping us work out what we had to do in a way that helped us own it love it and run with it