Does your church track member attendance?

[frokey]

I was wondering how many of you track weekly member attendance? Not talking about general numbers, but specific individual attendance. I've thought about this in the past, but couldn't see how it could work smoothly without being cumbersome, distracting, etc. If you do it successfully and think it's worth it, how?

[Mustangnaz]

We actually started something this week in staff meeting where we all get a list of people and together we go through it to check everyone that was there. It goes really fast with everyone working together, we got all 300ish people done in less than 5 minutes.
But here is the new system I am looking at implementing:
1) Use one of the video cameras to pan the congregation during service.
2) Print off a list of the members (and barcodes) from PowerChurch Plus.
3) Have one person watch the video and name people while another person scans the names into PowerChurch Plus.

[riafekim]

We have someone count from the back for numbers and we have on each aisle a 'friendship roster' that our pastor has everybody put their name on. Not the prettiest way but it works for us.

I like the idea of using the video.

I thought about just implanting a chip on peoples forehand and then just swipping it as they come in. I am sure someone would throw a fit and mention something about the mark of the beast....

[cbcmary]

we do check 'roll' in sunday school and other group activities, but only a head count for worship services.

mary

[Gracetech]

We have membership pads thay get passed. It allows us to know which church members are there which regular attenders are stopping buy and who is new. The information then gets broken down and we follow up with those that are new and keep praying for the regular attenders.

crt

[tedanderson]

If you do it successfully and think it's worth it, how?

We use the offering to determine attendance. We encourage everyone to have a seed every Sunday but if they don't (for whatever reason) the pastor has asked us to give a small amount, even if it's a penny, nickel or a dime so that the financial staff can register you into the system as having given an offering that day. We have even have one of those "Give a penny/Take a penny" trays at the door so if you object to coming out of your own pocket, the church will absorb the expense.

And it's well worth our efforts because it helps us keep up with people who have been out of church for a while as a result of a health condition, injury, or some other severe family matter. We expect the members to call in if they are having life challenges or hardships that are keeping them out of church but the attendance helps us proactively keep up with members who stray away, whatever the reason.

[Pastor Tim]

We pass attendance pads during the service (always mentioned during announcements) and then I enter the results into a spreadsheet and add the people who, for some reason or another, didn't put their names on the pads (worship team, stubborn, etc.). My wife checks the list and it then goes to my head usher who does follow-up calling on those who are AWOL. Even in our small congregation of just over 100 'congregants' it is easy to miss when someone is gone. The routine follow-up calls (and visits from me if warranted) seem to help a lot with keeping people consistent.

Pastor Tim

[cmchamp]

We keep attendance for SS, but for regular service, those of us on the platform (chancel) overview the congregation during the opening, singing of hymns, specials etc. and alert pastor if we feel someone has been missing for too long. We're a pretty close nit congregation that prays a lot for each other, so seldom does something slip through the cracks.

[Paris MkVI]

We're a cell-based church, so that affects how we do this.

Every "welcome messenger" (our service flyer) has a welcome card in it. We encourage all members, sponsorees (folks who attend regularly but are not in a cell group) and visitors to fill them out and place them in the offering. The welcome card includes name address and contact info, demographic information, boxes to check for requests, or to note they have made a spiritual decision, and space to write in prayers and praises.

After four weeks of regular attendance, a visitor becomes a sponsoree and is assigned a sponsoring community group leader and section pastor. We send them a note in the mail introducing ourselves to them.

The welcome cards are collected every Sunday and sorted by zone, section and group. Every member is in a community group. All sponsorees have a community (cell) group leader and section pastor assigned for them. Welcome cards with any written praise or prayer requests are then, by community group, scanned into the copier and e-mailed to the community group leaders. In this way we can quickly respond if need be. All the physical welcome cards for the group leader are made available by Monday morning.

If someone doesn't take their name tag or leave a welcome card for four weeks, we contact them to make sure all is well. After ten weeks, if they have not taken their name tag, left a welcome card or responded to our attempts to contact them, we drop them from the name tag list. They remain in the Excellerate database for much longer, though, in case they return.

It is not a perfect system, and it requires time and effort, but works well to keep us connected. We don't watch the numbers except to determine what we will require to meet needs. Our focus is connecting to people first. I figure since the Lord said He would build His church, we'll focus on the things we can do to lift up and support others as He does His work.

We say it this way: it's not about building a church. It's about connecting folks with Jesus and changing lives.

The Lord is doing the church-building part for us, just like He said He would!

[Steven]

We have around 5,000 people on our campus each weekend. About 2,500 of these make it into the worship services (the rest are infants/kids/youth/whatever). In our weekly program (bulletin) we have a slip of paper called the "communication slip." Every week, we have everyone fill it out. If this is your first time, fill it out. If this is your 347395³th time, fill it out. Give us as much information as you feel comfortable giving. Some people fill out everything (name, phone, address, age, kids, etc). Some only put their name.

This accomplishes a few things.
1) By having everyone fill it out, a new guest actually feels out of place by not filling it out, so they turn in their slip. It also gives the guest something to put into the offering, so they're not giving us money, but don't feel bad either.
2) It allows us to keep attendance records for our congregation.
3) It allows us to identify new guests (because they will be a new entry in our database) and mail them a hand-written postcard and a gift.
4) It allows us to track attendance so we can send postcards to those who have been missing for a few weeks,
5) It allows us to see whether a person who wants to be a teacher/leader/etc has been coming consistently.
6) It allows us to send mailers/info to our congregation when needed (rare).
7) It allows us to identify which geographic and demographic areas we are reaching.
8) It helps us see where our people live, so we can plan events and/or new campus churches in their area. We recently found that a large population of our church was driving 30 minutes from a particular zip code, so we planted a church there. Attendance there is up to 250, with no negative affect on the main campus.

[tedanderson]

We don't watch the numbers except to determine what we will require to meet needs. Our focus is connecting to people first.

Good point. That's another reason why we started taking attendance. We know that we have 'X' amount of people on our rosters but knowing how many people actually come on a regular basis helps us prepare for events, gatherings, etc.

[MFGC]

Our church is beyond small - 25 folks this week. We have an usher stand at the door with a clipboard and check off names as people come in. Which leads to a rabbit trail sort of question - has anyone else noticed attendance dropping significantly in the past year or so? We've gone from a high of almost 200 five years ago to an average of 50 or so more recently. In the past month that has dropped to 25 - 30. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Sue