The Allure of #s

No matter what area of ministry you work in or are involved with there is always a strong pull to focus in on the total numbers in attendance at a particular program. This can be a very slippery slope down into the land of serving our own egos through our ministry.

Sure #s are vitally important because each # is an individual. But the story of the raw numbers does not always tell us the full story. Are these people coming from other churches, are the same people showing up multiple times? Anyway…

I’d like to focus in a little more on youth ministry right now. The story of the total #s in youth ministry is perhaps one of the greatest sources of pride as well as lack of self-esteem for many youth workers.

I read a blog post very recently in which the youth pastor relayed that they had 587 students at their last gathering.  Sounds like a ton right?  Well, if we look closer we would realize that # is only 5.8% of that particular church’s Sunday attendance (according to the blog of one of their pastor’s.)  Now, think about this situation that is much more common, a church has a part-time, of volunteer based youth ministry that is drawing 25 students each week, the church’s weekly attendance is 150.  That means that their # is 16.7%!

I am by no means trying to degrade the big church and what they are doing, I am simply trying to get us thinking about what is really going on in our ministries.  It is so easy to look at the mega-church’s youth mins and be discouraged.  This is one of a number of reasons that I have started to look at my ministries numbers a little differently lately.  I’ll be outlining some of those reasons in posts to come.