First, a Little Pop Quiz
You love meeting new people, but when it comes to data reporting, which statement below describes you?
- What is it?
- It makes my head spin!
- I couldn’t live without it!
Data reporting is the practice of mining your data for trends, patterns, and the answers to burning questions, such as “how many of our members are plugged into a small group?” and “how well are we moving our members through a spiritual growth track toward becoming leaders?”
At Fellowship One, we’re passionate about data reporting. Unless you’re really only interested in a glorified Rol-a-dex (we’re not!), data reporting is the most important reason for collecting and storing data. We believe member and visitor data is a leader’s most valuable ministry resource for offering exceptional member care and for enabling predictive and data-driven decision-making.
It’s Personal
That’s all well and good, but here’s a story that illustrates the REAL reason you should care about data reporting:
Pastor Jon Stroker at the 7-year old Vista Community Church in Temple, Texas, recently shared with us that shortly after implementing Fellowship One in 2013, the church pulled a report on families or individuals who had been regularly checking their kids in on Sundays, but who were absent the last 4 weeks.
They had not been keeping attendance records long, so the report highlighted only one family, who were not members yet. They reached out to the family and discovered that the mother had recently passed away. The family was surprised and touched that a church where they had only been visiting on and off over the last year without ever really getting plugged in would have noticed their absence.
The church took this opportunity to pour into the grieving family with food, childcare, and encouragement. Since then, the family has become members of the Vista community, along with several of their extended family members.
That’s the power of data reporting in action!
If you’re new to the concept of data reporting, you should know that Fellowship One leads the church management software (ChMS) industry in this area. It was a key component of our software design from the beginning.
There’s a lot of confusion around the topic, so if you’re researching ChMS solutions, we invite you to download our No Surprises: Questions You Should Ask Every Software Provider about Reporting. It will help you make sense of the conflicting answers you’re likely to get.
You cannot possibly keep up with or guess all the life events your congregants are experiencing. Data Reporting could help you keep families like the one in Temple, Texas from slipping through the cracks when life hits hard.
Data Reporting can help you be there.
Isn’t that the best reason to collect data in the first place?
