Part 1: Buy-in from the Beginning
Series: What You Need to Create a New Church Data Program
In my experience, there are two must-haves for a successful data program implementation: senior/executive leadership support and a church data expert. In 15 years of working with churches and data, I have yet to see any organization be successful without both of those components.
What Does Church Leader Buy-in Look Like?
We know how to address the church data expert piece, and when we think about our most successful clients, several traits and conditions have been helped lead to results:
The leadership team is open to improvement and feedback. They know there’s more than one way to do things and are willing to learn.
Church leaders are curious and have a strong desire to know and learn more.
The leadership team is willing to test assumptions, knowing they may find things that don’t work as often as they find something that works.
Church staff understand their mission can remain unchanged, even if the way they’re working can change.
The leadership team is willing to invest in a data program with time and financial support.
Of course, no list of five items is completely true in every instance for every church, forever and ever, amen. The bottom line is we’ve seen churches with supportive, invested leaders do really well with taking the next steps on leveraging data as fuel for a growing church.
Gathering Support and Buy-In
If that list of traits leaves you with a sinking-stomach feeling when you think about implementing a program at your own church, don’t worry. Below are some ways to help develop a church leader’s understanding and appreciation of data programs:
Explain the benefits of a data program for your church. Data programs are an investment, and most leaders want to be really clear on what the return is on that investment. We believe the return on investment (ROI) for church data programs comes in two ways: the ministry benefits of having a program, but also the cost of not having a program in place. Making guesses for decisions without data to back them up comes with cost.
For example, studies show that church guests will continue to attend churches where they are engaged; as Carey Nieuwhof writes, “people become most passionate about the things with which they’re most involved.”
When you’re collecting intentional data about how your guests are engaging with your ministries (while maintaining their privacy and security), the better your church leadership’s understanding of the guest engagement. You also learn where you could improve, which gives you the option to make changes and leads to a greater likelihood of both guest retention and guest satisfaction, resulting in guests inviting their family and friends (growth!).
Identify problems in your organization that a data program can solve.
Guest engagement touches every aspect of your church, including the areas where your church leaders are most interested or focused. Identify those focus areas, and explain how your data program will address them.
For example, maybe you’re seeing a decline in guests signing up to serve. A data program would enable you to identify guests who show interest in serving, go through the interviewing and onboarding process, and begin serving. We could visualize this flow and identify where people might be getting lost in the system, or discover ways in which the system is actually making it difficult for guests to get involved.
Data can help us see when a lack of interest in a program poses challenges as opposed to seeing something in our program that we can adjust to create a better guest engagement experience.
Connect your data program to your church’s mission.
Your data program shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. As you develop your data strategy, work with your church executives and ministry leaders to identify your organization’s key objectives and make direct connections to your data program.
Analyze your data to understand how your church is performing and where it might be falling short on its goals. For example, if your children’s ministry has a goal to reach 25 new families this year, utilize a data program to track when a family attends for the first time and whether or not they return.
If new families are not returning, it is a great starting place for conversation as a team to become curious as to why. A simple phone call with the new family may reveal opportunities to create a better experience. Was the sign-in process confusing? Did signage help families find where to go? Did their children have fun, or was their classroom chaotic and understaffed?
Data gives us the tools to get curious and ask questions, which ultimately leads to a more enriching guest experience.
Conclusion
When church leaders can see how your data strategy relates to overall ministry objectives, they’re often supportive and ready to dive in. If not, there may be fear of what the data might reveal or a deeper issue causing the hesitancy.
What happens after the buy-in? Stay tuned for part 2 of this three-part series on implementing a data program for your church.
Have questions in the meantime? We’d love to hear them.
