Every Monday I post one of The Basics. The Basics are simple steps every church can take to grow. They are the same steps that led my church from 87 people in attendance to over 700. These steps have helped my church see hundreds of people saved and baptized in just a few short years. Most of these steps you can take this week without even having a board meeting. These are The Basics.

If you’re interested in seeing your church grow numerically and spiritually, there are some numbers you’re going to need to track. By tracking the following numbers year after year, you will be able to measure your success. This allows you to celebrate areas of growth and make changes in areas of decline. These are the eight main areas we track each year.

• Worship Attendance – Almost every church I know of tracks worship attendance. Keep it simple. Count every man, woman, and child who attends your church each Sunday.

• Giving – These are the tithes and offerings given each week. These numbers can be key indicators for growth or decline in a church.

• First Time Guests – Your church grows one guest at a time. The more first time guests you have, the more likely your church will grow. On average, between 10-20 percent of first time guests will become active members of your church.

• Second Time Guests – Once a guest visits your church for a second time, the likelihood of he/she becoming an active member jumps to 20-40 percent.

• Salvations – One of the main goals of the church should be to add people to God’s Kingdom. It’s important to know how well you’re doing that. If you see salvation numbers decreasing, it may be time to teach more on evangelism.

• Baptisms – We would like to see everyone who makes a decision to follow Christ follow through in baptism. Obviously, this doesn’t always happen, but by tracking it we can follow up with people who need to take their next step.

• Volunteers – It’s great to know how many people are coming to your church, but a more important number is how many people are serving. We believe you’re never more like Jesus than when you’re serving others.

• Small Group Attendance – We believe biblical community is important. It was a huge part of the early church (Acts 2:44-47), so it should be a huge part of the church today.

These are the eight areas we track in our church. The numbers you track may look a little different depending on what you believe is most important. The important thing is keeping track of them.

A tool we’ve used for several years now is ChurchMetrics. It’s a free online software that will track many of the numbers we’ve discussed, as well as allow you to run reports. For the areas it doesn’t track we’ve used a simple Excel spreadsheet.

I’d love to hear about the numbers your church tracks, and what tools you’re using. Let me know in the comments below.