4 Benefits of Tracking Group Attendance

No matter what tool a church uses to track group attendance, there are multiple benefits for recording the attendance of members and guests.

By Ken Braddy

Do the groups in your church track attendance? In the recent State of Groups study, Lifeway Research found just over half of churches (53%) track attendance in their groups.

Some churches use a low-tech system for tracking attendance (paper and pen), while others have discovered a digital record-keeping system works best for them.

No matter what kind of tool a church uses to track attendance, there are multiple benefits for taking the time to record the weekly attendance of members and guests.

1. Pain points and growth opportunities are recognized

I’m currently working with a church in Florida to complete an extensive space survey of their church campus. The goal of this project is to determine why the church has plateaued, and group attendance is one of the measurements we must consider.

After measuring every classroom and determining total square footage and how many people should comfortably fit in each room, I’ve examined the average attendance of each group. I’ve compared average attendance with each room’s capacity to determine if it was 80% full (the place at which growth begins to cool off).

Growth of groups begins to cool off when the room they're meeting in reaches 80% full, according to @KenBraddy. Share on X

In doing this, I’ve found many of the church’s classrooms for kids, students, and adults are close to (or beyond) 80% capacity. I’ve also determined there are 17 open classrooms in which the church can start new groups to alleviate the crowded conditions.

Now that we’ve identified pain points for growing the ministry, we can make plans to start new groups and grow the groups ministry again. Without attendance records, I’d simply be guessing as to the cause of the plateaued state of the church’s groups ministry.

2. Caring and follow-up is enhanced

Words create worlds, and what we call a list of people who attend a group matters—a lot. Does your Bible study group call that list a “class roll” or use a different term? I’ve written with others about this in the book Shepherd: Creating Caring Community:

Perhaps the first step a group must take to signal that it wants to create caring community is to change what it calls the roster of people who are members of the group. If it’s just a Bible study group that meets once a week, the people who have enrolled are put on a Class Roll. In a caring community, they are added to a Ministry List. What’s the difference? A Class Roll connotes that the primary commitment is from Member to Class. That is, the member has made a commitment to attend the class. A Ministry List, on the other hand, connotes that the primary commitment is from Class/Community to the Member. 

Tracking people’s attendance allows the group to spring into action and serve absentee members and guests. You will have a hard time doing that if you don’t have a view of people’s attendance patterns.

“Tracking people’s attendance allows the group to spring into action and serve absentee members and guests.” — @KenBraddy Share on X

3. Future leaders can be recognized and enlisted

Every church has a need to start new groups. Because the majority of new leaders will come from existing groups, it’s important churches maintain accurate records. When a pastor or church leader begins to create a list of potential new leaders, they often consider the church members whose percentage of attendance is high. The only way to truly know that percentage is to trust the record-keeping of each adult group.

Would you be comfortable enlisting a new leader whose percentage of attendance was 25-30%? How about 50-60%? Maybe your church has a threshold percentage of 75% or higher. Tracking attendance either eliminates people from consideration or places them in the “maybe” column as you pray about who to approach.

4. Community is built

Regular attendance records encourage stronger bonds between members, as familiarity and shared experiences grow over time. Many adult groups have subdivided members into smaller “care groups,” and use these “micro groups” to help people stay connected to the group and one another, throughout the year. Care groups take into consideration people’s need for biblical community.

Group members engage in active learning during a weekly Bible study, but they also have the added connection to a smaller subset of the group. Only through accurate record-keeping can a group begin to divide its members into care groups. Each of these smaller groups within the group needs a balance of people who regularly attend, occasionally attend, and almost never attend.

The data alone won’t change a thing. But if churches choose to act on their attendance data, they can make key decisions about the future of their ministry through groups.

For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.