What numbers are important in the church? Are numbers even important? These questions have been around as long as the church has been lead by people. I will leave the last question for later, but we always look at numbers. It is how we measure our effectiveness.
We are now faced with a whole new set of numbers. As we are entering the digital methods of ministry or shifting from the digital as an extra to a primary method of ministry, what do the numbers mean? I know what one person is who sits in my chair on Sunday means (or at least I think I do). I do not want to discourage us but we must understand the numbers at least in some format. For this writing, I am going to focus on Facebook.
Before I go into details, if you have not looked at your numbers, you can click on your “page” on Facebook to the tab “Insights” to see some of the numbers mentioned below. Having a Page for me has been the better option and then we have groups under our page.. but that for another post.
1: Facebook does not track analytics for churches
Facebook did not create their numbers for churches to find value or understanding in their mission, much less to see if our numbers have Spiritual or transformational value. We need to be careful to think just because millions of people ‘could’ see our post it does not mean they do.
2: People Reached
One number you will see on either the actual video or the insights is “People Reached.” This number can be deceiving. In a traditional church format, we would think this means that they came in and sat through some of our services. Somewhere in that, we think maybe something stirred them. However, that is not what the number means. It simply means that is how many people saw your post or video. The closest I could say is that it is someone that drove by your church and actually saw your sign. It is important for someone to drive close enough to see our sign, but we need them in the parking lot and in the building to truly minister to them right? The same is true in “People Reached.”
3: Unique Viewers
I am a fan of tracking not general numbers, but unique people. This is not the ‘weird’ level of unique but it means that they do not get counted twice. Likewise, it also is not the average. In our normal setting, I have started tracking not only our averages only but the number of unique people who come through our doors on Sunday in a given month. This tells me truly how many people come through our ministry. I have found that number speaks volumes of our true impact in a day when the average person comes on campus 3 times a month at best.
If you click on the video you should see the video and numbers to the side. Sometimes it seems layers deep, but if you will look for “Audience and Engagement” you should be able to see “Unique viewers.” One of our better performing videos over the last couple of months stated over 4,000 reached. However, that same video had right under 1800 “Unique viewers.’ This means they viewed the video at least once. This is a much better idea of how many people are getting something from your services, devotions, and other digital content. To put in our sense of our normal. It means they drove in the parking lot and at least looked through the window to see what was happening.
4: Length of Views
This one is simple but at times discouraging. Facebook again does not track numbers for our standard practices. To get counted as a “View” it means they watched at least, wait for it… THREE seconds (no that was not an error I said seconds). That same video I mentioned above had over 2100 ‘views’ of again three whole seconds. Luckily Facebook tracks TEN whole seconds and then to see who is really engaged ONE whole minute (yes 60 seconds is the max count). That video that had over 4000 reached and had over 2100 actually ‘view’ the video (of three seconds) dropped all the way to 194 unique people who viewed at least one minute. Now that is a little deflation from saying we had 2100 people watch our video. This is those who come in, look around and decide if they are going to sit down or not. You can see the progression of that decision in these comparisons.
5: Watch Time
Each video will show an “Average Video Watch Time.” Again this is not always the most encouraging number. However, keep in mind all those 3-second views affect the average. You can also look at a period of time (set at the top of the video insights page) to see the total minutes viewed for that period as well. This feeds into number four, but it gives you a true snapshot of how long people will stay in our digital world. Somewhere between accounting for the 3-second views and the average we can begin to find how long those who are really there to watch. (You can look deeper into this number to see a timeline of when they were watching too..)
This is like someone coming in to sit down or stand at the back if the truth is told, and then seeing how long they stay. In the digital world, people do not see us come and go so we can come in late for a minute and then leave. Take that into account before you get discouraged.
What does it all mean?
The truth is for many of these can be discouraging. They say all preachers count evangelistically. I really do not know the definition of that other than it means it is inflated. So we all are pretty good at being optimistic about numbers. Here is the hope in these numbers. Most of us are not truly impacting thousands more than we were a few weeks ago by them listening to our entire sermon. However, we are seeing some drive by the church, get out and come into the digital door that has not before or in a long time. Some are other church people I am sure looking around like I am doing and I bet you are too. However, we have hope of someone checking us out for the first time and maybe they are looking for a church family or need to be saved. The point is there are still people you are impacting that you were not before, but do not get lost in the “BIG” numbers see your real impact.
All this has helped me be more realistic. Our online presence has long been said is the new front door of the church. I prefer to say it is the new lobby of the church. However, today it is much more central to the church. My first purpose of the digital church is not to reach thousands I have not seen before, but to continue to pastor my church family and our community. And hopefully, connect with someone who has been out of church a while or are searching for something at this time.
We have always said it, if it is just ONE person being saved or touched by Christ, it was worth it. Do not get lost in the numbers, it is still about ONE. First Christ, and then the ONE He wants to touch that day.
