Monday, November 23, 2009

How to estimate church attendence

From Andrew Jones' blog.



It's a complex thing to measure church attendance but here are a few pointers on arriving at an accurate number based on the attendance figures they give you.

- 50% if its a Pentecostal worship service because they count the legs and forget to divide by two.

- 30% if its a Baptist church because they count members on the roll and not all of them are still living.

+ 10 if its a Vineyard service because those rugs on the floor were actually people!

+ 20% if it's a fundamentalist church because they don't count the people they didn't want there.

- 30% if it's an Anglican/Presbyterian/Methodist church because the number they gave you is from their huge Easter service.

+ 15% if it's an ethnic/non-western service because all those people coming late missed the counting.

- 10% if its a megachurch because the worship team and welcome team got counted during all 5 services.

- 520% if its a Catholic church because they count the parish, not the church attendance.

+ 20% if it's an emergent service because those having a smoke outside were not counted.

- 25 % if its a Reformed church service because they count the people who SHOULD have been there.

- 15% if it's a house church because the neighborhood kids playing video games in the back room somehow managed to get counted with everyone else. So did the guy delivering pizza.

1 comment:

David-FireAndGrace said...

Excellent! Thanks for the chuckle. Particularly as a Vineyard guy. (Now they make folks sit down during ministry time.)