lies, lies and statistics
I am doing some work on statistics for our annual report. It is a year that particularly interests me as it is now five years since we begun our journey in merging four churches in the northern suburbs of Melbourne in an attempt to respond to the new missional context the churches found themselves in. Prior to the merge, all four churches had a trend analysis that meant closure in the near future.
The commitment to the new and the unknown was always a part of the deal. There was an understanding from the early stages that to continue to operate as we were meant that the newly merged church would continue with the same path of continuing to die.
Some more work is needed to analysing some of the data and some conclusions are hard because our record keeping is vague when the four churches merged. But, five years on:
182 people actively committed to one of our congregations and 101 of those are new since the merge.
January 24th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
A set of very encouraging signs and yes the intent was just as it is beginning to be more people to be engaged in the buisness of being the presence of Jesus.
August 28th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
Your site has made me smile