How to track your Covid comeback.

Written by Boyd Pelley | 11/4/20 4:28 PM

Some good news - It's finally November, 2020.

We're on the last lap of this most unique year. Many churches have started and are starting to meet for large group worship on Sunday again. Many will still wait a couple more months or longer. Some have restarted and had to go back to just live stream due to a Covid outbreak in their community. But, whenever the time is right for your church, you're going to want a way to track the comeback.

You probably have summary data that allows you track worship attendance from January 1 to March 8 and then compare it to attendance since or once you re-open. An even better metric would be to compare attendance this year to attendance the same weeks last year. Then do the same for giving and small group attendance. I bet most of you do that already.

This is a good, big picture of how you are doing with your comeback. But, what if you want to dig in and get details. What if you want to see a list of families who attended regularly before but haven't come back? Or families that gave significantly but haven't given since Covid? This could help you identify and then discreetly discover families who've lost their jobs in the downturn.

If you are a Churchteams client, here are 3 overall reports you likely already use.

Worship Attendance (Summary). Reports > Groups > Attendance Chart. Put in dates you want. Ex. Same week last year, Year to date, last 15 months. Then Filters > Groups > Groups > Selected Groups / Group Types and select your worship groups that have attendance in them.
Group Attendance (Summary). Same process, just different groups. You might even use Ministry Area instead of selecting one group at a time.
Giving (Summary). Logged in as Financial Admin. Reports > Financial > Contribution Summary Chart. Pick same dates as Worship. No filters needed. Run.

But, here are 3 "by person" reports that you may not do, that can help you identify activity and potential needs of individuals and families in your church.

Worship or Group Attendance (Detail). Staff access on up. Reports > Groups > Attendance By Member Consistency > Select date range and check boxes as shown. Then filter by all groups or ministry types that you want to include. The result will be a list of people in those groups from least to most consistency and the dates they attended. You'll be able to spot trends from this.
Giving (Detail). Financial Admin only. Reports > Members > Member Listing. Choose any output data you want to see. Then Filters > Contributions. Select criteria like this one that shows people who gave twice between 1/1/20 and 3/15/20 but nothing since.
Last Activity (Detail). Staff level and up. This report will give you families who last attended, gave, registered for or were put into a group, or had a note entered on them between January 1 and March 8 this year. Go to Reports > Members > Member Listing. Choose any output data you want to see. Then Filters > Members > Fixed attributes. Scroll down to find the last activity date as shown.

If these reports aren't as helpful as you were hoping, the problem is likely that the output you want from the system exceeds the input. If this is true, a major take-away from 2020 for you is to elevate the value for ALL staff to consistently use the database. At the end of the day, your church database is a shepherding tool to help you care for people well. That includes helping them transition back to church on Sunday when the time is right.

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