Stories and statistics

I couldn't tell you where I stole this line from, but I'm fairly confident I didn't come up with it myself... for now I'll give credit to the unknown source, but eventually I'll get to the point where I'll take credit for this expression, but here it is.

Behind every statistic is a story

Looking at the church overall, and speaking from personal experience, I know that all too often people look at easily track-able numbers like attendance when it comes to looking at our statistics as a church to see "How we're doing". While this isn't the case at Lifepoint, I do know at churches I have been to in the past the focus seemed to be on attendance, and in force of habit, on occasion I have found myself regressing to see how we did on a Sunday by attendance, instead of focusing on things like that are nowhere near as easy to track such as salvations, baptisms, and/or as how we like to put it, Life Change.

But if you look at it even with attendance, how often do we really pay attention to what those numbers actually mean?

Every one of those "numbers" is a person with a story, that person? you know the one who was number four hundred ninety nine, do you know their story? do you know that their family was in discord before they started coming to Church and that it's made such a huge impact in their lives? What about person number four? They're the one who didn't want anything to do with God or church before a friend dragged them in (kicking and screaming) and now after encountering God their life has turned around and they're not only here every week, but helping with setup and now, bringing their friends!

What about volunteer number 49? They're the one who had been burned by "Religion" and was done with church, who never knew a church like this could exist, where the purpose is to reach people far from Christ, and now are back on fire for the Lord?

Or Kid number 87, who's parents brought them to kidspoint for the first time, who finally was told the gospel in a way that made sense to a 3rd grader and changed their life forever...

Those kind of stories go WAY beyond simple numbers, and this post is more of a mental reminder to myself than to anyone else and really help to drive that point home, maybe you're the Pastor of a Megachurch with over 3k in weekly attendance, or maybe your the choir director of a church that has more people in the choir then on the pews... is Life change happening at your church? What are the stories behind some of your statistics?