By Michael Sove
Last week I talked about keeping things simple as far as reports from cell leaders. Joel and Jeff did a great job the last few days talking about good programs that are available for recording and tracking data to see how you are doing in your ministry to people and where they are in your equipping process.
We are a mid-sized church that has used Excellerate for the last four years. It has proven very useful for us. Everything is integrated in this system. All information on the people you are tracking is in one place. Whenever we as staff make contacts on people, we put pertinent notes in the system. The basic reports are adequate and the people at Excellerate are helpful in creating reports specific to your needs.
Regardless of the tool that you use, it will be important to have a consistent way of gathering the information. We don’t have this integrated with our web page, so our leaders receive an e-mail from our church secretary on the day on which their cell meets. This e-mail contains the list of the names of those who are in their cell. All they have to do is place an “x†next to the names of those who were in attendance, and give us the names of new attendees. The secretary goes in and updates the database. Every Monday I review the information she has received from the previous week and if we haven’t heard from one of the leaders she contacts them. Most of the people send it back without hesitation because we have kept it simple.
Once you have the information it is important to use it. Whenever I meet with a cell leader or a coach I always have their report that shows the last few months of attendance from their cell or network as well as where people are in the discipleship process. This information is invaluable.
In our weekly staff meetings we focus on some of these reports as well but pay close attention to first time guests and those who are new to our church. Remember the bottom line is this, “It’s all about people and developing people for the Glory of God†so whatever you do, don’t just gather information to gather information, use the information you gather.
Comments?
Michael