20.Jul.2010 Statistics for Mission:the results!
...allowing God to help us soar higher in mission...
With thanks to the many Churchwardens, clergy, administrators and others who took valuable time to complete the Statistics for Mission returns, for the first time this year we have produced a summary of these returns. It’s an exciting and challenging story of what God is doing across the county and city – a headline from which appeared in the recent edition of Shaped by God News.
The conclusions and comments on the Statistics are my own and some are even possibly contradictory, so it is important the summary is read as a whole, rather than aspects extracted without context (for example, the exciting news of the returns which indicate over 1,300 new people have joined our worshipping communities as regular members should be held against the caution in the yellow box on page six!). I’m not a professional statistician and I’m happy to be contradicted or, even better, for additional to be reached! The main thing is that we engage together in what God is doing amongst us and saying to us – how might we best help Him to grow His Kingdom, so that lives and communities might be transformed by the saving love of Jesus Christ?
To download the summary of the Statistics for Mission click here
For the first time, this year, we are also making available the raw data, in excel format, for those interested to analyse. The hope is that this will result in additional conclusions being reached, maybe more specific to Mission Partnership or Deanery, as well as help the ongoing diocesan 2020 vision process. It is important that the caveats in the above summary are held alongside the raw data, which is in Excel format. To download the spreadsheet click here.
UPDATE: Also, Bob Jackson (church growth consultant) has written some thoughts on using these Statistics for Mission. He proposes four stages: collecting, collating, reading and interpreting. The above summary deals with the collating, reading and some of the interpreting, but much more local interpretation work remains to be done. To read Bob’s paper and explore how it might relate to your benefice, Mission Partnership or Deanery click here: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/churchcommissioners/resourcingmission/chapter5.pdf