In 2016 I decided to keep track of my church attendance. I have been impressed by sermons and posts online about the importance of local church membership and attendance. I hope that this does not become some type of legalistic standard for any to follow. My intention was to measure my church attendance in 2016. I don’t actually know quite how to interpret the results, but here they are if you are interested.
My church meets Sunday morning for Sunday School, then again for a service, then again Sunday evening. We also have a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
All that being said, with the various cancellations in 2016, my church offered 205 opportunities to hear God’s Word and pray with the brethren.
I attended 84% of those services or 172 times.
I attended another church 10 times when it was at the same time as my church, bumping my total attendance to 182 meetings or 89% of possible time. Or seen another way, I attended my church 88% of the time after “excused absences.”
If I subtract out family matters which kept me from church, my overall attendance rises to 94%.
I don’t know if that is good or bad or whatever. It is just what it is. I do know that if a person just attended my church on Sunday morning for one service, they’d have a 25% attendance rate so it is better than that. If I only went to 3 of those services each week, I’d have a 75% rate.
I also taught or preached 25 times. That is about 5 months of teaching once a week. This was spread all throughout the year. But out of 205 “services” I ministered 25 of them, meaning I teach about 12% of the time, or every other week on average.
So how are you doing? It is early enough in 2017 for you to start keeping track and seeing how you do. What would your commitment be if you bought season tickets to a sports team? Better than 94%? I think this is a thoughtful way to try to measure yourself without condemning yourself or finding your hope in your church attendance. If anything, I hope it would help you in some way.
