5 Different Ways to Measure Whether Your Church Services Are Having Impact (And 5 Big Implications)

Learning professionals, from the largest companies in the world to the most prestigious universities in the world, all use a similar format to measure the impact of their learning.

LEVEL 1

Participant Experience: Was it fun, interactive, soothing, challenging, etc?

LEVEL 2

Knowledge or Skill Learned: Can the participants repeat back the information correctly (or demonstrate the skill) when tested afterwards?

LEVEL 3

Behavior Change: After the event is over and they go back to regular life, what behavior changes (if any) do they show?

LEVEL 4

Overall Organization Impact: What changes can be seen after the experience in the overall organization performance (for churches, typical measurements of this are numbers of visitors, baptisms, giving, etc)?

LEVEL 5

Return On Investment (ROI): How much did it cost vs. how much impact did you see?

5 BIG IMPLICATIONS

Study after study shows that there's no automatic link between Level 1 and Level 2. Just because they like it doesn't mean they're learning anything. One of the most common rookie mistakes is to make decisions about what gets funding and personnel based on Level 1 info alone.

Same goes for links between Level 2 and Level 3. Just because they understood what you said doesn't mean they're doing anything different as a result. They may be loving the experience and learning a ton--and going back to life as usual. (Sound painfully familiar to anyone?)

Measuring behavior change doesn't require "Big Brother" to set up cameras in your members' homes. You can simple ask them on anonymous surveys. Free survey's like this can be found at sites like www.surveymonkey.com, which I use. (No, that isn't an affiliate link and I don't make any money if you click it.)

It's not unspiritual to measure ROI. Yes, we would spend lots of money to save just one. But I'd rather spend that money differently and save on hundred--or one thousand. Jesus talked a lot about getting a good return (parables of the talents, the sower and seed, etc).

The best professionals plan their events by starting with goals for each of the Levels--working from the bottom up. What impact overall do we want to have? What behavior change is needed? What will they have to learn to do that behavior change? What kind of experience will make that learning most possible? (See my earlier POST on different experience options.)

[If you want to read more about this, check out the guy who taught me: Jack Phillips. He's written many books on measuring what's hard to measure, certifies people on his ROI process through year long programs, consults with organizations like the NSA, Fortune 100 companies, etc. His company's webpage is: http://www.roiinstitute.net]