Increase Engagement with Data-Driven Strategies: Ronee de Leon on Unlocking Your Church Database’s Potential

Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ronee de Leon, the Director of Executive Project Management from Grace Fellowship, a multisite church in Ohio.

Many churches have some sort of church management software and mountains of data. But figuring out how to make it actionable so you’re connecting with your congregation is a different story. Listen as Ronee shares how you can make your data actionable and track people’s engagement in order to better shepherd and disciple individuals in your flock.

* Making data actionable. // Like many other churches, Grace Fellowship had a wealth of data from their congregants but struggled to know who to reach out to and when. To address this, they developed PATH Engagement Software, an add-on to their church management software. PATH is compatible with both Church Community Builder and Planning Center and provides user-friendly, holistic reports, such as an engagement index to track an individual’s engagement over time. 

* The Engagement Index. // PATH Engagement Software currently offers five modules including an Engagement Index. Through this program, a church can track both the long-term and short-term engagement of an individual. The long-term engagement lets you track a person’s engagement over time whereas the short-term report helps you understand as people disengage. And because the software refreshes multiple times a day, churches can access the trend report in real-time.

* Understanding disengagement. // Many times, there are care issues related to disengagement. By helping to identify disengagement, a church can reach out to individuals and families in order to provide pastoral care and support where needed. The short-term report provides the names of those who are disengaging and the staff that is closest to them can then reach out. Seeing these reports gives churches more clarity so they can come alongside as well as shepherd and disciple people who are disengaging.

* Cast vision. // As a church grows, people can start to fall through the cracks, but acquiring good data can help close the gap. It can be difficult to get people to engage with attendance tracking systems so it’s important to communicate the heart and the why behind it. Ronee stresses that every data point represents a soul and churches will be able to better come alongside individuals on their faith journeys if they are gathering good data. Talk about these things consistently with your staff and lay leaders. Enforce the vision to make sure the right data is being collected at all levels of the organization.

* Unique Individual Engagement Report. // Another report that PATH supplies is called the Unique Individual Engagement Report. It tracks each individual person that your ministry touches over a period of time so that you can understand the reach of your ministry beyond weekend services. PATH is seeing that through groups or other ministries and activities over and above weekend services, healthy, growing churches are typically serving an additional 35-40% more people than what attendance numbers show at weekend services alone.

* Pastoral shepherding. // At PATH they’ve also discovered that the most fruitful discipleship conversations are happening with people who are mid-range engaged. People who are highly engaged and disengage for a time often find their way back on their own. People who are nominally engaged are much harder to win over. But people who are mid-range engaged in the church are very responsive to pastoral shepherding when they begin to disengage.

* Leverage your data. // Leveraging data also helps with having effective pastoral conversations. However,