How Many Active Records Should Your Church Have? Well, Check!

Active records can be a useful indicator of how healthy your data is, but there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. Are you a church that takes up multiple city blocks or do you meet in your pastor’s garage? Hopefully, those churches would not have the same number of active records. If so, your garage pastor should consider renting his space to the local airport.

After analyzing data from churches who have undergone a Triumph Well Check, we found that, on average, churches have about 10 active records per weekend attendee. Additionally, approximately 50% of total records in a church are active. These figures were both calculated by taking the average of a sample of 79 churches, with no exclusions due to size.

So, how does your church compare to those numbers? You may be thinking “Our church does things differently-these numbers don’t really apply to us.” And you’re probably right. Each church has its own focus and strategies around getting people connected. Maybe your church needs your active records to only be the members of your church. Maybe you need active records to be anyone who you think might have the smallest chance of coming to your Easter service this year.

The goal of these numbers is not to provide a strict measuring stick to hold up to your church, but rather to get you thinking about your process for managing active records. Do you feel like you are constantly having to jump through hoops because of too many active records? Do you think it’s time to take the dreaded journey into your Data Automation and re-evaluate the conditions for activating and inactivating people?

If you answered yes (or no) to either of these questions, we want to encourage you to think critically about your churchʼs data.

If you would like a complete diagnostic on how healthy your Rock instance is, look no further than our Well Checks. Triumph Well Checks come highly recommended by the community and are carried out by our professionals who have seen and fixed it all. Just like you service your car, make sure you keep your Rock instance in tip-top shape with a Well Check!

Resources

1. Here is a SQL query you can run directly in your instance to see how many active records you have.
   Note: You may have to change or add to the values in the variables at the top if you have modified the 'Record Status' Defined Type.

DECLARE @ActiveStatusValue int = 3
DECLARE @InactiveStatusValue int = 4
DECLARE @PendingStatusValue int = 5
    
SELECT 
    COUNT(*) AS [TotalRecords]
    , SUM(CASE WHEN p.[RecordStatusValueId] = @ActiveStatusValue THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS [ActiveRecords]
    , SUM(CASE WHEN p.[RecordStatusValueId] = @InactiveStatusValue THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS [InactiveRecords]
    , SUM(CASE WHEN p.[RecordStatusValueId] = @PendingStatusValue THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS [PendingRecords]
    , FORMAT(SUM(CASE WHEN p.[RecordStatusValueId] = @ActiveStatusValue THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) * 100.0 / COUNT(*), 'N2') + '%' AS [ActiveRecordsPercentage]
FROM [Person] p

2. Check out this section of the Rock Admin Hero Guide for more information on how to set your Data Automation