This time of year the completion of Statistics for Mission, especially in multi parish benefices, can be a daunting task!
However, I found after being in post for a few years, that this became a really helpful benchmark to reflect on the life of the church and its outreach in the community.
I would meet with the Churchwardens for each parish, and we would spend an hour filling in the form from the registers including making a list of the people who were part of our church community for the stats.
It was helpful to compare this list year on year, and helped us bring to mind those people whom we had maybe lost sight of… those who we hadn’t seen for a few months, those who we had been in contact with for weddings, christenings and funerals. This prompted us to make contact, to look out for these people when out and about in the parishes, or to invite those people, particularly to the next mission event as we felt appropriate.
It was also helpful to use some of the graphs generated from the statistics given in the annual report for the APCM. This saved a good amount of time a couple of months later!
Statistics for Mission measures church attendance in several different ways, and the data collected enables the Church of England and its diocese to help plan and evaluate its mission and ministry.
The form can be submitted online using the Archbishops Council portal. If you require login details to use this system, or are having issues logging in, please do not hesitate to contact Ben Tooke on 01603 881723 or ben.tooke@dioceseofnorwich.org
