When I visit a home if they is 20 people there, I count it as one visit. If the hospital room has 5 folk, I made one visit to minister to the patient. Same with a nursin home, I made a (meaning one) visit to see the resident, so if 10 family members is there, I did not make 10 visits.
I’ve heard of pastors who drive school buses as counting every child they pick up and deliver (each day) as a home visited. This would put their visits near a 1000 each month. Makes for impressive numbers at the end of the year for a bi-vocational pastor who runs 20 in attendance on a high Sunday. Some denominations have just annual ministers reports, with some accountability to the local church on a more frequent bases. Have you ever felt managed by the questions on the monthly reports? As in the questions are instructing you as to what you or your local church needs to be doing. Seems like its a kind of paternalist control system by the higher ups to keep the worker bees busy.
My brother, if you are indeed providing spiritual encouragement or prayer or invitations to be saved or to come to church, then as far as I’m concerned (and I am POSITIVE that everyone with any sense agrees with me), that counts as a visit.If someone went door to door in the neighborhood and invited people to church, I would consider that a legitimate visit–even if it winds up with someone saying they already have a home church. How much more should we count a visit that actually has some spiritual heft to it?Another question is whether a PHONE CALL is a visit? I mean, when you go for a visit, you are TALKING to people, right? If you call someone, you are TALKING to people. So….
I filled out these reports for a few years. I used to be embarrassed at the numbers I put in the blocks. It has been so long since I filled out a report I have forgotten what I did. BUT if you do visit and ‘talk-to’ or encourage several I see no problem with the report.I have never been one to be impressed by numbers until at my dad’s funeral. Someone had checked his life time numbers (I have no idea how they got them, it was over 50 years of reports), they certainly were impressive and I could not see my dad ‘inflating any number’.Over all reports are good barometers for ‘bean counters’ in admin for statistics, but I think guessing would probably be just as good a barometer. ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Administrations of all types LOVE reports and numbers, it is something to play with and come up with new programs and maybe even add a new box.I have never been a public school teacher, but in the last few years I have know some. They seemed to be loaded down with ‘REPORTS’, so much so that a couple said it took 2-3 hours of their time a week just for REPORTS.That said, I would like to see a 1940-50 report form and one for 2017 to see the big difference. Just for fun________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
One time as I was filling our my report I thought about how dumb I thought Pastoral Visits one the report were. So I decide to find out if they (Cleveland) pay any attention to pastoral visits. So I reported 10,000,000 I did not hear from anyone. So next month I reported 10,000,001 again nothing. My wife’s cousin worked in records. She said some ran through their department saying look at this report. She looked and said, that is my cousin. I suppose when I die and they show my records at the assembly someone will get a laugh. BTW, I have not reported a pastoral report since then. In fact I didn’t report them before that________________Recorded Sermons @ http://www.pastorwiley.com
I felt (and still do) that AVERAGING the SS and FTH together can give a very wrong impression as to how many attend. For instance, if I have 4 in Sunday School, but 400 for mid-week service, that is an average of 733 (just kidding; 204). HOWEVER, when someone called me about it (as I was reporting the numbers in the comment box, since I didn’t know how else to go about it), I realized that I was making someone’s job harder than it had to be (including mine!). So I just have gone with it ever since.At the same time, I have noted that it seems that Morning Worship is the big service that matters most now. I wonder what would happen if we could get ALL the services on the report. Not averaged, etc., but stand-alone numbers.If a church didn’t have a Sunday night service, then, instead of putting in zero or NR (not reported), there would be something else there to note that there is not service on Sunday night. At the same time, I imagine that some folks would decide to have a Sunday night service if it were being counted–ESPECIALLY if they could show up in the Top 25!Years ago, our church decided to try to break into the Top 25 Sunday Schools (I don’t know if it is still listed that way, but back then it was). We made it to the Top 26…but that was a moral victory for us. (Of course, with the way some folks count, it’s not really fair. To count people standing in the hallway…or that walk in 30 seconds before Sunday School is over…is JUST CHEATING. We just had a policy that a person had to be in class for at least 15 minutes–that may not be the greatest idea either, but we felt it was fair–in order to be counted.)
Do you get kicked out for too many visits?Is there a max?Perhaps they would prefer you listed 0________________
When I visit a home if they is 20 people there, I count it as one visit. If the hospital room has 5 folk, I made one visit to minister to the patient. Same with a nursin home, I made a (meaning one) visit to see the resident, so if 10 family members is there, I did not make 10 visits.
I’ve heard of ….
I’ve heard of pastors who drive school buses as counting every child they pick up and deliver (each day) as a home visited. This would put their visits near a 1000 each month. Makes for impressive numbers at the end of the year for a bi-vocational pastor who runs 20 in attendance on a high Sunday. Some denominations have just annual ministers reports, with some accountability to the local church on a more frequent bases. Have you ever felt managed by the questions on the monthly reports? As in the questions are instructing you as to what you or your local church needs to be doing. Seems like its a kind of paternalist control system by the higher ups to keep the worker bees busy.
WAIT JUST A MINUTE!!!
Are y’all telling me that y’all are NOT counting your visits to Actscelerate as pastoral visits?
My brother, if you are indeed providing spiritual encouragement or prayer or invitations to be saved or to come to church, then as far as I’m concerned (and I am POSITIVE that everyone with any sense agrees with me), that counts as a visit.If someone went door to door in the neighborhood and invited people to church, I would consider that a legitimate visit–even if it winds up with someone saying they already have a home church. How much more should we count a visit that actually has some spiritual heft to it?Another question is whether a PHONE CALL is a visit? I mean, when you go for a visit, you are TALKING to people, right? If you call someone, you are TALKING to people. So….
I filled out these reports for a few years. I used to be embarrassed at the numbers I put in the blocks. It has been so long since I filled out a report I have forgotten what I did. BUT if you do visit and ‘talk-to’ or encourage several I see no problem with the report.I have never been one to be impressed by numbers until at my dad’s funeral. Someone had checked his life time numbers (I have no idea how they got them, it was over 50 years of reports), they certainly were impressive and I could not see my dad ‘inflating any number’.Over all reports are good barometers for ‘bean counters’ in admin for statistics, but I think guessing would probably be just as good a barometer. ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Administrations of all types LOVE reports and numbers, it is something to play with and come up with new programs and maybe even add a new box.I have never been a public school teacher, but in the last few years I have know some. They seemed to be loaded down with ‘REPORTS’, so much so that a couple said it took 2-3 hours of their time a week just for REPORTS.That said, I would like to see a 1940-50 report form and one for 2017 to see the big difference. Just for fun________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Out of all your visits, Dawg, what percentage of em has happened as you describe above?80%20%.005%
One time as I was filling our my report I thought about how dumb I thought Pastoral Visits one the report were. So I decide to find out if they (Cleveland) pay any attention to pastoral visits. So I reported 10,000,000 I did not hear from anyone. So next month I reported 10,000,001 again nothing. My wife’s cousin worked in records. She said some ran through their department saying look at this report. She looked and said, that is my cousin. I suppose when I die and they show my records at the assembly someone will get a laugh. BTW, I have not reported a pastoral report since then. In fact I didn’t report them before that________________Recorded Sermons @ http://www.pastorwiley.com
I felt (and still do) that AVERAGING the SS and FTH together can give a very wrong impression as to how many attend. For instance, if I have 4 in Sunday School, but 400 for mid-week service, that is an average of 733 (just kidding; 204). HOWEVER, when someone called me about it (as I was reporting the numbers in the comment box, since I didn’t know how else to go about it), I realized that I was making someone’s job harder than it had to be (including mine!). So I just have gone with it ever since.At the same time, I have noted that it seems that Morning Worship is the big service that matters most now. I wonder what would happen if we could get ALL the services on the report. Not averaged, etc., but stand-alone numbers.If a church didn’t have a Sunday night service, then, instead of putting in zero or NR (not reported), there would be something else there to note that there is not service on Sunday night. At the same time, I imagine that some folks would decide to have a Sunday night service if it were being counted–ESPECIALLY if they could show up in the Top 25!Years ago, our church decided to try to break into the Top 25 Sunday Schools (I don’t know if it is still listed that way, but back then it was). We made it to the Top 26…but that was a moral victory for us. (Of course, with the way some folks count, it’s not really fair. To count people standing in the hallway…or that walk in 30 seconds before Sunday School is over…is JUST CHEATING. We just had a policy that a person had to be in class for at least 15 minutes–that may not be the greatest idea either, but we felt it was fair–in order to be counted.)