On my first Sunday at the Bridgewater Church in the then-Northern New Jersey Conference, the head usher showed me an attendance book that went back to the founding of the congregation 15 years before. Every service on every Sunday was included, indicating the number of persons in attendance.

Like a thermometer a nurse may use to take your temperature, that attendance book was a wonderful tool to measure when there was growth and when there was decline. Registering weekly church attendance will not help the church grow, any more than taking a patient’s temperature will help a person get better. It will, however, help leaders assess the spiritual health of the congregation.

What numbers do tell is what’s happening in the life of the church, whether a congregation is on an upswing or plateaued, or even declining.

Actually, there is nothing spiritual about not counting people and, in our connectional system, sharing that with the larger Body of Christ for celebration and prayer. Knowing the numbers may lead us to affirm that "at least we’re doing something right," or it may lead to a "holy prompting" to try some new tactics.