Who is coming to our Christmas services and why? We might think this is obviously to encounter God. But some recent research shows 33% of participants did not believe in God. This should give us cause for thought, optimism and…
NumbersMatters Posts
Luke’s account of Christmas has a census as the reason Jesus birth took place in Bethlehem. As we come into the Christmas season I want to reflect on the nature of what statisticians do, in the light of the Bible’s…
What happens to the statistics we carefully collect and collate. How are they used – if at all? In this edition we will look at myths, realities, and aspirations of using church stats NumbersMatters is also available as a podcast…
The CofE has released the Statistics for Mission 2022, so are they good news, bad news or no news? Well as I will explain, the broad answer appears to be yes. Included also are some interesting occasional statistics on the…
Should the Church be SMART or organic? A recent Church Times article rails against episcopal managerialism and sets its sights on “targets” as the problem. In this week’s NumbersMatters I want to say why we need SMART targets now more…
Covid in Canada in fall 2023 Anecdotal instances of Covid have been on the increase in my neck of the woods over the last few weeks. Is it time to be concerned? This blog is not the place for an…
The United Church of Canada (UCC) has compiled its stats for 2022. They show little negative effect of Covid and even some real bounce back. For those outside of Canada, the UCC is Canada’s most numerous protestant denomination. It was…
David Goodhew has an interesting article on the Covenant web site (here and below) suggesting that TEC’s numbers may fall below those of ACNA in the next 20 years. It is certainly cause for thought about some of the things…
It is the season of “mellow fruitfulness” – harvest – and thus also the season for tithing. At least it was until 1977 in England. Today we will look at the connection between ten – as in the ten commandments…
In an interesting parallel to my developing series on Numbers in the Bible, CBC has a radio/podcast series called “The Greatest Numbers of all time”. It is a secular approach to significant numbers. But even a secular approach cannot avoid…