I received an email from our technology specialist today about our church database transfer to Church Community Builder. In the past we have used Shelby Database, but we have made the decision to switch to CCB. The question from tech was this: "How do you want to categorize the 4,000 or so records that we have in our database?" He proposed four general categories based on a 2 row and 2 column matrix:
1) people who are active AND they are members
2) people who are active BUT they are NOT members
3) people who are inactive AND they are NOT members
4) people who are inactive AND NOT members
As I thought about it, I thought such a long description would become a linguistic nightmare. Plus I thought of a fifth category, which I think every church MUST concentrate their efforts upon. So here's what I'm thinking we will do. Let me know what you think. We'll categorize each person in our database as follows:
Category #1 - Prospects. These are inactive people who are in our database for one reason or another. But they don't come to Crossroads very often. This is the largest group of people in the database.
Category #2 - Attendees. These are people who actively attend Crossroads, but they have never signed up for membership. I'm thinking we are looking at about 1,200 people in this category. These people probably consider Crossroads their church home, but they have not taken CLASS 101 or committed to membership.
Category #3 - Members. Some might call this group active members, but anyone who is a member SHOULD be active. Every member is a minister at our church. People who have chosen to become a member have committed to faithfully support our church with their prayers, attendance, ministry, and financial support. This group is over a thousand strong now.
Category #4 - Inactives. These are people who have become members, but for some reason or another are not active currently. This is the category I mentioned before that I believe we must focus regular attention upon. Within this category are two subgroups - people with a legitimate reason for being inactive, such as students away at college or winter snow birds who have moved away. There is also a second subgroup within this category - people who are members, but have recently stopped attending, giving, or serving. I'm hoping our new church management software helps us to identify these people early, while we might be able to find out what - if anything - can be done to reactivate them.
Category #5 - Formers. These are people who were members at one time, but have been taken off our membership rolls for one reason or another.
This may be a discussion that only an executive pastor and/or a database manager can appreciate. However, I'm certain every church has people in each of these five categories. Identifying the categories, then identifying who fits into which category, and then finally identifying a strategy of what we will do with the people in each category is the work of the church who takes seriously the care of its flock.
