What about for you? When does your attendance really pick up? Do you do anything different or special during this season that causes the heavy attendance? When attendance is high, is there anything you do differently in response  in order to handle the larger crowds or to manage follow up?

I’m going to be looking at some trends from the past four years (since I’ve not been here long enough to have the history). However, I do know that the flu bug has been vicious here. H1N1 has ravaged the state of Texas and there are a couple other flu strains that have been affecting our families. We’ve even had to change our well child policy this fall (we ask kids not to come if anyone in their family has had the flu that week) since H1N1 is contagious even before you know you have it. So although we usually experience a little bit of a decline in October and November, we usually don’t see our numbers take this big of a hit.

Has anyone else had a noticeable attendance dip that was out of the ordinary (especially if you’re in Texas)? Let me know as this seems to be the best way gather information from others. Feel free to post as comments or email me privately at kenny@childrensministryonline.com.

Last Sunday was a pretty full house here at Gateway. We’ve instituted the off-site parking shuttles and all the other things you do to “make room.” One of the things I learned last Sunday is that things were not as I had assumed. I learned an important truth. Because our attendance surged so high this last weekend, I was able to see something I hadn’t seen before.

Since coming here I have been told that 11:00 is our biggest service. It’s pretty obvious on Sunday. The lot is more full and people are sitting against the walls in the auditorium at the 11:00 service. Even when I look at my overview of numbers, I do have more kids at 11:00 than at 9:30. It’s always that way. The last 3 or 4 weeks I’ve walked around the early childhood area at 9:30 and noticed that they were feeling fuller than normal. This was odd because elementary seemed about the same as always. It wasn’t until I looked at the report a few hours ago and noticed a trend that I hadn’t seen but makes perfect sense.

At 9:30 the nursery was almost twice as full as it was at 11:00. The preschool was only 5-10% bigger than at 11:00. Elementary? It was about 50% smaller at 9:30 than at 11:00. This was an unusual Sunday, but it caused me to go back and look at past weeks numbers. They all say the same story (although not as dramatic). Yes, 11:00 is a bigger service and we have more kids at that time. But unless you look at individual rooms or areas, you won’t see that the younger ages are busting at the seams at 9:30.

My assumption had been that 11:00 is bigger, so we should always staff that service bigger. Now our team knows that this is true (except for early childhood). My new assumption is that we have a lot of parents of young children getting church in before nap-time. I won’t know for sure until we start asking around. This week we’ll be able to communicate to our parents about ideal service times. We’ve come dangerously close to turning away some little kiddos simply because our facility was at capacity. We can communicate to our parents that if it isn’t a big deal for them to come to 11:00, it will make room for more babies at 9:30.

I love looking at numbers and trends. I’ve learned a lot from studying them. What have you learned from keeping an eye on your numbers?