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Topics of interest to Clerks of Session, Session Moderators and others who are interested in Presbyterian local-church governance.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Crunching Our Numbers, New and Improved

Some of us have been noticing for a while that a part of the General Assembly website has been down: that part that allows access to 10-year statistics on congregations. For years, it’s been a reliable, workhorse portion of the website: data on membership gains and losses, financial income and the like.

A few weeks ago, abruptly and without prior notice, that functionality disappeared. After checking back a couple of times, I inquired of some folks in our national office and was told that the statistics part of the website was being extensively revised and improved. It was “under construction.”

Now, the results of that improvement are on display. The new site is impressive. It’s so much easier to make sense of the statistics now. It’s also possible to crunch the numbers in new and different combinations that may prove useful.

Clerks of session will be especially interested to see these improvements, which are the results of the annual statistical reporting process you engage in each January.

 Check out your congregation's numbers!