Easter 2022 Online Stats at Greenwood Baptist Church

This year at Greenwood, we had 5 in-person services. We also had 2 online services. In-Person we had Saturday at 4:30 and 6pm, the Sunday at 8:30, 9:45 and 11:00am. Online we streamed at 9:45 and 11:00am. Guess which one was the most attended!

Methodology

We do a physical head count of people in the room for a worship service. We also do a physical count of children for each service. For my purposes today, I’m going to bracket out children’s attendance (to compare numbers more directly — I realize children are important and I have 3 myself). To count online I spoke to 10–12 large churches (think mega- and larger) and found that they count total views of over 1 minute and multiply times 1.7 — often times they actually multiply by more than that but I chose to be conservative on counting. The reason is pretty simple, if my family was watching the Youtube stream it would be on our TV and 5 people would be watching from that one IP address.

My one caveat here is that we recorded our 6:00pm Saturday service and edited it, then broadcast that one at 9:45 AND 11:00 on Sunday (to ensure no internet issues messed us up). So I’m counting the two of them together as “online numbers”. In truth the broadcast at 9:45 is where at least 2/3 of our people attend online.

Raw Data

4:30pm: 214

6:00pm: 192

8:30am: 309

9:45am: 480 (tied for largest)

11:00am: 318

online: 480 (total tied for largest — but two time slots are counted)

Interpreting the Data

The raw data only tells part of the story. You see from our in-person services we had 61 people indicate that they made Jesus their lord that day. Online we had 2. Those are significant numbers. Even though our total attendance online was nearly the same as the largest in-person service it did not produce the same life change (though the measure isn’t perfect) as the in-person services. HOWEVER, it did give a chance for some people to respond to the gospel. Additionally, even though our church is in north Texas, we had a few people from Canada and the UK (we know they join us weekly). And 65% of our online attenders attended from the USA.

Additionally, we had to broadcast on-campus to an overflow room during our Sunday 9:45am service because we had no more seats in the Worship Center. 50 something people would have been standing in the hallways straining to hear without our broadcast team there on Sunday.

Conclusion

Was it worth the trouble of coordinating the broadcast team and editing video? Yes! Online attendance made up our (likely) second largest Worship Service. We know that the immediate fruit wasn’t the same as the in-person Worship — but perhaps it reached people who were not planning to attend in person anyway. And there were two people who told us (via text) that they made Jesus their Lord that day. I was able to follow up with them so we can pray for them and so that they have a beginning Bible reading plan. Time will tell how they do, but that’s always the case. In conclusion, the additional time and effort was worth the results.