Question of the Week: What's Your Church's Average Cost Per Attender?

The Question of the Week, which is featured in Leadership Network Advance, invites input from all readers. The most recent Question of the Week was "what's the largest-attendance U.S. church you know on the smallest acreage?".

Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv recently posted this interesting blog:

You might remember the old wooden signs many churches had in the sanctuary showing last weekend’s total numbers. The signs boasted total worship attendance, Sunday School attendance and total given to the offering.

. . . We measure what it costs to minister to each person who attends a campus. . . . For us, it is helpful to break this down to micro levels. We measure how much it costs to minister to:

· Kids (birth through 5th grade)
· Teens (6 through 12th)

To find this number, divide your weekly budget by your weekly attendance.

You may (or may not) make big decisions based on what you find. But it could be helpful to know if your cost-per-attender is growing or shrinking. If it is growing, you’ll want to ask if your ministry benefit is growing as well. Or are you simply investing more for a similar result.

What number do you come up with? I looked into the average "cost" per attender in churches with attendance of 2,000 and higher. The weekly amount is $25 (with a large spread of $6 minimum and $85 maximum), based on 2005 data, according to Scott Thumma, lead author of the book Beyond Megachurch Myths.

Additionally, the median cost per attendee consistently drops as the rate of growth increases (see chart 1). Likewise, the earlier the church is founded, the more it spends per attendee (see chart 2). 

CHART 1

   

Pentecostal, charismatic and mainline megachurches spend significantly more per attendee than do churches that labeled themselves seeker or fundamentalist.  And if you are a denominational megachurch, your weekly spending is nearly $6 more per attendee more if you are nondenominational.   

CHART 2

Perhaps most interesting, megachurches that spent the most per attendee have the smallest percent of converts among their new members, whereas those with nearly all their new members being recent converts spent the least per attendee. 

Do you know your church’s weekly cost per attender?  What figure do you come up with, and what do you make of it? 

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.

Comments

[Noel Heikkinen]

Interesting. I stumbled on your post while working on a message on money. One of my comments in my notes was that our church has the budget around 1/3 or so of the average church our size. Using your figures, that's pretty close. We run around 2000-2200 and our CPA is $9.

Thanks for the article. Very helpful.