Do You Know Your Church’s Dot?

A few weeks ago, I spent a day with Jerry Harris from The Crossing.  One of my biggest takeaways was a concept that Jerry calls the Dot.  He uses it as a tool to assess how they are doing as a church.  Here’s how the Dot works.  Take the average age of all adults 18+ in the church.  That’s your dot.  This is the target demographic that you are reaching best.  Whether intentional or not, this is the age group of people that your church is targeting.  What happens in the life of many churches is that the Dot moves gradually upward. In other words, as time passes people in the church age and so the Dot moves up.  New people have to be brought into the church in order to keep the Dot from moving.  So for example, if the Dot for your church is 32, and in three years its 35, what that tells you is that your church is aging.  If the trend continues, the church will die.  To keep the Dot from moving you have to apply downward pressure.  Downward pressure mind include outreach that is focused on a younger generation or worship service tweaks that appeal to younger people.  The Dot keeps your church leadership on their toes and helps promote relevance.  But you can’t apply too much downward pressure or your Dot will begin to go down.  If it goes down too much, you end up with a very young congregation that stereotypically lacks finances and maturity.  This is a great self evaluation tool for church plants.  So what do you think?  Will you start measuring your Dot?