What's a Good Turnout?

You can get yourself down and get crabby at your church if you don't have a rough idea of what a good turnout should look like in your church with all the givens (age and stage of congregation, degree of 'alignment with the vision', amount of advertising and adviting). Here's the Xrds breakdown, with a church partnership of around 70 people:

• Scary things (like doorknocking): If you get one person who isn't paid by the church to be there, you have a good turnout.
• Small things (like our gift collectives, an MTS conference or something): If you get 10% there (=7 people), you have a good turnout.
• Big things (like annual church conference or a whole-church community event): If you get 50% there (= 30 people) you have a good turnout.

I always count staff in my headcounts. I think it's a good principle, to realise we are not just there to run things, but to participate. I also "almost-count" people who take the effort to give apologies. It means that they wanted to come and are with us in spirit.