Sunday School Lag and Lead Measures

In The 4 Disciplines of Execution, the authors talk about two key measures often confused in Sunday School work. Let’s add a little clarification from these definitions from Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures:

Lag measures track the success of your wildly important goal. They are called lags because by the time you see them the performance that drove them is already passed. You can’t do anything to fix them, they are history.

Lead measures track the critical activities that drive, or lead to the lag measure. They predict success of the lag measure and are influenced directly by the team.

https://www.franklincovey.com/the-4-disciplines/discipline-2-act.html

The article referenced above points out that weight loss is a lag measure while diet and exercise are lead measures. But it is common to focus on the end result (weight loss) and make no changes or fail to work on the leads. Can you see how this applies to Sunday School? The two most common measures of Sunday School are attendance and enrollment (both are lag measures). What measures contribute toward accomplishing them?

Attendance Lead Measures

In order to see more people in average attendance in Sunday School, what actions and measures will contribute toward that increase? Consider the following:

• life interactions
• more caring contacts with members and prospects
• more invitations
• ministry in times of stress and need
• more leaders leading class members to provide care
• more classes providing more care

Enrollment Lead Measures

• invitations during class to enroll
• Sunday School testimonies (see Grow Sunday School by Sharing Your Sunday School Testimony)
• invitations between classes to join (May I add you to our class care list? Our care list is our list of people for whom we pray, provide care, and invite to our parties.)
• provide continued prayer, care, and invitations to all those enrolled

Keep in mind this equation: enrollment + care = an average of 50% in attendance. Working on attendance alone seldom produces gains. These two lead measures are very connected.

Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash