Automatic Attendance Recordkeeping
Posted on May 1, 2011 by Servant | News| Tags: attendance, recordkeeping, tracking | Comments feed
How do you measure attendance? Can you do it automatically? Some Churches have a check in/out procedure for the children’s ministry. It works great for getting the kids in and out, with automated kiosks to streamline the process. A by product is that the children’s attendance is automatically recorded. Computer databases are great at keeping track of such details. From the data recorded, reports can easily be generated.
Adult and Youth worship are a different matter. Traditional Churches used “pew attendance pads” to record attendance. This generates a stack of paperwork for the attendance secretary. But the data can be entered into the database and reports generated. (The forms were also designed to spot visitors so that their information can be passed on to other staff for followup.) All of this is voluntary, but most folks do fill them out.
What if we gave everyone in the Church a witness card? This card would have an RFID chip embedded which would register their attendance when they walked in any door of the sanctuary. All they would have to do is wave the card at a recording station. Would this go over? It would certainly provide automatic attendance recordkeeping – with the computers doing all of the work. However, people might resent the cards. And the youth might lose them frequently.
What do you think would work?
May 2, 2011 by Nate
Man Brad you are full of good ideas. The church I attend still uses those attendance pads. What ends up happening is that the data is never entered into the computer because it is too much work. The leaders just kind of glance over the attendance sheets to try and get a feel for who is attending.
Someday we are all going to have an RFID chip on a card or something that is always with us (perhaps our phones). Maybe that way attendance could be tracked. You are right that some people would resent having to carry a specific RFID tag just for the sake of attendance. However, if it was something like a phone that was already on them, then they might not care as much.
Keep the good ideas coming.