Sacrament Meeting Attendance

Where do I record Sacrament Meeting attendance?

The average attendance for the last month of the quarter is reported as part of the quarterly reports. Until then, it's recorded in whatever method works for you. Usually a piece of paper in the clerk's office.

Our clerks office has a calendar and there is a number written on it each Sunday that equals sacrament meeting attendance for that day.

I made an OpenOffice spreadsheet on the clerks computer desktop.
I just enter in the count each Sunday and the average for the month is automatically calculated.

klricks wrote:I made an OpenOffice spreadsheet on the clerks computer desktop.
I just enter in the count each Sunday and the average for the month is automatically calculated.

Would you be willing to share your spreadsheet template? I'm hoping that the new 2020 sacrament attendance can be easily accessible on a mobile phone.

I believe the original post was asking about the new way to record attendance. If so, LCR has this message up:

"As announced by the Office of the Presiding Bishopric on November 1, 2019, beginning January 1, 2020, ward and branch clerks should begin counting sacrament meeting attendance each week and recording it in Leader and Clerk Resources. This can be done by selecting 'Sacrament Meeting Attendance' under the Reports menu. The ability to record sacrament meeting attendance using the Member Tools application will be available in the coming weeks."

I haven't seen the report yet, but LCR indicates that the change is to be made today. Can't wait until it works through Member Tools!

Ugh...Just realized the original post was on "02 Jun", not "02 Jan". Apologies for my lack of sleep.

How do you account for Stake Conference in the new Sacrament Meeting Attendance. Just post a zero?. Same question for cancelled Sacrament Meetings due to inclement weather?

Just leave it blank.

How do you account for Stake Conference in the new Sacrament Meeting Attendance. Just post a zero?. Same question for cancelled Sacrament Meetings due to inclement weather?

scgallafent, you said just leave it blank. Is that official church policy? Wouldn't that have a negative impact on the average?

rmwr wrote:How do you account for Stake Conference in the new Sacrament Meeting Attendance. Just post a zero?. Same question for cancelled Sacrament Meetings due to inclement weather?

scgallafent, you said just leave it blank. Is that official church policy? Wouldn't that have a negative impact on the average?

In another post, it has been reported that blanks or zeros for a sacrament meeting attendance are removed from the average calculation so they don't negatively impact the average. I would assume that means they average each week in the month where a number greater than 0 is recorded for that week.

We have been using a spreadsheet, that works out the average, for many years to record sacrament attendance. We are now using both methods. The results are the same! The percentage will vary because of membership movements in and out, but not the average of actual attendance. Whether you use a zero, or not, won’t affect the final results.

With most spreadsheets, if you average together a group of cells, the average function ignores empty cells. Likewise, this church software also appears to ignore empty dates.

As a ward Clerk, after logging into LCR, you should have an option under the "Reports" menu that may or may not be highlighted in Yellow, that will say "Sacrament Meeting Attendance". Go there, and once it's loaded, you'll see a text box where you'll enter the count of attendance for the current week, and click "Save".

I agree it seems that leaving it blank(which is the only option I'm seeing right now) or putting a 0 would not be the most accurate way to record a Stake Conference weekend. Mainly because, as has been mentioned, it will throw off the percentage and it seems that the percentage is an important stat the church is wanting. My guess is that the church will be updating this in the future with a drop down menu for General and Stake Conference and/or, as was mentioned, Sundays that for whatever reason church was not held.

The problem with a list is the list of reasons can be quite long. A simple "no meeting held" to distinguish it from "not entered" would suffice.

dsharrai wrote:I agree it seems that leaving it blank(which is the only option I'm seeing right now) or putting a 0 would not be the most accurate way to record a Stake Conference weekend. Mainly because, as has been mentioned, it will throw off the percentage ....

It appears that you had a Sunday without a sacrament meeting in January. If you look at your numbers, you can verify that the average for January is calculated correctly and the Sunday with no reported attendance is excluded from the average.

dsharrai wrote:My guess is that the church will be updating this in the future with a drop down menu for General and Stake Conference and/or, as was mentioned, Sundays that for whatever reason church was not held.

The Church won't be updating this in the future with a drop-down menu for Sundays where church is not held.

Here is the definitive answer: Last week, I walked over to the desk of the lead developer on that team and asked him about this. Sundays with no attendance entered (blank or zero) are excluded from the average. If you don't have sacrament meeting on a given week, don't enter a value.

In preparing January's monthly ward statistics to submit to our stake, I tried to match the average calculated in LCR. I can approximate the same percentage two ways with a slight variance: 1) the average of the attendance across the 4 weeks in January divided by the average of the ward membership across the 4 weeks of January; 2) take a percentage each week based on that week's membership and then average the 4 percentages. This is a slight adjustment to the former practice of taking the average of attendance divided by the end-of-month membership count. Does this match the experience of others?

The average is calculated based on the membership each week. You are correct that this is slightly different from how it was previously calculated.

I have the same concern as rmwr.
Wouldn't posting a zero for the week of stake conference negatively impact the average attendance?
This will actually be an issue at least 4 times throughout the year (2 stake + 2 general conferences).
If there isn't a feature where "conference" (or something else along those lines) can be input for attendance on a particular Sunday, then maybe there should be? Perhaps in the form of a checkbox?

JVerNooy wrote:Wouldn't posting a zero for the week of stake conference negatively impact the average attendance?

No. As has been stated previously, zero and blank values are ignored in calculating the average.

How are wards calculating zoom attendance for Sacrament total attendance.
Here is what I do.

I send an email to all ward members asking that they reply with the numbers that viewed sacrament on zoom this week. Based upon responses and no responses and noting how many login into zoom..... here is an example.

Total zoom logins = 63 minus 2 (for camera and host) = 61 zoom logins
Of the 61, 37 responded with numbers for a total = 142 people
No response 61 - 37 = 24 x 2.7 (Ave members per household)= 65 people
In person attendance. 120 people
Total sacrament attendance = 327 people

It might be interesting to look at household sizes for the households that don't respond and correlate those with your average of 2.7 per household. I would not be surprised if the average members per household for households that don't respond is lower than 2.7.