3 Indications Data is King and Not Friend

My friend Ed Stetzer often says, “Facts are our friends,” when encouraging leaders to learn from important research. He is right. Wise leaders don’t ignore facts. They understand reality and offer hope and mission in the midst of that reality. Data should be a friend of ministry leaders. As examples: Data about the number of […]

Data in Ministry: a Cruel God But a Great Tool

Ministry leaders should have a complicated relationship with data. We should value data because it can be used as a tool to help us make wise decisions. But we must not value data too much, and must not find our worth and identity in a number or spreadsheet. Data can help ministry leaders make wise […]

6 Problems with Obsessing over Data

Data can be a leader’s friend as it is wise for leaders to leverage data in their decision-making. While it is foolish for leaders to ignore data, it is equally unhealthy for leaders to obsess over it. Here are six problems with obsessing over data: 1. You can find your worth in the numbers. There […]

Leaders and Data: Three Approaches

Leaders have never been able to access so much data and have never been encouraged so strongly to let the data direct them. In recent years there has been an avalanche of books, articles, and conferences on leveraging big data. Data scientists are hired to bring their expertise to companies and “machine learning” is being […]