The Congregation Statistics Report (WELS) is exclusively used by churches of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. This report is designed specifically to assist users in submitting their statistics report to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
This report contains the following tabs:
» Church Info—General church information. Some of this information will already be filled out with information from the Church tab of the program settings screen accessed from the system menu of Shepherd’s Staff.. The reporting year indicates the year you are running this report for.
» Membership—This tab contains information about the number of Communicant and Baptized members your church has at the end of the prior year, the baptisms that took place this year, as well as Membership Gains and Losses and Communicant membership at the end of the reporting year.
» Attendance—This tab is where you can select which events make up your average weekly church attendance, VBS attendance, Sunday School Attendance, and Bible class attendance. Various school information is also filled in under this tab.
» Giving—This tab is where you can designate which accounts comprise giving for local ministry, missions and other areas. This will also show you giving averages as well. The finance module must be used in order to get information on the giving tab.
Notes on this report:
» The report prints out annual statistical data for a single calendar year (January through December). It cannot be printed for a non-calendar year or any time period other than 12 months. The WELS statistical office usually requires the report for the previous year from the church by January 31 of the following year.
» When you opt to Print the report it is automatically re-calculated for you. The separate Save and calculate button is provided so that you can see the report figures on each tab (as you fill it out) without having to first print or email/export the report.
» The report will only be able to determine who the baptized and communicant members are if the correct terms are being used for the Received by and Removed by fields within Individual records. Below is a listing of the accepted Received by and Removed by terms that should be used for accurate reporting:
Received By Terms:
Profession of Faith
Transfer WELS
Transfer
Removed By Terms:
Death
Transfer WELS
Transfer
Other Lutheran
Other Christian
- Select Other Reports within the Membership Module
- Select the "Statistics: Denomination-specific" option on the list of reports
- In the "Denomination" field, select "Lutheran - WELS" and then click the "Select" button
- In the Church Info tab, set your Year Organized (Year your church was established) as well as your Reporting year, and your Age cut-off for children, which determines at what age a person is considered to be an adult.
- The Membership tab will show you your membership statistics including Total Baptized and Confirmed membership, and membership gains and losses. Click the question mark button next to each figure to see how that figure is being calculated, or click the i button to see who is included within the figure the button is associated with.
- The Attendance Tab is where you can select what attendance events compose your Average weekly church attendance, VBS attendance, Sunday School Attendance, as well as Bible Class attendance. To select which events are to be included in each one of these fields, click the button next to the field that has checkmarks and lines on it. From here, you can select which attendance events should be included for the field. You will also need to fill in figures for information such as Number of Male and Female Elementary teachers, Sunday School teachers as well.
- The Giving tab is where you can determine which income accounts are being used for different areas of giving. Click the button with the checkmarks and lines next to each field to select the relevant income accounts.
- Click the Print button to see a preview of your report, and then click Print on the preview screen to print the report out.