Should I count online worship as part of average worship attendance?

When reporting Average Worship Attendance on the ALEX Yearbook Report, you should include people in attendance that you can count. This would include in-person attendance, of course, but it may also include real-time online worship attendance. 

You could include as part of your average worship attendance those people who join worship real-time in a way they can be counted. For example, a church that welcomes people into worship via Zoom or other video conferencing could count the people in attendance on that platform. 

Including in-person attendance with live video conference attendance counts people. Stream counts or view counts, on the other hand, report the number of devices that connected to the stream. Worshippers may use their devices to connect live, but they may also use their devices to connect later. They may also view the same stream multiple times. 

Because of this difference, we cannot determine from the number of views how many people were part of the worship experience. One view could be one person or it could be multiple people. Did some watch more than once? Did they stay on for the whole service, or did they watch for a minute and then leave?

While streaming statistics, such as number of views and viewer retention, can be very informative, they should not be included as part of average worship attendance for the ALEX Yearbook Report.