YOY
Also known as: Year-over-Year
Year-over-year comparison.
YOY (Year-over-Year) is a comparison of attendance during a given period to the same period twelve months earlier. In Kingdom Metrics, the primary YOY metric is the 8-over-8 comparison, which smooths the comparison using 8-week rolling averages on both sides.
Raw YOY comparisons (this Sunday vs. the same Sunday last year) are available but can be misleading due to calendar shifts — Easter moves every year, school start dates vary, and a snowstorm last February does not mean anything about this February.
Why it matters for your church: YOY is the gold standard for answering "are we growing?" because it neutralizes seasonal patterns. A church that shrinks every summer but grows every fall might have a flat WOW trend — YOY reveals whether the overall trajectory is up, down, or flat across the full annual cycle.