How do you know how well you’re doing in ministry?
I’m teaching a class on assessment and evaluation in ministry. And I’m very curious as to how well you know you are doing it ministry? I would really like to hear what process you use to gauge how well you are doing. You can post it in a comment or you can e-mail it to me, but I would love to have some examples of what people use ( or don’t use) to measure their success.
The issue is that those of us in ministry (and nonprofits) are notorious for not embracing evaluation. Youth ministries in particular don’t often know, or able to point to, how well they are doing… Or not doing. If we are honest, we sometimes take our temperature on areas (like attendance, external response to worship music, listening attentively) that don’t align with discipleship or program outcomes.
I work and lead in a variety of nonprofit organizations. I currently teach at a Christian college, serve on the board of directors for a homeless ministry, serve on the board of a large church, and a member of an oversight committee for a local Catholic hospital, and consult with three national organizations. There is a range of evaluation procedures among these organizations. And I’m not a big ‘evaluation’ guy. But I do think it’s important to know how well we are doing. Education has moved to be very focused on outcomes. The hospital that I work with is very effective in evaluating many of its programs. But in the highly relational energetic world of youth ministry, it seems like if we keep having kids, and there’s a general enthusiasm for the program, we must be doing something right.
Yet the recent research of Christian Smith and the collaborative study of the Sticky Faith group (Kara Powell, Brad Griffin, Cheryl Crawford and the think tank members) seems to suggest that we would benefit from spending time listening and reflecting with our students.
So, back to my question that I love for you to answer this weekend: how do you know how well you’re doing in ministry? If you could give me examples of your assessment, I would certainly appreciate it.
The recent success of consulting services for youth ministries and youth work groups (Youth Ministry Architects and Youth Workin’ It), tells me that many of you have also been thinking about this – and working to better monitor the health of your leadership efforts.
I look forward to your responses! Thank you in advance for helping me.
