How do you assess the effectiveness of your ministry?
(If you just threw up a little in your mouth… you’re probably not alone.)
I think I can safely say that “assessment” is not why any of us got into ministry…
Assessing the impact that our ministry has on campus — or even in the life of just one student — can be an incredibly challenging task. One that makes our head spin if we think about it too long…
So we don’t… usually think about it.
Many of us have resigned ourselves to the fact that assessing the spiritual formation of others — individuals or communities — is a near impossibility.
If we’ve been involved in ministry for long at all, we’ve likely come to realize that while numbers might tell us something… it typically not the “right” something.
Willow Creek — the mega-church just outside of Chicago, IL — is a great example of what I’m talking about… One of the largest churches in America, its leadership decided it was time to see just how much of an impact the collective ministry was having on the faith community, so they surveyed their congregation.
What did they find?
The community was shallow.
All of the teaching, worship, service opportunities, bible study and outreach that people were given the opportunity to engage in was not producing the kind of fruitful growth in the lives of its community members. It could have been easy for the church leadership to simply resign themselves to the fact that — since they were HUGE and continuing to grow numerically… things must be going well.
People must be growing in their faith…
The ministry must be “working.”
Size was not a good indicator of “spiritual growth” in this situation — nor is it in most.
So if we’re not focused on quantity, we must be assessing quality… But how?
How do you assess the “spiritual quality” of someone’s life — or that of a community?
What are the indicators in someone’s life (or the community) that “growth” is taking place?
What do we mean by “growth” anyway?
Can you even assess spiritual growth in somebody else?
I could go on with this line of questioning… but I think you get my point. Assessing the overall effectiveness of our ministry (which I’m identifying as the spiritual growth and development of the members of the faith community we serve) is incredibly challenging. But just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean we’re off the hook!
We’ve been called to serve college students.
We’ve been charged with leading them spiritually.
We’ve been tasked with providing them opportunities to grow and mature in their faith…
And at some point, we’ve got to be able to point to something… won’t we?
Are we truly free to fly by the seat of our pants, or “let the Spirit lead as it leads,” when it comes to our ministry efforts?
Or are we called to be more calculated?
Are we supposed to have achievable goals, definable learning objectives for each unique ministry, formal and informal ways to give people the chance to give feedback or offer opinions in regards to our ministry efforts?
A lot more could be said… And I’ve clearly offered more questions than answers… soI’ll spend some more time on this in the days and weeks to come…
But for now, here are a few important questions for each of us to consider:
Do we believe it’s possible to assess the spiritual growth of another individual? How about a community?
How do we assess the effectiveness of our ministry on campus?
Do you have any tools or tricks for assessing the effectiveness of your ministry that you might suggest to the rest of us?
3 thoughts on “Beneath the Surface: Assessing Your Ministry’s Effectiveness”
always an incredible question….you cannot look for increased sales numbers and productivity like a business, but if Christ tells us you know them by their fruit, that would be an indication.
Understandably it can be done out of obligation, so the way I “assess” is helping my people see how much joy/happiness they are experiencing in life. Are they joyfully attending home group, are they joyfully wanting to pray and read the bible, are they joyfully serving, and are they experiencing deep happiness in the midst of difficult circumstances. If not…why? If not….don’t do these things. Don’t read your bible. Don’t pray. Don’t go to core group. But question, if the God of the universe, the God I say I believe in wants these things in my life and says this leads to the best and most full life (John 10:10) why don’t I want to engage in these things….and engage with them with the deepest happiness possible? If this is taking place, you as the leader should have some sort of gauge on it and give these people the opperuntity to share their stories to encourage the rest of the community. Helping people see deep rooted happiness in Christ. Seeing Him as their ultimate treasure above everything else this world offers and use that as a thermometer of their spiritual health and then giving them platforms to engage with it. Not the only tool or only spiritual fruit in life, but a fruit that Christians in my interactions don’t engage with as often. Happiness in the eternal God rather than another episode of Modern Family. Look forward to more “assessment tools”, keep me posted when you solve it 🙂
David, I think you’re on to something here… but I believe there’s got to be more to it. Joy is only one of the fruit of the Spirit. What if a student exhibits joy but not patience, or peace, or self-control? If they are a naturally happy person? I don’t know that joy can be the sole measure of a student’s spiritual formation. And even if we did “measure” all of the different fruit of the Spirit… how would we qualitatively measure it from one person to the next? How could we hope to set a “standard” by which all people would see a “5” on the joy scale as the exact same thing?
I think testimonies of God’s activity in someone’s life speaks volumes. I also love seeing students transformed… you know what I’m talking about. But I just don’t know how (or if it’s even possible) to go about working these things into some sort of assessment tool.
We assess based on the experience of intimacy in worship, authenticity of community, and missional zeal. Students are challenged to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 in each, and discuss why they gave themselves that rating, and where and how they want to improve. We huddle our students and have these conversations. Through these conversations, we get a sense of their growth.
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