This is the fourth post in a series about ways that I have
missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why
young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here
if you want some background to this current article.
I apologize for using the metrics of business to evaluate the
success of our programs as if the effectiveness of ministry can be determined
by numbers, charts and graphs.
Here’s where it gets really difficult to apologize. I believe
that one of the reasons the Church is so slow to change is that we rarely
evaluate what we do. We assume that because something worked in the past it
will continue to work just as well in the future. So we need to look with a
critical eye at what we do to determine its effectiveness. Unfortunately we
have adopted evaluation tools from the world of business where efficiency and
profitability are the goals. Even when a congregation can come to some kind of
agreement about its goals (which is rare) finding a way to accurately evaluate
what it does is almost impossible.
I remember the first time I asked a group of church leaders, “Why
are we here?” We were sitting in the church basement on metal folding chairs
huddled against the darkness that enveloped most of the room since there was no
reason to light the whole room if we were just sitting in one section. After a
brief silence someone asked, “You mean tonight?”
“No,” I said. “I mean why is the church here? Why do we keep
going to all the trouble of being a church here in this community?”
If you ever want people to look at you like you were the
biggest moron walking the face of the earth become a pastor and ask people to explain
the purpose of the church as if you had no idea. That particular night the best
reason they could come up with was along the lines of, “Because that’s the way
it is supposed to be.”
Over the past 20 years congregations have become better at
defining their purpose and goals. My experience is that it helps a congregation
understand that they can’t live up to everyone’s expectations. In Acts
6 the disciples wrestle with the issue of how to best use their time in
service to others when some in the community begin to complain. They eventually
decide that a particular ministry is important enough to continue doing but that
it needed to be done by someone other than the 12 apostles. Even in the early
church they struggled with both the purpose of the church and evaluating the effectiveness and details of the ministry.
In addition to simply needing a way to evaluate what we do I
am also acutely aware that we have limited resources at our disposal. I have to
be a good steward of what I have been given responsibility for. People also want
to know that their money is being used wisely. If I can’t demonstrate some kind
of return on their investment I can be sure that they will find ways to be
generous with their time and finances in other places.
The problem is that the effectiveness of ministry can’t be
shown using the metrics of efficiency and profitability. How do I evaluate the
effectiveness of sitting with someone as they die? What level of efficiency is
required to maintain a ministry that feeds the hungry without getting taken in
by scam artists? What multiple choice answers do you put on a questionnaire to
determine the impact of a sermon? How do I evaluate the internal response that
parents and kids have when they see me supporting them at sporting events or music
concerts? How do we determine whether it is a more profitable to use pastoral time
having coffee with a congregation member or praying for the people who
participate in ministries by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering
the homeless or mentoring at-risk youth?
These things don’t fit on charts and graphs. There are no
numbers that can easily translate the effectiveness of ministry that isn’t
meant to be efficient. This was the struggle that met the disciples when the
woman anointed Jesus with the expensive perfume (Matthew
26). The disciples saw a more efficient and practical use for the perfume
but Jesus praised the extravagance of the act both for its symbolism and for
the way it demonstrated the woman’s love and devotion to Jesus. We just can’t put numbers on love and devotion.
