Sunday, December 28, 2008

Comparing Purpose to Actions

By Ken Row
When I pastored, my church's purpose statement was "Reaching, Teaching, and Keeping People for the Kingdom of God."

Some of my mentors recommended keeping the purpose before the people, so I kept it as my lead powerpoint slide every worship service and mentioned it from time to time during preaching.

One thing I never did, though, was do a year-end evaluation of the church's actions against its purpose statement.

I never asked the question, if someone were to analyze the church finances and calendar, what would they deduce the church's purpose to be?

Looking back, I think they might have deduced the church mainly existed to worship together, listen to sermons, pray for each other, and occasionally have a pitch-in dinner.

With the new year approaching, it'd be a good time to take a hard look at your church's purpose statement.

Using my own purpose statement...

What do we need to do in 2009 to reach more people?
Are there different people we could target?
Are there new methods to implement?

What do we need to do to teach more people?
What should we change to keep from simply re-teaching the already-taught?
Can we do more on hands-on, experiential teaching and less lecture-driven, head-knowledge teaching?

Who do we need to do to keep more people?
Why do so many teens leave the church at adulthood?
Why do our young preachers head off to other denomination's schools?
at 2:00 AM Labels:

4 comments:

  1. Ken, do you think we as leaders don't evaluate because we are afraid of what the results might look like and what changes we may have to make in order to see the purposes fulfilled?
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  2. I just never thought about this sort of evaluation when I was pastoring.

    I was busy enough with what I was already doing -- prepping for sermons, dealing with church problems, enduring spiritual attacks, and trying to take care of my own family.

    I hate to think that any of our preachers fear change.

    Yes, on a district or national level, some resist change, but I think it's more of a trust issue than a fear issue.

    On a personal level, I think it's more likely that our preachers don't have the energy to see the changes through, especially if the changes will offend anyone in the congregation.
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  3. You may be right, especially in smaller congregations. Most of our churches are under 100 and have a solo pastor with little or no support staff and no wiggle room in terms of financial viability. In my own current experience I work for a Pastor who is afraid of evaluation and has openly admitted such because he believes it will relfect solely on him as the top leader. As support staff this concerns me because I see a church of 200 that has been plateaued for 10 years with no prospect of turning it around.

    My next question is this: How do we present an evaluation process to our churches, districts and national levels that alleviate fear and breed the trust you are talking about?
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  4. When I wrote this post I was thinking about discrepencies between what we say we are and what we really are, and I merely hoped to introduce the thought of comparing our stated purpose to our actual performance.

    As for an evaluation process, the more I think about it, the more complications I see, but there is one concept that stands out in my mind.

    Fatherhood.

    Fathers can speak to their sons.

    When sons are young, they think their fathers are superheroes that can fix anything.

    The teen years can be shaky, but a father's authority still reigns -- even if the son doesn't like it.

    Adult sons regain respect for their fathers.

    Men naturally welcome advice from sages, shun advice from stooges, and question advice from everyone in between.

    The catch is that men only welcome advice from people they consider to be a sage. If they have a car problem, they'll go talk to somebody who knows something about cars. They won't ask their wife what she thinks the problem is, unless they know that their wife knows more about cars than they do.

    This means that most pastors won't welcome an evaluation from the congregation. If there are any negatives in the evaluation, the pastors would question the accuracy or viability of those negatives. They might think, "If the people really understood spiritual things, they'd see things differently."

    Pastors won't welcome evaluations from other pastors, unless they sought out the evaluations themselves (from pastors they perceive as knowledgeable, naturally).

    Pastors won't welcome evaluations from district or national leaders they didn't vote for. They also won't welcome evaluations from leaders they did vote for, but perceive to be less experienced than they are.

    This only leaves one effective method that can be applied across all levels.

    Whoever evaluates another has to be someone who has spent time with the evaluee, has poured life into the evaluee, loves the evaluee, and is recognized as a mentor/sage by the evaluee.

    That brings us back to fatherhood. Fathers meet that criteria.

    I recognize (and emphasize) that there is much more to fatherhood than siring children.

    I also think a child can have multiple fathers, multiple people who spend time with them, pour life into them, love them, and hold valuable advice for them.
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