"Evaluation as Collaboration" by Maria Mallory White from Alban Weekly for Monday, November 16, 2015

"Evaluation as Collaboration" by Maria Mallory White from Alban Weekly for Monday, November 16, 2015

"Evaluation as Collaboration" by Maria Mallory White

Evaluation doesn't have to be scary. One way to ease anxiety and foster openness to this important practice is to recast it as a learning experience, says Susan Weber, coordinator of the Evaluation Project for the Religion Division of Lilly Endowment Inc.

"Evaluation is a way to learn and grow through the ministry experience," she said. "It's not meant to threaten anyone or to judge anything."

Weber works with Religion Division grantees, helping them build their own capacity for evaluation. Her approach to helping religious and non-profit organizations offers insights that clergy and lay people can use in other contexts as well.
She suggests church leaders view evaluation as a collaborative inquiry focused on the question: "How can we learn from this and make ministry even better to serve who we want to serve?"
Asking good questions
Begin by asking good questions. Good questions help focus the scope of the evaluation (What do we want to learn about this ministry?), guide the design of the evaluation plan (What information is needed to answer our evaluation questions?) and, once the data and information is collected, determine its meaning in relationship to the ministry (What are we learning?)
Before these questions can be identified, an organization needs to define its own marks for success. For example, what single change would you hope to see? The change could be in attitudes, behavior, knowledge, skills or action, she said.
When Weber works with organizations, she encourages the involvement of all key stakeholders. Stakeholders are persons or groups who have a vested interest in the ministry's success and/or are involved in the ministry's design and implementation.
If the project were an adult daycare center sponsored by a local congregation, for example, a group of stakeholders might identify one meaningful single change to be helping the elderly maximize their full potential to function independently through socialization and interaction. Other signs of success might focus on the value of the program and support given to caregivers. In turn, the "signs of success" enable the stakeholders to focus on the evaluative questions important to them.

• What unique value does our program bring to caregivers? To the elderly?
• How does our adult daycare provide supportive services that ensure the elderly who live alone continue in mainstream society?
• How do caregivers and/or the elderly know about our services?
• What services are missing from our program that we need to consider?
• How does our adult daycare provide meaningful respite and support for caregivers of older adults?

Gathering, interpreting and learning from data and information

Collect information and data that will most appropriately answer the evaluative questions. For example, in an adult daycare, three types of focus groups might be convened: groups of caregivers, participating senior citizens, and care providers and volunteers to answer the questions generated above. Surveys of these same groups would provide more in-depth information.

The information that is collected is then organized, analyzed and shared with the stakeholders. So in this case, the adult daycare’s board of directors and staff would discuss the evaluative findings in terms of what they are learning about how programs and services could be improved, marketing enhanced, or how to create a case for support to donors and organizations.

Beyond the board and staff, the organization should consider how to disseminate findings to audiences who either have an interest in the ministry or who can offer a perspective that would provide added value to the findings. Written articles, speaker series, or one-on-one conversations are excellent ways to promote what an organization has learned from an evaluation. The residual value is that it promotes your good name and good work.

Finally, for its greatest effectiveness, evaluation should be ongoing -- and inclusive. With one evaluation completed, an organization now has baseline data and information to build on and learn from. Additionally, it has created a community of learners who now know evaluation practices and value the rich conversation opportunities it creates.

“Evaluation that is effective is not something that is done by a few people,” Weber said. “It should be woven into the culture of the organization.” That is, a culture that values learning, curiosity, growth and improvement, and accountability.

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Monday, November 16, 2015

Each congregation must evaluate itself in light of its own mix of gifts, backgrounds, talents, and opportunities. Presenting the best of evaluation theory past and present, Woods shows clergy and lay leaders how to engage in mutual evaluation-not judgment-of ministry, mission, and community as a shared responsibility. The goal is building up the congregation. A special chapter provides commentary from church evaluation experts Roy Oswald, Paul Light, and Jill Hudson on dilemmas congregations face in evaluation.
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Ideas that Impact: Practices of Evaluation
"Evaluation as Collaborative Inquiry
adapted from Projects That Matter: Successful Planning and Evaluation for Religious Organizations" by Kathleen A. Cahalan

Before planning the third season of a hospitality project, St. Paul’s minister of outreach suggests at a committee meeting that an evaluation might help the group to make improvements for the upcoming year. Committee members nod in agreement. One enthusiastic member suggests, “Let’s design an evaluation form participants can fill out at the end of each session.” Another member offers a dose of realism: “Great idea, but we don’t have the time or the expertise to make up a survey. Let’s just hire an expert in evaluation.” A third member opposes the very idea: “What a waste of time, we already know how it’s going and what we need to do for next year.” And a fourth member dares to voice an underlying concern of many: “Are we sure we want to ask people what they think? What if the wrong people speak up and they distort what is really happening? Won’t that possibly harm the project?”

The committee members’ responses reveal some common attitudes about evaluation: it consists of immediate feedback after an event; it is extra work added on to an already full agenda; it requires experts; and it’s challenging or possibly dangerous. Each of these attitudes reveals an element of truth about evaluation; however, they are not a complete or adequate picture of what evaluation is and what it can do for a project. Evaluation is much more. I think of evaluation as a kind of collaborative inquiry that builds on three important dimensions of strong organizations—learning, leadership, and accountability.

Standard textbooks in evaluation define the word evaluation in one of three ways: to assess the worth or merit of a particular object (Is this project worthwhile?); to assess objectives and outcomes (Did the project do what it promised?); or to gather information in order to make decisions (Based on what we know about the project, what aspects should be improved, added, or discontinued?). Each of these definitions highlights an important aspect of evaluation, but there is another dimension that I think supports all three. It might be best described as a meta-purpose—why an organization engages in assessment and decision-making. The primary motivation to engage in project evaluation is a desire to learn.

An Opportunity to Learn

But what does a project and organization seek to learn from evaluation? Quite simply, a comprehensive approach to evaluation allows us to learn something about each aspect of a project’s design and, in so doing, contributes to the refinement of the project’s rationale. Evaluation builds up a body of knowledge that can help project leaders refine activities, select appropriate resources, identify results, describe impact, and hopefully understand more fully the condition being addressed. For example, project evaluations can teach us something about the relationship between activities, resources, and impact: what resources are necessary to successfully undertake an activity, and what is the activity’s real impact on participants. In short, what we learn from evaluation can become the evidence that further substantiates the project’s claims about the condition it is addressing, as well as what the project is doing to address it.

St. Paul’s Church claims that hospitality is necessary in a large parish where people have a hard time meeting others face to face. The hospitality committee believes that newcomers need immediate assistance in finding their way into parish life. Furthermore, the church believes that mentoring relationships are the most effective means of connecting people to parish activities. As the committee looks to evaluate their efforts, they can begin with the question: What is it we most want to learn about our project? Committee members might be wondering about a number of issues: What areas of parish life are newcomers attracted to and what are they most likely to become involved in? How do existing ministries welcome newcomers and draw on their knowledge and experience? Do any newcomers take initiative to start new groups and ministries? Questions such as these illustrate what project planners might desire to learn, and evaluation is one of the most effective means by which people can learn about their work together.

Many of us are accustomed to filling out an evaluation form at the end of a meeting, event, or conference. It provides the host with immediate feedback on what people liked and disliked. Oftentimes this is valuable information and an effective means for gathering participants’ immediate feedback, but in most cases it does not constitute the full range and scope of evaluation.

When evaluation is a means to learning, it is both a formative and summative practice. Evaluation that occurs over the course of a project is generally referred to as formative evaluation; when evaluation occurs at the conclusion, it is called summative evaluation. Both types of evaluation provide helpful ways of seeing what happens in a project. Formative evaluation, for instance, gives project leaders an accurate picture of what is taking place as the project activities unfold, and may assist them in making changes over the course of the project that will insure goals are met. Summative evaluation looks back on a project and seeks to learn how and in what ways project goals were met and what kind of impact the project has had on its participants. Summative evaluation is often used for purposes of accountability or accreditation. It also provides information to strategic planners that can aid in decision-making about future efforts. Evaluation, then, can have a broad scope beyond the evaluation forms we are asked to fill out at the end of a conference.

Overcoming Resistance

If evaluation is going to do what I claim it can, it matters who in an organization is responsible for it: who leads it, who cares about it, and who uses it. Evaluation is the responsibility of organization and project leaders who help staff members, board members, and constituents understand that evaluation is important and useful. Leaders set a tone for evaluation; their attitude toward learning influences how others will receive and use evaluation information. It is no surprise that evaluation is often resisted; it can be threatening! A project, in fact, may not be living up to its claims, or securing the results it aimed for. Some people fear that evaluations will turn up negative findings that will lead to punitive measures against the project or organization. Others, on the basis of previous experience, may view evaluation as a waste of time and of little use. And some may see evaluation primarily as additional work on top of an already full set of tasks.

Evaluation may feel for some like negative judgment or being graded on their performance. A project leader may feel they have to prove something to others in order to get high marks. It can be uncomfortable to have a project judged, particularly in regards to work we care deeply about. We might feel that evaluators are looking over our shoulder and pointing out problems and failures. Because of our close involvement and commitment to the work, we may hear criticism or suggestions as negative indictments rather than as constructive proposals. And we may fail to separate what the project is and does from our personal investment and contributions to it.

Leaders can reframe evaluation to help overcome these resistances. For instance, when evaluation is truly understood as learning, the project’s weaknesses, mishaps, and failed attempts are not threats, but opportunities. Leaders can invite people to step back and reflect on the project’s goals, and identify the obstacles that are blocking success. If leaders allow people to see the project design as flexible and adaptable, evaluation opens up alternative strategies and activities. In fact, if plans do not change over the course of a multiyear project, it may be a signal that learning is not taking place. Because every element

of a successful project cannot be identified at the outset, evaluation is indispensable for answering the questions: What have we learned from the project thus far? What’s missing from what we are doing? and What needs to change?

In addition to a spirit of learning and openness, leaders can insure that evaluation is worth the time it takes. Evaluation is an activity that requires resources such as time, money, and material goods, so people must be able to see that the use of additional resources has merit for the project and organization. In essence, evaluation can create a spirit of collaborative inquiry among the project’s stakeholders. A key aspect of evaluation is determining who these stakeholders are, what they want to learn, and how the project can engage them in conversation. Again, in a well-designed project, stakeholders are people invested in the project’s rationale: they are committed to helping the organization successfully execute activities, secure needed resources, and achieve the results and impact necessary for changing a condition. Evaluation is a way to provide comprehensive information to the project’s stakeholders so that they see more clearly, understand more fully, and learn what is necessary to do the work effectively.

Making Good Projects Better

Evaluation is a means of being accountable to the organization’s mission and the project’s purposes. Obviously, few organizations have the luxury to be wasting time and resources on unnecessary or ineffective projects. Evaluation helps to build the case for a project and strengthen an organization’s commitment to sustaining it over the long term.

Project evaluation, then, has the potential to make good projects better. It increases understanding about the conditions the project seeks to address, and strengthens the claims about the activities and resources necessary for effective response. In addition, project evaluation helps us to see the project’s impact on constituents and the organization. In essence, evaluation helps to refine the rationale that provides a project with meaning, purpose, and direction.

[This article was excerpted and adapted from Kathleen A. Cahalan’s forthcoming Alban Institute book, Projects That Matter: Successful Planning and Evaluation for Religious Organizations (AL 266). To order, call 1-800-486-1318, ext. 244, or visit our Web site at www.alban.org.]

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"Becoming Mutually Accountable: Strengthening Clergy and Congregations through Evaluation" by Donna Schaper

Assessment is often viewed as a dirty word, but it is a necessity and even a positive tool. Without it we don’t know how to measure what has happened to us, through us, or around us.

Assessment, or evaluation, is nothing more or less than mutual accountability: we agree to be and do certain things and to allow others to help us see whether or not we did so. With this simple tool of accountability we can enter a place of comfort, safety, and personal growth. We can open the door to knowing what others really think of us rather than guessing at their points of view.

But let’s face it; there are many things wrong with assessment. The call from the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education for “commonly used tests or other assessments” of student learning is a prime example. In response to these urgings, faculty members complained that higher education is far too diverse to be measured by standardized tests, that common learning measures would lead to costly and unnecessary federal intervention, and that if assessment was used as a consumer information tool it would oversimplify a complex higher education system and lead to comparisons among unlike institutions.1

In congregations, all the issues about assessment that concern higher education come to an even sharper focus. The clergyperson is seen as set apart and accountable to God first and people second. God, we believe, uses grace as assessment—for all human beings—and many people therefore resist evaluating others, wishing to remain outside each other’s critical embrace. But being critical, in the sense of examining something from all sides, can provide a positive moment of recognition. It can be a vehicle for grace, the grace that understands that nobody is perfect, that we all have flaws, that we are all partial, and that we need each other’s gifts to complete ourselves.

We clergy are not perfect and we are also much less important to church than churches think. A rabbi friend of mine understands this. When I left my Miami congregation he gave them a message: “The only way we will know how good Donna was here is in what you do now.” He got it: the goodness of a parish is in the relationship between the leaders and the congregation, not in the quality of any one leader. A leader is only as good as the fruit of his or her relationships. If the consequences of a person’s leadership are that the soil has been prepared for the next leader to enjoy even more trust and mutual accountability, then the leader has succeeded.

Even though some measurements don’t apply until long after we are gone, clergy—and congregations—need to periodically be informed as to how they and their performance are perceived. If done right, the evaluation process can have positive results for both clergy and congregations. It can lead congregations and their leadership to focus on what really matters. It can show that church boards are really teams of spiritual leaders and that leadership is the interaction of the system with itself, not just what the minister does—nor, for that matter, just what the congregation does. It is the healthy, mutually reinforcing, mutually evaluating action of the relationship between the leader and the system, the board and the leader, and each with the wider world in which the system is located.

Good evaluations and legitimate assessments help the congregational system go from fuzzy to focus. They address such questions as: What is it we are doing? Are we doing what we should be? Good assessments also offer the system a way to improve. Through effective evaluation the system is held accountable both to God and to its own constituents. We make mutual the accountability and give each other the grace that God has already given us. But, in order to conduct an evaluation that fulfills this promise, some guidance may be in order. In the following sections are some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind.

What Not to Do

• Don’t poll the entire congregation about the pastor’s performance. General information can be very harmful. However, particular information can be very useful. To obtain such information, have a conversation with five percent of the congregation (for instance, 10 members of a 200-member parish). What is wrong with most evaluations is they are too complicated, too general, and provide information that no one takes responsibility for implementing. Complicated evaluations abuse precious lay and clergy time, and they don’t meet the goal of mutual accountability being the vehicle for grace. Simplifying the process by limiting the number of “assessors” can therefore be valuable.
• When asking people for their assessments, do not use a written form. Instead, have a conversation with them, asking what they appreciate about the pastor and what they would like to see more of. Let this question be the place where people can register any of their disappointments.
• Do not make the results public. Consider the assessment a treasured conversation between trusted friends (in both directions).
• Do not link the evaluation itself to the raise. Instead, link the pastor’s response to the evaluation to the raise. In other words, evaluate in one season, do the budget in another season. Some congregations annualize the review; others do it early and often by means of as pastor-parish relations committee (PPRC) or similar mechanism. Ongoing evaluation has real strengths and creates the “muscles” we need to do it well. At the same time, annual evaluations have a formality to them that can help support positive, open, and diverse communication; they provide opportunities for multiple and divergent viewpoints, make space for difference, and allow for expressions of appreciation for the pastor and all those involved in the evaluation process. A combination of an annual formal evaluation and a regular mechanism for mutual feedback is the best set-up for evaluation. In either case, we need to allow the evaluation’s message time to sink in. For example, if it has been suggested that the minister spend more time editing his or her sermons, allow six months for this to occur. During that time, certain appointed people should provide regular and specific feedback. If the pastor responds appropriately to the feedback, reward him or her with a raise. If not, withhold the raise. Likewise, if you are asking the pastor to spend more time on an activity, be clear where the pastor should spend less time. Should he or she do less parish visitation instead? Make the issue of improvement a collective responsibility, not an individual accusation.
• Do not let the temperature rise in the organization around evaluation time. Instead, quietly announce that an evaluation will be taking place and that anyone who has comments may send them to the PPRC or the personnel committee. Evaluation between congregations and pastors should become normal. Ordinary. The way we expect a very good friend of ours to invade our personal space—early and often.

What to Do 

• Do have two units, a personnel committee and a PPRC (or some other group of diverse, appointed people who hold genuine conversations with the minister regularly about what is happening in the parish). The members of the PPRC should serve at least three-year terms and should become known in the parish as the people to whom parishioners can talk if they have a complaint about the minister. The PPRC member should then determine how to deliver the message to the minister, whether one-on-one or in a meeting. The style and feel of these meetings should be one of intimacy, trust, and friendship. The second unit, the personnel committee, should then receive the evaluation of the PPRC and make decisions about raises and the like. There is nothing wrong with formal procedures! For
• mal procedures would surely avoid some of the crises that accompany organizations today: pedophilia, clergy burnout, misuse of information, e-mail abuse, confidentiality violations, and worries about affirmative action, to name a few. The fact that no one watches clergy is terrible. Formal procedures matter; they just are at odds with the highly emotional, intimate, preciously fragile system that parishes usually are.
• Do have a formal but simple job description for the clergyperson and have all members of both the PPRC and the personnel committee privately complete an evaluation of each part (based on a one-to-five scale) and hand it to the minister. In other words, do use numbers.
• Do anticipate a three- to five-year “break-in” period for this method to work. Becoming “normal,” or ordinary, takes time.
• Do allow the minister to also evaluate the congregation, using its bylaws and/or another device. If there is a “job description” for the congregation, it should be one developed by the congregation. If no such job description exists, ask the minister to do a simple one-to-five evaluation of how the congregation is measuring up to its bylaws. This creates mutual accountability, further strengthening the congregational system. The best pastor in the world can’t minister to a parish that is not focused on its work in the world.

Finally, submit both numerical evaluations to the PPRC and the personnel committee, who should then name future directions: What do we want to improve this year? In the name of improving these things, what will we eliminate?

Annually, the pastor’s job description should be weighted and changed, with extraordinary attention to the dilemma of trying to do everything versus doing some things well and others not at all, and compensating for weaknesses through the intelligent use of staff, lay leaders, and consultants or other external resources. This annual reassessment of the job description can be based on the conversations that have been occurring throughout the year.

When assessment is done graciously, normally, and in an orderly way, wonderful things can result. One is appreciation, another is trust, a third is clarity, and the final one is grace. At ordination we clergy give ourselves to God. The same is true for the baptism of the nonordained person, who is also given to God. Reminders of the sacred nature of our relationship to congregation, God, and each other are terribly important. They keep us alive. How we manage our relationships is a sacred activity. Evaluation, as part of that management process, is also therefore a sacred activity. The mutual accountability of assessment makes real our ordination vows and the membership promises of baptism—and is a vehicle to experiencing the deep pleasure of grace.

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NOTES 

1. Margaret A. Miller, “The Legitimacy of Assessment,” The Chronical Review, September 22, 2006.

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"Getting Feedback on Your Ministry: Three Ways to Do Evaluation without Risking a Public Flogging" by Roy Oswald

To maintain competence, a parish pastor needs accurate feedback on how his or her ministry is perceived in the congregation. It matters little what I intend to do and be if members view the results of my ministry negatively—hence the importance of feedback. The trick is to get feedback without being beaten up from time to time. I offer three ways that pastors and congregations can evaluate their ministries together.

1. Total Ministry Evaluation

First, clergy can learn of their impact on a congregation by engaging the entire membership in a ministry evaluation once every four years. In this process everyone is evaluated, not only the clergy. Each congregant is invited to a small meeting in a member’s home and asked, with others, to reflect on the congregation as a spiritual community. What do we like about the way we conduct our ministry to members and outsiders? What gives cause for concern? Small meetings can be valuable as an aid to devising a four-year strategic congregational vision.1

For this type of evaluation I like to engage the group in a study of Revelation 1–3. In these biblical passages seven letters are written to seven congregations. The format of all seven is similar. God is saying:

“This I commend you for.”

“This I hold against you.”

After the seven letters are read aloud by group members, everyone is handed writing materials and invited to “write a letter to our congregation. What do you think God would commend us for? What do you think God would hold against us?” Give participants 15 to 20 minutes for writing. This approach seeks to move people beyond petty grievances so that they see the congregation as they imagine God might see it.

After each person reads his or her letter aloud, group members discuss the similarities and differences in how they view the congregation. Before the session ends, the leader collects the letters. Leaders of all small groups meet to collate the responses; a summary of results is sent to congregation members. This summary tends to get people talking and working to remedy the dysfunctional aspects of their congregational life. Goals can then be set to address the findings.

The advantage of such a ministry assessment is that all are evaluated, not just the clergy. In the process, pastors gain insight into their role and may as a result alter the way they conduct ministry.

But such a major intervention in congregational life should not be an annual rite. Once every four years suffices. Other methods can be used in intervening years to help gain feedback.

2. Annual Role Renegotiation

At least once a year, the pastor and the congregation’s chief decision-making body should spend a couple of hours reviewing the relationship between pastor and members. The pastor and vestry/session/council/board might begin the evening with prayers for guidance, followed by solitary time for board members to write their responses to three questions posed by the pastor:

1. What would you like more of from me?

2. What would you like less of from me?

3. What would you like me to keep the same?

Meanwhile, the pastor writes answers to similar questions asked by the board:

1. What would you like more of from us?

2. What would you like less of from us?

3. What would you like us to keep the same?

Once again, a public flogging must be avoided. The session may well turn into a free-for-all if the number of people involved exceeds nine to twelve.

The pastor should share first. She should expect that board members will be as candid with her as she is with them. Her candor elicits theirs. Do not expect to blow off the board with innocuous compliments about how wonderful its members are, and that nothing about them needs to change. Such comments are a cop-out, and the pastor can expect equally insipid remarks from the board. People should enter this serious pastor-parish relationship with the intent to keep it healthy or to restore it to health.

After the pastor speaks, all at the table should share their lists. Once these responses are on the table, the pastor and the group may renegotiate roles. Do the shared comments suggest that the pastor’s working relationship with the congregation needs work? The board can learn much about the complexity of the pastoral role. Should it want more from the pastor (such as more frequent home calling), she can explore what parts of her role may have to be given up to make time for home visits. In this case, the pastor doesn’t accept all requests at face value. Should the board urge her to make more home visits, she might share her experience of driving around town trying to find a member at home, mostly leaving her card in the mailbox. When she does find someone at home, they sit, drink coffee, and make small talk. The pastor may pronounce such visits an unproductive use of her time.

Yet the board may offer ideas for the pastor to shift priorities to meet at least some of its expectations, raised on behalf of the congregation. The board may modify the way it works with the pastor, its members having learned what she needs more or less of. Both may agree to change the way they carry out their roles for a stated period, later evaluating how well the alteration has worked.

Objectives at Odds

Any clergy evaluation has two long-term objectives, and they can be at odds with each other: administrative effectiveness and personal growth. Leaders charged with running an organization need accurate information on employees. Without it, running an effective system is difficult. Leaders may lack the knowledge to decide whether an employee should be given a pay raise, additional responsibility, a change in job description, or a termination notice. Thus an evaluation may be geared toward operating more effectively. Such a performance review is top-down; employees are subject to it whether they like it or not.

The other sort of appraisal seeks to assist the individual’s personal growth and job-related learning. Literature on performance appraisal generally advises that these two aims (administrative and growth-oriented) not be combined—a common error of those who conduct reviews. As we look closely at an employee’s experience of evaluation, we can understand why combining the two is a mistake. For one to learn to do a job better, she needs to explore her pain, her sense of vulnerability, and her confusion. If we want to learn to improve our performance, we need to identify where we hurt and where we are perplexed, and head in that direction. But if our future within a system depends on a good rating, we would be crazy to explore our pain and confusion. When an evaluation is top-down, we must give our most positive response to every question. We need to look good if we want a raise or a promotion. In a congregation, when the chief decision-making body evaluates the pastor, you can bet that she will do everything in her power to make a positive impression. Too much is at stake to do otherwise.

The difference between administrative and personal-growth reviews can be summarized using two basic questions: “Who owns the data?” and “Who controls the process?” If the answer to both questions is “Someone other than the pastor,” it is an administrative evaluation, and the group that evaluates needs to know that the pastor is not going to learn much. What pastors learn from administrative evaluations is how to protect themselves from humiliation in the presence of key congregational leaders.

3. Pastor-Initiated Evaluation

In a “personal-growth” evaluation the pastor can both control the process and own the data. It is collected for his eyes only. He may wish to identify one or two lay leaders he can trust implicitly, and ask them to assist. Those asked must be able to maintain confidentiality.

For example, suppose that the pastor is getting “negative vibes” about his sermons. Most people like and appreciate the sermons, but some have difficulty staying with them. The pastor may ask these trusted lay leaders to interview six people after one sermon a month. They will ask what people value about the pastor’s sermons and what gives them difficulty. After this data-gathering, the pastor meets with the lay leaders to receive and discuss the feedback from the interviews. Using what he has learned, the pastor may try preaching a sermon to address some of the issues raised by members. The same congregants interviewed previously are then asked whether they got more out of the new sermon.

In a similar pastor-initiated approach, the two chosen lay leaders work with him to develop a questionnaire to send out to a cross-section of the congregation. The two leaders collate the responses and assist the pastor in interpreting the results. At the next vestry or session meeting, some members of that body might ask the pastor, “Hey, we’d like to know what you’re learning from that questionnaire.” One possible response from the pastor could be: “I’m sorry. I initiated this process for my own learning, and therefore the results belong to me. I may choose to tell you about what I’m learning—in fact I probably will—but I’ll decide just what will be shared.”

The pastor-initiated process of getting feedback builds in enough safety that a pastor can explore aspects of ministry without defensiveness or risk of public humiliation. However, it does require that the pastor take the lead in finding out what impact he or she is having on members. Without such knowledge it is hard to gain competence in his complex pastoral role.

The Common Ingredient

None of the three methods of gaining feedback is easy, and all involve some degree of tension. Each requires that the pastor take some initiative, stating clearly that feedback is desirable; each demands the pastor’s candor. The process controlled and initiated by the pastor offers the advantage of enabling him or her to face tough feedback without suffering embarrassment in front of lay decision-makers. The one ingredient common to all three processes is a pastor motivated to make a greater impact on the congregation for the sake of the gospel.

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NOTE

1. For more information on developing a strategic vision, see Roy M. Oswald and Robert E. Friedrich, Jr., Discerning Your Congregation’s Future: A Strategic and Spiritual Approach(Bethesda, Md.: Alban Institute, 1996).
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