How should we define success in pastoral ministry?
This question begins a series of questions on the theme of pastoral ministry for this week. I am asking this particular question because sometimes we misunderstand success as we evaluate our ministry as pastors.
Here are some ways that we traditionally evaluate “success” in ministry?
- Numbers – how many people are coming?
- What are people tell us – comments after sermons, ministry events, etc.?
- Length of pastoral ministry in a particular location?
- Size of building?
- Size of church budget?
- Debt load?
- Number of ministries?
- Baptism and Membership numbers?
These are a sampling of ways we can define what “success” is in ministry. Any others that you can think of and the problems you can see with some or all of them?
Taken together, they are all important in overall evaluation but this traditional list is still lacking a dimension that we too easily ignore. This dimension is the subjective, less quantitative characteristics that are often neglected but are often what distinguishes healthy and successful churches. Therefore, I think we should evaluate our churches with the following questions (along side the traditional objective questions above)?
- Do we have open arms that reflects the love for others that Jesus demonstrated?
- Do we have good relationships among ourselves?
- Do people know there spiritual gifts and are they using them?
- Is it difficult to find and identify ministry leaders?
- Do we have openness for disagreements and can we handle conflict with love and respect?
- Do we, as a community, enjoy being together?
- Does the average church member have good healthy relationships with people in the community who are unchurched?
- Do our worship services have an element of excitement about them?
- Do our pastors, elders and leadership get along and enjoy each other?
- Do people participate in the worship service?
- Does our budget reflect our values?
- Do we know, and are we doing, something about the needs of our community?
- Do we show a heart for missions and is it reflective in our actions?
- Is laughter a common sound in our foyer, classrooms and sanctuary?
- Is our teaching engaging, biblical, contextual, etc.
- Are we compassionate to others? Do we mourn with those who mourn?
- Are people’s lives being changed by the Spirit of God and do we, as a community, celebrate those changes.
- If our church ceased to exist would our community notice? If not, why not?
I understand that these qualitative questions may seem idealistic and problematic, as they are difficult to track and report on, but don’t they reflect a deeper level of success than our traditional quantitative questions?
