It is annual evaluation time at the church where I serve as Lead Pastor (Parkview Alliance Church).  Consequently, it is a busy time of year (I do formal evaluations, written and verbal, for the 8 staff members I supervise) but it is also a great time a year.  It is busy because I try my best to do this area very well and take intentional time and effort to make this is constructive and positive experience for everyone.

I often get asked on how we do this at Parkview and if you were interested in the full evaluation and professional development documents and policy we use, let me know and I would gladly send them off to you (in full disclosure, we edited and reworked some resources we took (with permission) from somewhere else).  We are in the process, over this next year, of expanding our evaluation process to include all our staff, not just the staff that I personally supervise.

The challenge for most churches is not the evaluation forms they use but about taking the time and effort to do them.  To that end, I thought I would present the principles and guiding philosophy that make this a positive part of our staff dynamic.

7 Reasons why I believe that evaluation is key to a healthy staff:

1. It communicates trust and constant communication.  
1. My goal is that nothing said in the evaluation time will be news to the staff member.  If I have an issue with them, I commit to not “gunny sack” it until our evaluation time (potentially holding it for months) but deal with it at the time of occurrence.  
2. Regular annual evaluations, with 6-month reviews, aid in a continual communication process that is ongoing and consistent.  It helps to foster regular communication, it does not take the place of it!
2. Evaluations are a regular part of all our staff’s life and ministry whether they are struggling or thriving.  
1. My observation has been that churches often only do evaluations when things are bad with a staff member.  This should never be the case.  Evaluations should be ongoing and consistent. This will help to alleviate the need for bad evaluations, help to encourage success, provide opportunities for encouragement and celebration, as well as give a positive route, with a foundation of trust, to deal with area of weakness.
3. It links self evaluation with supervisor evaluations – growing increased self awareness.
1. The best part of evaluations for me is having the staff members do their own self-evaluation and using part of the evaluation time to compare my observations with their own self-assessment.  By doing this it helps to raise self-awareness and therefore growth in specific areas. 
4.  Evaluations are related to personal growth and professional development.
1. Particularly with our full-time pastoral staff, this is huge component of our evaluation process and one of the best benefits of it.  Our full-time pastoral staff, myself included, also complete a yearly professional development plan that takes into account the areas brought out in our evaluations and helps us create a plan to manage and/or work through our areas of weakness (our growth potentials) and work more in our areas of strengths.
5. It makes me a better Lead Pastor because I am being evaluated.  
1. I lead by example.  My annual evaluation (done by a couple Elder’s based on evaluation forms filled out by all our elders, all our staff and six congregants) is the most intensive of all our staff members.  
2. I helps me be aware of areas I am not great at and need to grow in and it helps we check my “blind spots” regularly.  It, also, helps me to refocus my energies in areas of my strengths and find new ways to manage some of my weaknesses.
3. As a side note and separate from my annual evaluation, I do sermon evaluations several times a year having congregants fill out a sermon evaluation that aids in my desire to constantly grow as a preacher/teacher.
6. It provides opportunities to celebrate success.
1. If we are never honest about areas of potential growth, we will never be able to celebrate our growth in these areas.
2. My favourite time in evaluation with staff is looking at past years evaluations and seeing growth and then celebrating that growth with the staff members.
3. One of the benefits of annual evaluations is the cumulative nature of these and the subsequent ability to track growth.
7. It leads to personal and professional growth.
1. We will never grow if we are unaware of our current situation and don’t create a plan for growth.
2. Our professional develop plans and funds are connects to our evaluations and so if I, or a staff member, need to grow in an area and a certain conference or resource will help, we can strategically allocate funds and resources to see this happen.