My bishop has challenged pastors to increase professions of faith, attendance, and members in mission by 5% this year. Other clerical leaders also place challenges before their pastors, or explicit expectations. One district in our Conference requires monthly reports to the District Superintendent on attendance and giving.What are sound criteria for evaluating pastors?
18 comments:
Ah, one of my pet subjects.
My short answer -- there are no sound criteria short of in-depth interviews with each person in the church. Numbers can say anything you want them to say.
Percentage of apportionment paid, obviously. ;-)
each church should have to take a picture of the congregation during worship (pref from a balcony). if the pews look full then that's okay.
&:~)
From the Missouri Conference -
If the congregation has 1) radical hospitality, 2) passionate worship, 3) relevant faith formation, 4) risk-taking mission, and 5) extravagant generosity. These five markers describe a healthy congregation led by an effective pastor.
Check,
Andy B.
But Andy, those are such subjective terms -- radical, passionate, relevant, risk-taking, extravagant. Give me a break! If we can't quantify our discipleship, it doesn't "count" and nobody gets the plum appointment they've always wanted!
< / sarcasm>
You can't just a congregations faith by easy numbers like growth. You might as well take their midiclorian count.
If they really want to get a feel for whether the church is doing well, then they should be going to the building and spending time with the church.
I like Gavin idea, and with just a little bit of Photoshop manipulation I could insure that my sanctuary always looks full.
Seriously though, monthly reports??? Just what ever pastor needs, more paperwork! And for people like me that are administratively challenged it's an extra burden. Seems to me there are two questions that should be asked.
How is the pastor applying his/her spiritual gifts in ministry?
How is the pastor equipping others to use their spiritual gifts in ministry?
In the Minnesota Annual Conference we've been talking about "Pastoral Excellence." One piece of the conversation is starting to discuss "fruitfulness" meaning both a measure of both faithfulness and success. We are also counting numbers, and trying to sort out what numbers to count.
But do we want people in the pews, institutional stability, or transformed hearts? Perhaps we assume they all go together.
I never thought about measuring midiclorian. Is there a test for that? :)
RE: andy b's 'radical hospitality.' What is that? Forcing people to drink coffee at gunpoint?
Counting nickels and noses? No thanks! Doesn't seem very, well, Methodist to me.
Instead of seeing how many come to worship, we could measure by percentage who many members and frequent visitors in our worship services are also involved in Bible studies (classes) and accountability groups (bands.)
To be close to the mark of early Methodist societies- that figure in worship should be pretty close to 100% on class attendance and maybe 60% or so on band participation. At least, that's how J.W. would have done it back in the day.
Plus we could look at time spent serving the least, the lost, and the left-out in our communities- what percentage of our core congregation is active in love and service of their neighbors?
And how about submitting a sermon every quarter on tape and have the theology of that sermon compared to the theology in the "standard sermons" to see if what we're preaching is consistent with who we're supposed to be as Methodist preachers? I mean, Wesley wouldn't let preachers get too far, theologically, from the "basics" so why should we?
Weren't people asked to pay for class meetings? Perhaps we should be charging for Sunday School not church! :-)
Pastors don't need a judge ... they need an encourager. The problem with this proposal is that encouragement requires relationship. Church leaders often do not understand that authority is all about influence. Consequentially they sometimes administer staff evaluations devoid of this very personal and relational aspect. Pastors need mentoring relationships with other church leaders ... when they have this they and their churches benefit because evaluation will comes in a loving and caring way.
Mark,
Coffee at gunpoint is, in fact, radical - but not quite what is meant. Radical hospitality means going beyond the "greeter at every door out of a sense of obligation" kind of hospitality to a woven into the fabric of the congregation kind of authenticity. Yes, pretty subjective. But this is after all, church.
Subjectively yours,
Andy B.
what about measuring the excitment/investment level of the congregation? Are they looking at their watches hoping their weekly duty is almost over; or are they so excited about what is going on at small group or in the worship service that their co-workers are either intrigued or tired of hearing about it?
John, the DS in my district in the Illinois Great Rivers Conference is trying to get each of our churches to have one more profession of faith this year than last year. The next year, he wants one more than that. And by the next year, he wants all of our worship attendances to see increase in worship attendance in all of our churches.
First, this feels like a slap in the face, as if we aren't trying to do this basic stuff in the first place.
Second, our conference has been losing between 2000-4000 people a year since 1988. They want us to just fix that by them giving us a goal?
Our conference is trying to come up with criteria for pastoral effectiveness too. This is troublesome to me, because it seems that what God considers effective is something that can't be measured by corporate standards of "success."
I'm glad that other conferences are torturing their pastors the same way ours is. Just kidding, sort of. I was hoping that ours was the only one doing this! Guess not!
their hearts :)
If the church is losing members, something truly prophetic must be going on!
Criteria? Ready?
Radical obedience to the Word of God. Add a Napolean Dynamite "Shuuuuu"!
Post a Comment