Pastor's Pastor

Pastor's Pastor: Ministerial evaluation: good? or bad?

Pastor's Pastor: Ministerial evaluation: good? or bad?

Floyd Bresee is the Secretary of the General Conference Ministerial Association.

Evaluation is essential to growth. Practice does not necessarily make perfect. It may only make permanent. If you do anything wrong often enough, it becomes the only way that feels right. Pastoral or any other kinds of skills are best learned by practice, followed by evaluation, followed by a plan for improving, followed by practice that tests and implements that plan, followed by evaluation, etc. Evaluation is essential in helping us identify our strengths and weaknesses and in providing us a foundation on which to develop a plan for personal improvement.

It is important to the pastor that not only he be evaluated, but his church also. Peter Wagner makes the bold assertion that seminary training is inadequate because it doesn't train a minister to diagnose a congregation's needs and potential.

Evaluation is frightening to some ministers. Evaluation ought to be taken seriously--but not too seriously. You will never be able to do perfectly everything expected of a pastor. No one is that talented. You're always going to be strong in some areas and a little weak in others. God gives each of us enough strengths to give us courage and enough weaknesses to give us humility. On the other hand, you can grow to where you are able to do acceptably everything expected of a pastor.

Paul's counsel is encouraging: "Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have. For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not" (2 Cor. 8:11, 12).

Two lessons: First, Paul talks of a "readiness to will" and a "willing mind." God doesn't judge us by our performance, but by our willingness to perform. He smiles on those brave enough to face the limitations of their performance because they show a willingness to improve.

Second, our text speaks of performance out of "that which ye have" and according to "that a man hath." God doesn't compare a particular pastoral performance of yours with someone else's, but with the amount of talent He's given you to perform in that area.

In His parable of the talents, Jesus taught that God is as happy with His two-talent servants as He is with the five-talent ones so long as they are doing their best with what talents they have. He is disappointed with one-talent servants, not for having only one talent, but be cause, having so little, they try so hard to hide the fact. They give up on themselves and do nothing with what they do have.

Evaluation is often unavailable to the minister. In many professions there is a rather automatic numerical evaluation built in. The salesman knows how many sales he's chalked up. The businessman knows how much money he's made. But the only numerical evaluation of a pastor's success may be the number of persons baptized. This is one good indicator, but a very incomplete one. Conference administrators who seem to evaluate ministers on the basis of baptisms alone may not do it so much be cause they think it is a complete evaluation, but because it is the only means readily available.

The Seventh-day Adventist minister's paycheck doesn't evaluate his effectiveness. It is based not on how well he's doing his work, but on how long he's been doing it. The congregation doesn't volunteer much unbiased evaluation. It's not easy for the minister to get honest, accurate evaluation.

Evaluation is now available to you through a notebook prepared by the General Conference Ministerial Association. We have found that no one test or instrument fits every pastoral personality or every situation, so we have taken the cafeteria approach in preparing this notebook. One of the 16 different instruments it offers should suit your needs and personality.

There are tests included for six areas: pastor evaluated by himself; pastor evaluated by his church; pastoral job description; pastoral objectives; church evaluated by itself and/or the pastor; and church administrator evaluated by pastor, himself, or others.

One of the tests was prepared by us, but most came from conferences and were gleaned from responses to a survey of the world field. We thank those who submitted them for their good work and willingness to share.

Some conferences may use forms such as these to evaluate their pastors. This is where evaluation is sometimes perceived by pastors as bad and it may be if not done in the right climate. At any rate, our emphasis is on self-evaluation.

These evaluation instruments come to you accompanied by our prayer that you and the Lord together may use them as a means to help you grow ever more effective in His service. See the advertisement on the opposite page for ordering information.


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Floyd Bresee is the Secretary of the General Conference Ministerial Association.

June 1989

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