No one becomes a pas tor by accident or drifts, unchallenged, into the Christian ministry. Ministers in most major denominations are ordained only after they have undergone a process of selection, training, examination, and probationary service, all designed to test their vocation, assess their suitability for ministry, and equip them adequately for their future work. The smaller, independent churches, though less formal in their assessment methods, are equally concerned to ensure that their pastors are truly called of God and are fit people to minister to the local congregation. So it is generally recognized that a pastor needs to be a person of evident Christian faith and experience, and one who possesses clearly defined leader ship and professional skills. Careful assessment is made of everyone who seeks to become a Christian pastor.
Because of this, it is somewhat strange that little or no regular assessment is made of a pastor's ministry after his* acceptance by the church. It seems a common assumption that once a person has been ordained, given a "living," or placed on the "approved list" of ministers (however the state of initial attainment is described) he is able to exercise a successful ministry until retirement, without any further assessment of his work being either desirable or necessary. It appears to be taken for granted that his preaching will be fruitful, that his pastoral work will build up the church, that he will be an efficient administrator, and that, as a matter of course, he will always be master of every situation. Unless he is openly immoral, or convicted in a criminal court, his ministry is unlikely to be called into question or his effectiveness as a pastor challenged.
Only when the pastor changes appointment is an assessment (of sorts) at tempted. And then only when a "key" appointment in the church is at stake is it likely to be conducted with any degree of professionalism. In the case of most ordinary pastoral appointments the inquiries made about a pastor tend to be superficial rather than of any depth, subjective rather than objective and on the level of "Do you think J— S— will fit in at St. Mark's?" "Yes, you'll like him, he's a good chap!" If the pastor has a weaker side to his ministry (and what pastor hasn't?) this tends to be minimized out of mistaken kindness to him and in order not to damage his prospects. Even when the assessment is carried out conscientiously it is unusual for the pastor to be given details of it. He is, therefore, denied any opportunity of profiting from it and using it to shape his future ministry. And if he changes appointments infrequently even this kind of assessment isn't made often.
Proper pastoral maintenance
The lack of any regular assessment of ministry affects both the church and the pastor. No right-minded church allows its central heating system to deteriorate through failure to renew the annual service contract; no church, fortunate enough to have financial reserves, invests them haphazardly; no live, worshiping community omits to review its work periodically in response to changing circumstances. Yet how rarely is a church concerned to get the best from its most valuable (and most expensive) investment, its manpower! Greater care needs to be taken in handling this resource than in fully utilizing the church's other resources, for more is at stake; whether the pastor is over- or under-employed, rightly or wrongly employed ought to come higher on the church council's agenda than even such a major item, say, as the re-roofing of the building. The church that fails to maintain, service, and assess the work of its pastor fails in a vital area of its stewardship and is bound to suffer long-term consequences.
The pastor, too, suffers from never facing a realistic assessment of his ministry. Because the nature of his calling means that he often has to stand alone, the pastor who wishes to isolate himself from the guidance and help of others is able to do so unhindered. Personal and family problems can be concealed successfully from church members. Problems in ministry can arise without anyone (sometimes without even the pastor himself) being aware that they are there or that they are serious. One pastor may die prematurely through overwork because no one has shown him how to delegate his responsibilities, or told him that the kingdom of God is unlikely to collapse if he takes a day off! Another may enjoy a leisurely existence and never be fully "stretched," or may busy himself doing things for which he wasn't ordained while rejecting important pastoral duties, simply because he's never been challenged to ex amine how he spends his time. Many pastors would not have reached the crisis point of resignation from the ministry if their work had been regularly assessed and they had been helped to come to terms with themselves and their situation. Many others would have been saved from the nagging dissatisfaction and sense of unease that have dogged their continuing service of the church.
Why, then, has the church been so slow to recognize the importance of ministerial assessment and the need for in-service evaluation common in other professions? This article discusses that question and then lists the aims that ought to lie behind an assessment; it concludes by suggesting practical ways in which regular assessments may be carried out.
Why we don't evaluate ministry
The root cause of the church's reluctance to introduce any assessment of its pastors may be that, historically, the church has regarded itself as distinct from other institutions in society, operating under different rules and for different purposes. The church is "holy"—its pastors, who are people of vocation, are set apart for God's work and are specialists in their sphere of things spiritual, and to apply to them the personnel procedures used in industry, the civil service, and other walks of life is unnecessary and out of place. Often, both pastor and congregation accept this notion too readily. The pastor claims he is accountable to God alone for his ministry and for how he fulfills it. The church member who respects his pastor as a man of God and holds that ordination confers on him all the gifts and graces necessary for his life's work hesitates to ask questions about matters (he considers) outside the lay man's province. So in many parts of today's church there is a built-in, traditional resistance to the idea of assessment of ministry; being unbusiness-like is regarded as a virtue, not a vice!
A pastor may resist an assessment of his ministry for reasons other than that he feels his vocation ought not to be subject to such a procedure. If his training instilled into his mind the belief that he was being fully equipped to deal with the demands of any situation he would be likely to face during his ministry, it isn't surprising that, when experience proves otherwise, guilt feelings take hold of him. Provided that he can keep to himself the knowledge that he isn't always able to cope, that he has weaknesses, and that he's not altogether the model pastor his congregation imagines, then he can live with his guilt and frustration. But once the idea of assessment is mooted he immediately feels threatened and becomes defensive. Any inquiry, he suspects, would increase his sense of guilt, reveal his failures to colleagues and superiors (on whom he depends for preferment?) and undermine the respect that his church members give to him and that he needs to justify his calling and boost his morale. But perhaps the hardest thing for any pastor to accept is the reality that he is not self-sufficient. Spending his life helping others and being the assessor of their situation, he finds it hard to accept help for himself, to share his problems with others, and to subject his ministry to open and honest assessment.
However, the entire blame for the lack of assessment mustn't be laid on the pas tor's shoulders! There are difficulties in the nature of ministry itself. How can matters that are essentially spiritual be assessed by using other than spiritual criteria? Diagnostic tests can quickly assess the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, and an athlete's progress can be measured against the stopwatch or meter rule. But how can a pastor's performance be measured adequately? By the growth or decline in church membership during his pastorate? This is likely to be determined as much by sociological as by religious and spiritual factors. By the number and variety of the church activities he has introduced? These may be only of marginal importance in the growth of the church's inner, spiritual life. By the fullness of his diary and the number of hours he gives each week to his job? There is no guarantee that constant activity is a sign of a well-balanced ministry; it may equally be evidence of inefficiency, bad management, and a careless use of time. And how can a pastor's priestly ministry of prayer be assessed? Or his care of the needy? Or his power in preaching? The difficulties involved in making any assessment have often been used as arguments for making no assessment at all.
One further problem needs to be mentioned. Very rarely is there a written job description of any ordinary pastoral appointment in the church. It is assumed that everyone knows what a minister does and what the job requires of him. But do they? Different situations call for different qualities in a pastor: the person skilled in inner-city work may not be equal to the demands of an appointment in the country, the university, the armed forces, the suburb, or some other area of ministry. In the wide variety of appointments no standard job description is possible, and therefore there is no recognized norm against which the pastor's ministry can be assessed. Until there is a full, written job description for every appointment, it is difficult to determine the extent to which the pastor matches up to its demands.
If the difficulties can be overcome and the principle of regularly assessing a pas tor's ministry find acceptance, what should be the aims of the assessment? The primary object must be to help the pastor rather than to judge him; to enable him to know (and accept) himself, to develop as a person and to replenish his own inner resources; to give him insights into the strengths and weaknesses of his ministry that he can use to make his future work more satisfying and effective; to encourage him to share with others the problems and opportunities of his situation so that he is helped to bear the stresses of the former and seize the challenges of the latter; to open his mind to new ideas, new methods, and new areas of service so that he is never entirely bound by the heavy hand of custom and tradition. These are some of the broad aims that ought to lie behind any assessment of ministry. Only a positive and forward-looking evaluation will help the pastor.
How can an assessment with these aims be put into practice? Four methods (not mutually exclusive) immediately come to mind: self-assessment, assessment by the congregation, peer assessment, and external (professional?) assessment. Each has its advantages and drawbacks but any one of them would bring benefit to a pastor willing to cooperate in working it through.
Self-assessment
This method is perhaps the most re warding, but unquestionably, it is also the most difficult and demanding. Truth that a person discovers for himself has deeper and longer-lasting influence on his thinking than truth demonstrated to him by somebody else. And because self-assessment can be incorporated into the pastor's regular pattern of life, it doesn't suffer from being regarded as an imposition made upon him (always at an inconvenient time!). But honesty and discipline are essential! Pretense comes as easily to the unwary pastor as to anybody else, and "turning the blind eye" can often be his unconscious reaction to negative and adverse factors. No useful purpose is served by attempting to prove anything, whether it be one's own sanctity and success, or miserable sinfulness and failure. Again, like most other people, most pastors live and work between the two extremes, and however difficult it may be to practice, the Delphic precept "know thyself must be the self-assessor's rule. Self-discipline is necessary if the pastor is to avoid casualness on the one hand and the over-intensity, leading to unhealthy introspection, on the other.
If the pastor decides to follow the self-assessment method, there are various actions he can take. He can adopt a "rule" of life by which he regularly measures his vocation. He can prayerfully review each day's events at the day's end. Every few months, for a day or longer, he can make his "retreat" to reflect on the effectiveness of his ministry. Every year, on the anniversary of his ordination, he can write down his hopes (realistic ones!) so that 12 months later he can assess achievement in the light of intention. The way of self-assessment is open to all, but none finds the going easy!
Congregational assessment
This method is also fraught with problems, but pastors who have used it testify to its value. It is essential for both pastor and people to show charity and goodwill, particularly if the congregation is one of those that has considerable say in the hiring and firing of its ministers. The representatives of the congregation appointed to carry out the assessment need to have a proper understanding of the nature and scope of the pastor's work, both within and outside the church structures. They must look neither for a superman to whom they can safely en trust the success of their church, nor for a scapegoat on whom they can blame their own failure. But given qualified laymen prepared to undertake it, this congregational assessment has two main advantages: it is carried out by people familiar with the local situation, and it provides the opportunity for pastor and people, together, to evaluate the ministry of their church and not simply that of their pastor. What is the church achieving? What progress is being made in its life of worship, fellowship, evangelism, and Christian service? What are its plans for the future and how does it propose to implement them? Answering these questions assess the church's work, and within that context, the pastor's leader ship role is evaluated as well.
Peer assessment
The pastor who belongs to a team ministry, or who shares colleagueship with others in a regular staff meeting, has considerable advantages over the pastor who works on his own. He has a ready-made peer group in which corporate evaluations of ministry can be made as a matter of normal practice. The team members may work in the same situation, but they bring to the shared task differences of approach, a variety of insights, and a diversity of gifts, all of which challenge the individual pastor to reassess his own ministry against the contributions of others. To some ex tent this happens automatically, but assessment of ministry ought to be one of the team's declared aims rather than a byproduct of its staff meetings. Time and effort should be spent in evaluating the part each pastor plays; a trustful atmosphere needs to be created in which each team member is able to react to the others, to make criticisms without giving or taking offense, and to offer challenge, encouragement, and support to the group. A pastor who works on his own and is, therefore, denied this method of assessment, can benefit from it in a limited way if he seeks out one or two neighboring pastors who are similarly placed and who would be willing to share in a mutual evaluation of their ministries.
External assessment
If objectivity is rated as an important factor in any assessment, this method offers the best hope of obtaining it. Someone from outside can assess a situation more clearly than a person intimately involved in it. The responsibilities of the pastor pastorum, whether bishop, moderator, or district chairman, ought to include the appointment of an assessor for every pastor in his care. (Indeed, those responsibilities ought to include under taking the assessment of his pastors himself, ex-officio. But the numbers involved and the many other demands made on him preclude him giving any individual time and attention to do the job properly, even if he is suitably qualified. ) He may appoint someone after the model of a spiritual director with whom the pastor can meet regularly to discuss, in confidence, every aspect of his minis try. He may introduce the pastor to one of the Christian organizations specializing in professional assessment techniques and ensure that the church authorities pay the consultation fees incurred. Or he may encourage the pastor to use one of the residential centers that provide opportunities for further training, for "re treat" and for courses that contain an element of assessment. Whatever form it takes, it is sensible for an external assessment of a pastor's ministry to be carried out at least once every five years. And it is important that it include a medical check-up. The pastor's effectiveness at work is not unrelated to his physical and mental health!
At present, few pastors undergo any form of regular assessment during the course of their ministry; there is a long way to go before even the principle of such evaluations is generally accepted by pastors and the church as a whole. Nonetheless, attempts are being made to initiate schemes and there are stirrings of support in the councils of the different denominations. These may be clouds no bigger than a man's hand, but they fore shadow the day when as much care will be given to assessments after a person becomes a pastor as is now given to evaluating him before his acceptance.
