Assessing Your Ministry: The Right and Wrong Way to Do It

If someone were to give a brief speech as to why you deserve a position of greater acclaim or responsibility or exposure, what would they say? The speaker would highlight the accomplishments of your ministry. And what are those?

What if he asked you in advance to write them out?

This week, a search committee assigned to find the successor to Dr. Morris Chapman who wears the interesting title of “President of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention,” gave its recommendation. Dr. Frank Page is their nominee, and will be made official at the annual meeting of our denomination a month from now in Orlando.

In their presentation on Frank Page, the committee hit the highlights of his ministry over these years, specifically from his last church, the First Baptist Church of Taylors, SC. The church runs about 2,300 on typical Sunday mornings, baptized 145 last year, and contributed some $6 mil of which 10% went to denominational missions. That sort of thing. They told of the two years he served as president of our denomination and of the missionary work dear to his heart.

Why did they do that? Why tell what he has recently done when the next assignment is completely unlike any aspect of that? Answer: it’s all we have to go on. The best indicator of future work is past production.

Everyone I know likes and respects Frank Page. We expect him to do well, and are blessed to have someone of his caliber in this slot for these days. But for our purposes here, I’m more interested in the way they assessed his ministry’s success by listing accomplishments.

What would they have said about you and me?

Would they list the attendance in my church as a sign of my success? The size of the offerings? The mission contributions? The denominational offices I have held? The books I have published? The buildings we’ve constructed? The mission teams we’ve sent out?

If so, a lot of us would have come up short. And yet–and this is the point I’d like to drive home–a lot of people who are having a successful Christ-honoring ministry will not have big numbers to post. (Incidentally, Frank Page would hasten to agree with that, for what that’s worth.)

The question before us, class, is: How do we go about assessing the success or failure of our ministries?


And, why would we want to do that in the first place?

The short answer to the last question is that to one degree or another, we do it all the time anyway. Every pastor and missionary is keenly aware of whether they are doing what God sent them there to do. Even if we don’t make an official determination, we are constantly assessing our ministry in our minds.

The question is how do we do it?

Here are some ways men and women in the Lord’s work traditionally assess the success or failure of their work–for good or for bad.

1) By the numbers.

We preachers do something which we all hate. We run into an old friend and upon finding he’s pastoring a church somewhere, we ask, “What are y’all running?” We hate anyone making a judgment about our lives by the numbers of people in the pews before us on a given Sunday, then we turn right around and do it.

Numbers are solid barometers of many things. They tell if more people are coming than came last year, if there is going to be finances enough to send out missionaries next year, if we can pay the light bill or give raises, if people are getting saved and being baptized. If the pastor has been there only a year and the attendance has dropped by 50 percent, it’s time for everyone to get concerned.

The Bible uses numbers to a certain extent. The New Testament reports that “about three thousand were added” to the church on Pentecost (Acts 2:41). That was nearly a thirty-fold increase for the congregation of 120 (Acts 1:15).

But numbers are limited in what they can tell us. They can inform us that so many were baptized last year, but they cannot assure us all these people knew what they were doing and are adequately being discipled and becoming disciple-makers themselves.

Numbers cannot tell us why more are coming to church or the attendance has gone through the basement.

“He who lives by the numbers will die by the numbers” is a saying among ministers. It’s a warning we give ourselves not to condition our people to judge everything by how many and how much.

2) By our feelings.

Inner satisfaction is a good thing. But it’s not an infallible test of anything. More than one pastor has felt good about his ministry while the church disintegrated around him.

Feelings are not adequate guides in romance, in flying an airplane, in building a skyscraper, or in pastoring a church. Feelings are too unstable, too changing, too arbitrary.

3) By the reports we get from others.

“Oh, pastor, my brother-in-law was here last Sunday, visiting from Chicago. And he was enthralled by your sermon. He said we were one lucky congregation.”

The Lord Jesus once asked the disciples what others were saying about Him. What He left unsaid was whether the answers made the least difference to Him. What He was doing, of course, was testing how well His message was coming through to the people of God, whether they were figuring out that He was indeed the Messiah. (Matthew 16)

Most of us don’t come right out and ask the church staff or deacons what the community is saying about us. That’s a little too obvious, even for us. But it matters. Sometimes it matters too much, and we judge our effectiveness by what the community thinks of us.

Not a good thing. The Lord warned us, “Beware when all men speak well of you” (Luke 6:26).

Never forget that the crowd welcomed our Lord into Jerusalem on a Sunday and crucified Him by Friday. The Apostle Paul found that the Lystrians who treated him and Barnabas as gods in the morning were persuaded to stone them as devils by mid-afternoon (Acts 14).

4) By the approval of higher-ups.

“The bishop likes me.” “I’ve been invited to speak on this national program.” “Look, the denominational magazine lists me as one of the up-and-coming leaders of the church.”

Don’t buy into that, pastor. Bishops come and go. The program planners for that national event probably had a cancellation and knew you would have a blank calendar. And the editor of the denominational magazine was just looking for something to fill the space.

Frank Pollard, now in Heaven, for a quarter century pastored the great First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi. He was a role model for a generation of preachers. Sometime in the early 1980s Time magazine named him one of America’s 10 greatest preachers.

How could that not go to a fellow’s head, most of us wondered. But it did not. Not in the least. In fact, when a student pastor on assignment from a seminary class asked, “Dr. Pollard, how do you want to be remembered after you’re gone?” he answered, “I don’t want to be remembered. I’m just the messenger.”

5) By the satisfaction or unrest of the congregation.

I suppose it’s a sign of our times–with congregations firing their pastors and members constantly griping that “we’re not being fed”–that we would decide we must be doing a good job if no one is murmuring against us.

If Moses had used that standard he would have quit before they left Egypt. Had our Lord determined His faithfulness to the Father by the acclaim of the audience, He would have gone back to cabinet-making in Nazareth.

No one likes to pastor a people who are constantly unhappy. But someone must do it. And that’s why they pay you the big bucks, preacher. (We’ll pause a moment here for you to pick yourself off the floor!)

I can take you to more than one congregation where if the preacher spoonfeeds the people pious platitudes and does not rock the boat, he has job security for as long as he wants it.

After all, the unsaved of the community and those to whom the Lord’s people are supposed to be ministering are not going to come to the pastor’s office and file a report. It’s the ones paying your salary who are likely to do just that. If they’re feeling neglected, you will hear from them. But the lost remain silent.

As a minister of God, you will have to decide if that matters to you.

6) By the awards received.

In school they named you most likely to succeed and gave you an award as the outstanding graduate. In your first assignment, the denomination named you the outstanding pastor of a small church. The larger churches took note and came calling and now you’re serving the First Church of Podunk. The local military base gave you a plaque for support, as did the local university. The chamber of commerce elected you its leader. The ministerial association, the district association of churches, the state convention. Your alumni groups from high school, college, seminary.

If success is determined by awards, you are destined for greatness. The beams holding up your wall are bending under the weight of all those plaques.

You received a letter in the mail informing you that “Who’s Who in Religion in the USA” had decided to include your bio for the next edition. Wow, you think. This will look so good on your resume: “Included in Who’s Who.” But think again. This is a little book-selling enterprise by some outfit preying upon the insecurities and ego-needs of preachers. Naturally, they say, you will want to own a special issue of your own. That book, not co-incidentally, costs a small fortune.

Sometime around my 40th birthday, I informed a denominational leader that I did not wish to be reappointed to the trustees of an agency where I’d served for four years. When pressed for a reason, I told him the truth: “If I get off this board, you’ll appoint another person. But when I’m gone from home, no one else is father to my children, husband to my wife, or pastor to my church. And that’s where my priorities need to be.”

Seven years later, I attended the funeral of a denominational leader whose entire ministry had been a history of service with committees, agencies, task forces and boards. The sanctuary was filled with important leaders. During the service, as they read the endless history of committees, groups, and boards the man worked with, I looked around. The people were bored out of their minds.

Someone has to do it, I suppose. Someone called by the Lord God for that purpose. And to my friend Frank Page, I say if the Lord is calling you to this office in Nashville, God bless you and have fun doing it. I promise to lift you in prayer. But I wouldn’t have that job for anything.

7) By continuing to keep my job.

I actually heard someone say that. “Well, I must be doing all right; they haven’t fired me yet.” He said it in jest, but there was more than a kernel of truth to it.

These days, churches are becoming more and more like college football teams: if the numbers aren’t there, they change coaches. The alumni demands it.

Those who have been in the ministry for as long as a decade will have seen pastors who have literally made the decision that keeping their job is more important than making great changes. “Don’t rock the boat” becomes their mantra. And, if you’ll allow an editorial note here, it becomes their shame.

A friend told me that following Hurricane Katrina’s devastating effect on New Orleans, he was able to lead his church to become more of an emergency room than the country club they had been before. But these days, as we approach the fifth anniversary of that event, his leadership shows signs of reverting more and more to the country club identity of the past. He thinks his days in that church may be numbered.

8) The well-functioning of the machinery.

Every church of any size has its machinery, the organization by which it gets things done. The typical Southern Baptist church will have a vast Sunday School organization made up of departments, directors, teachers, secretaries, and others such as outreach leaders, social chairs, care group facilitators.

A church will have its officers and deacons, its ministerial staff and office force, its custodial team, and a vast array of committees.

I was in a small church one day for a funeral and noticed in the foyer a list of all their committees. I said to the pastor, “Am I to understand that you have more people on committees than you do members of the church?” He laughed, “Most of them serve on several committees.”

No wonder our people don’t have time to go down the street and welcome the newcomers or drive across town and minister to the friend just home from the hospital. We keep them so loaded down in the organization, just keeping the wheels greased and turning, that many do not have time or energy to be salt and light.

9) The support of certain influential members/supporters.

It must be written in stone somewhere, we’ve heard it said so often, that a new pastor should quickly find who the real decision-makers are in the congregation. They may not hold an office, but these are the people whom the church looks to for guidance in important matters.

And, I wouldn’t argue with that. He needs to know who they are.

What he does not need to do is spend too much time catering to their whims and winning their support.

A pastor of a large church once told me he felt like a lap dog of the rich and powerful members. “They give you a car, they get their college to give you an honorary doctor’s degree, and they think they own you.”

I once turned down a large gift from a powerful church member by telling him that as the new pastor, I wanted to appreciate him and his family for who they were, not for what they had given me. He had no problem with that. (A few years later, I went back and asked if he still wanted to make that gift. By then I needed it. He did. At no time did he ever press for favors because of his gift.)

10) External signs and proofs.

The books I’ve published, the work I’m doing in the schools, my involvement in community ministry–these all bear witness to my success.

They may. Or, they may not. It’s not for me to say. What I am saying is that this is one of the ways ministers have concluded they were successes, by the presence of these, or failures, by their lack.

A missionary once told a visiting pastor, “You Americans measure success in such large numbers. We don’t have large numbers of converts here. In the last year, we have seen only one soul turn to Christ.”

She was silent a moment, then said, “But then, ours is not to be successful. Ours is to be faithful.”

That, I submit, is the greatest testimony to one’s success in ministry: were you faithful?

To be faithful is to be successful.

Jesus told His disciples on more than one occasion what they were to do when a community rejected their ministry. “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or that town” (Matthew 10:14; also Mark 6:11, Luke 9:5 and 10:11; see Paul actually do it in Acts 13:51 and 18:6).

Reflecting on this recently, it occurred to me that we might extend the application of that metaphor.

In the Lord’s work we shake three kinds of dust from our feet:

1) Literal dust–when they reject our message (Matthew 10:14).

2) Gold-dust–when they try to buy us (Acts 8:18).

3) Star-dust–when they worship us (Acts 14:14).

The first is about dealing with rejection; the last two concern dealing with success.

Pastors and missionaries–all who labor in the Lord’s vineyard–would do well to keep tellling ourselves, “This is not about me. This is not about me. Christ is all and in all. He must increase; I must decrease.”

Do that and you will eventually arrive at a major life-changing conclusion about your ministry: nothing else matters except pleasing the Lord. (See John 8:29.)

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