Revolution

Evaluating In The Church

Recently I had to do some reading & writing for my Master's work in the area of evaluating learning in the church. While some of the questions posed were a little silly (should written tests be used in church?-sure, try making an adult small group take a test on Romans!), the overall concept is important. How do we as ministry leaders evaluate the learning of the people in our ministries? Do we even think about this? After all, if people are failing to learn, it could be that we are failing to teach.

Written tests with true/false & multiple choice questions are obviously out the window, especially with adults, but shouldn't we figure out how to gauge our effectiveness as learners & teachers? With kids it's a bit easier. It's possible to "test" them without their knowing they're being tested, but what about adults? And here is the bigger problem: our system of evaluation has to be fundamentally different simply because our goal in teaching is fundamentally different from the greater educational system.

This week, I want to talk about how we can begin to have honest dialogue & evaluation in our churches. Week after week, teachers & preachers stand before a group & pour themselves out, but most of the time we stop there without evaluating whether our teaching is sticking.

What do your ministries do to effectively evaluate the learning of the people & the teaching of the leaders?