Measuring Ministry Effectiveness

Can You? Should You? How?

Greg Hawkins

For the past 12 years, I've been fortunate to serve as executive pastor of Willow Creek Church. Whether it's been through our services, welcoming new members, nurturing small groups or serving the poor, I often ask myself, "How can we steward our resources of vision, effort, time, and money, along with the gifts and talents of our people, most efficiently and effectively for God's glory?" The "answers" always come back to this thing called measurement. Ultimately, what God is doing at Willow Creek (and I suspect in and through your organization) has a lot to do with casting vision, moving out in faith, and then at some point, evaluating the results.

Where's the yardstick? Can you measure a ministry's effectiveness? (Yes). Should you? (Yes.) Then, how does a church, regardless of its size, location or sphere, do it? (Keep reading.) One place to begin is with a bite-sized paradox from the late theologian Carl Henry who said measurement is both necessary and insufficient.

He might be right on both counts. Let me explain why by offering three eye-opening truths we've seen in our church.

Believe it or not, for its first 20 years, Willow Creek operated without a strategic plan. That worked fine, because we kept growing, and it wasn't hard to figure out what to do. Then, in the early 1990s, the growth stopped, and it made us rethink where God was directing us. We created some goals and set up a process to measure what we were doing. Every six months, our leadership would measure and evaluate the church through the lens of six key areas—Sunday service attendance, small groups, serving the poor, membership, volunteering and serving other pastors through the Willow Creek Association.

One of the first things we learned was how these six categories gave us an incredibly helpful, common way to talk about our work and communicate with each other. Every six months, each ministry produced a plan about how they were making a contribution to these six areas. These six measurement gauges gave us a way to learn what things were working, what things were not, as well as where and how God was showing up and where he was calling us to do more.

One practical outcome of our commitment to measure ministry outcomes (and there were many along the way), came when we embarked on a major building campaign: The number of volunteers were exploding. We paid attention to this. As our needs and demands grew, and as volunteer readiness and participation remained high, the first question we asked was, "Can we justify paying for someone to do the work a volunteer could do?" Our measurement, evaluation and learning paid off. With the new facility, we needed to serve an increasing number of people—and we did with volunteers. It proved to be very wise stewardship.

A second thing we learned about measurement is that we didn't have to be perfect. Measurement didn't automatically push us to come up with the exact numbers, rather it provided a way for us to learn about ourselves—our strengths, capacities, needs and incompleteness. Henry is right; the best human attempts at measurement are insufficient and incomplete. In fact, I'm a firm believer that most all learning happens from failed expectations. You hope for a certain outcome, you plan, you invest efforts and … you get a different outcome. The gap between what you hoped for and what you actually experience produces an opportunity to learn.

Suppose your goal is to get 500 people into small groups, and yet you only connect with 200. The gap between what you plan for and what you get can generate a great conversation. Again, our objective wasn't to find ways to still hit the original number. One of the great upsides of measurement is the opportunity to look for leading indicators or clues as to what's working as you're trying to determine what God is asking us to do.

For the past year, we've been working to create closer connections through weekly table gatherings on our church campuses. One key measurement is whether people come back. Another benchmark is to see how well these informal table discussions lead to small groups and perhaps service projects. In all of this we've created a way to collect valuable data—both numbers (quantitative) and stories (qualitative). You need both. Unfortunately, in the church we tend to form judgments and make decisions based on anecdotal conversations, whether they take place in the hallway or in a staff meeting. We kid ourselves when we make ministry decisions based on a handful of people's opinions.

Measuring ministry effectiveness in the church is challenging and complex because, frankly, transformed individuals and communities defy incremental notches. In the marketplace, money is an input and money, also, is an output. In ministry, money and other resources are the inputs and the output is … changed lives. Without knowing it, people can tend to mistake attendance numbers as outcome when, in actuality, numbers are inputs. The real question is, "Are we making—is God making—a dent in people's lives?" One thing that makes the REVEAL study we conducted (see page 24) so exciting is we were able to quantify, or measure, the change of heart that goes on inside people—and identify the predictable, inevitable steps of one's spiritual growth. I have no doubt that REVEAL, can and will give pastors and their congregations some trusted indicators to focus resources to strengthen and grow His church.

A third lesson of measurement is the need to be completely open to what God wants to do. At Willow Creek, I'm continually trying to discover what things God is blessing and what He is not blessing. Again, it's not just the outcomes that are so valuable, it's what we learn along the way about growing closer to Christ, closer to each other, closer to where the Spirit might be moving. Often I have to admit that what God wants to do through our church is a whole lot more than I ever thought. Can any of us ever fully measure or comprehend all that he has for us? Hardly. Should we challenge ourselves and others to set the kind of measurable goals that cause us to see and celebrate the evidence of God at work? Absolutely.

So how do we get there? If you start with the basis that God is completely in charge and is mysterious beyond belief, you have to believe in something that is humbling beyond measure: In his kindness and compassion, he has chosen to involve you and me in his work. To do that he has given us some tools—to reason, imagine, communicate, dream, plan and create. Some time very soon, a bunch of us at Willow Creek Church will get to sit around a table and take a needed six-month look at all we're doing. Even with the brightest minds, best questions and greatest insights at play, the truest measure of Willow Creek's impact and effectiveness is not the things we have achieved, but rather the wonders God is working in us.

Greg Hawkins is executive pastor at Willow Creek Church, South Barrington, IL.