The Performance Review Revolution: Building Ministry-Specific Evaluation Criteria

This podcast episode discusses how churches can create evaluation standards that genuinely reflect ministry values rather than adopting business-like metrics that may not capture the essence of spiritual and pastoral work. Todd Rhoades emphasizes the need for ministry-first evaluations, focusing on mission and qualitative measures along with quantitative ones, while ensuring metrics allow for personal and spiritual growth. • Sales and KPIs don't capture spiritual outcomes. • Churches often use business-like performance metrics unsuited for ministry. • Current evaluations risk undervaluing pastoral and spiritual growth. • Encourages a shift to ministry-first evaluations focused on mission and key role impacts. • Incorporate storytelling with numbers and peer feedback in evaluations. • Evaluate roles on both quantitative and qualitative outcomes. • Challenge existing performance review practices for being business-centric. • Offers a structured performance review system tailored for churches.

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Transcript

Why Ministry Defies Metrics

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Sales metrics don't measure pastoral care and APIs can't capture spiritual formation. Today on the podcast, we're going to learn how to create evaluation standards that actually reflect ministry values and output. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, and I'm one of the co-founders, along with Matt's Dean, over at ChemistryStaffing.com to listen to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. You just finished your worship pastor's annual review. You talked about attendance numbers and budget metrics. You discussed event execution and administrative tasks, but you never once mentioned the teenager who found faith through the whole worship experience, or the elderly woman who said that the music helped her grieve her husband. You're measuring ministry like it's a marketing department. Does this sound familiar? Let's talk about it here today. Here's the problem that many churches have created. Most churches borrowed performance reviews from the business world. We talked about this yesterday, which makes sense, except that ministry isn't a business. You can't measure spiritual formation with a spreadsheet. You can't measure KPIs the way that you do with businesses because you need to measure kingdom impact. But we try anyway because numbers somehow feel objective. And here's what happens when we get this wrong. Your youth pastor stops investing in the quiet kid. Or because because those breakthrough moments just don't show up in attendance reports. Your children's pastor, she focuses more on crowd control over life change. Your executive pastor, she optimizes systems but ignores souls. And staff start gaming the metrics instead of serving people. The most important work that we can do in ministry, if we're measuring it on what we're measuring in our performance reviews many times in churches, the most important work becomes invisible. Listen, I'm not anti-accountability. Talked about this yesterday. Good leaders need clear expectations, but we do need to measure what actually matters in ministry. And here's what I think would be a better approach than what many churches currently take. And maybe you're doing really great in this area, but I think there's always ways to listen and maybe find out something, a little tidbit here or there. Hopefully you'll hear that here, that will help your evaluation process get even better. I would start with what I call a ministry first evaluation. Start with your mission. Hopefully your church has a mission statement. But start with your missions, not your metrics. Ask what does success actually look like for this specific role? And there may be some metrics in there. That's awesome. But don't make it only metrics. Make sure you're asking the question that goes back to the mission of your church, not just the metrics, and ask what does success for this specific role actually look like? And then you're going to want to include both quantitative and qualitative measures. Create some space in your evaluations for storytelling, not just the numbers, not just the spreadsheets. Make sure that you measure inputs that they can control, not just outcomes that they can't. And be sure to build in that peer feedback from other church staff members. Your worship pastor should be evaluated on team development. Your youth pastor on relational investment, not just on event attendance. Your children's pastor should be evaluated on volunteer equipping and safety protocols. Both. Your executive pastor, man, the next P should be evaluated on staff health, not just operational efficiency. Because the person, remember, we're talking in ministry. This isn't business. The person matters more than the position. The person matters more than the position. Here's the bottom line for today. If your performance reviews could work at a Fortune 500 company, you're probably not working really well for ministry. So this week I want to challenge you. I want you to look back at your last performance review template. Where did you get it from? What's on it? Circle everything that could apply to any business, and then ask yourself, what are we missing that's uniquely ministry? And that's where you should start for your next review season. I have put together, spent a lot of time putting together a performance review system for churches. If you were interested in that, you can reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Just say, Todd, send me some more information on the staff performance review. No matter where you are, whether you've got a really robust staff review process that you're happy with, or maybe you're not doing anything, or what you're doing just really sucks. I think this framework can help you wherever you are or wherever you're not, put those building blocks in place to be able to measure both the ministry and the metrics that are really important. Your staff are kingdom workers, they're not corporate employees, so you should measure them like that. Okay. And if this helps, if it'll help you think differently about reviews, I'd love if you'd share that with another church leader, share it with your pastor, share it with your executive pastor who may be wrestling with the same exact thing. And again, if you want some more information on that process that I've mapped out, for churches, you can reach out, just podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Also, I've been mentioning, and you can get a free email newsletter that I send out every morning that you can have over your coffee. I pick three top things that I'm watching for the day in kind of the church leadership news, along with a bunch of leadership just links. You can read it in about 90 seconds, two minutes, but it'll keep you up to date and tell you what you need to know about the coming day and help you hopefully over time become a better staff member. If you're interested in that, you can subscribe absolutely free over at churchleadershipradar.com. All right, that's it for today's podcast. We're talking about performance reviews all week. Come back tomorrow and we're going to talk. Let's see what we're talking about tomorrow. We're going to be talking about the art of growth focused feedback. There you go. I hope you'll join me right here on the Health and Church Stat Podcast every day.