The Performance Review Revolution: Linking Performance to Spiritual Formation

This episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast focuses on transforming church staff performance reviews from business-like evaluations into meaningful discipleship conversations. Todd Rhoades discusses the importance of integrating spiritual development with professional performance, suggesting a new framework for reviews that includes competence, character, and calling, to better reflect the unique nature of ministry work. • Performance reviews in churches often mirror corporate models, lacking spiritual depth. • Suggests integrating spiritual growth into review processes, not separating character from competence. • Proposes using open-ended questions to focus on personal and spiritual growth. • Recommends dividing reviews into sections: competence, character, and calling. • Performance reviews should feel like discipleship conversations rather than corporate evaluations. • Encourages churches to develop review systems that include spiritual formation aspects.

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Transcript

The Conversation You Missed

Why Reviews Feel Too Corporate

Questions That Reveal Spiritual Growth

Competence Character And Calling Framework

Rewrite Your Review Template

Tools Help And Closing Invites

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You just finished another performance review with your church staff member. You checked all the boxes on ministry goals. You talked about attendance numbers and program outcomes, maybe discuss salary and next year's objectives, but something, for some reason, just feels real. It's like you missed the real conversation. The one about who they're becoming, not just what they're doing. If that sounds familiar, you're at the right place today, because that's what we're talking about here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast today. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistrystaffing.com, along with my colleague Mastine. And we are here every weekday to hopefully talk about things that are of importance to church staff people just like you. All right. I think there's we've been doing a series all week on church staff performance reviews because I find that this is an area where a lot of churches just miss certain really key, what I think are key aspects in the review process. And a lot of times there's just like what I described at the beginning of the podcast today, this missed opportunity because a lot of church performance reviews look exactly like corporate America. We talked about this earlier this week. All the goals, all the metrics, all the competencies, all the ratings. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with these things. Those things are valid and they have to be a part. Those metrics have to be a part of any church staff job performance review. But at the same time, we're not running widgets through a factory here. We're developing people called by God into ministry. And that calling involves both performance and transformation. And that's where it gets tricky because a lot of times what we do in the church is we split out the spiritual growth from the professional development. It's like they're two separate buckets. Character is over here, competence is over here in this other bucket. Sunday spiritual formation, Monday performance management. And you start your staff starts living these compartmentalized life. Faith becomes personal and work becomes professional. But ministry just doesn't work that way. At least it shouldn't. Okay? Now I get it. I get it. You don't want to become overly spiritual about everything. And that's there's wisdom there. But if we're what if we're becoming maybe being under spiritual about some of the most important conversations when it comes to these church staff performance reviews? I think you should start by asking different questions in your reviews than what most churches do. And we've gone over some of this week, but here are some great questions just to shift what you're doing from a corporate mindset to a ministry mindset. Ask this question: where did you see God working in your ministry through you this year? What character area is he developing in you right now? How has your calling been refined through this role or through this past year? What spiritual disciplines are supporting your ministry effectiveness? Those kind of questions, open-ended questions, connect their growth to their calling and not just to their job description. They talk about both fruit and character. Because in ministry, who you're becoming directly impacts what you're accomplishing. And that's just not true in the business world. So here's what this works looks like practically. Give me some examples. I think that there should be the framework of a really good review should be three different sections competence, character, and calling. And those aren't new terms to all of us, but competence, how well did they execute their responsibilities? That's competence, right? Character, how did God shape them through their work this year? That's character. And then calling. How is their role aligning with where God is leading them at your church or in their ministry or in their career? That's calling. And suddenly you're not just evaluating performance. You're still going to do that, right? But you're participating in their spiritual formation. We said yesterday that your staff review should actually be a form of discipleship. You are participating in their spiritual formation. So questions that you can ask again, uh lots of questions here. What has this year taught you about yourself? Where have you struggled to trust God in your role? How has serving here grown your faith? If it hasn't, then that's another question you're gonna have to talk about, right? What areas of character is God inviting you to develop? These aren't your fluffy add-ons to the real review. They are the real review, okay? Your bottom line, your performance reviews should feel more like discipleship conversations than corporate evaluations, because the best ministry flows from transformed hearts, not just from trained hands. So this week I want to challenge you. Rewrite three questions in your performance review template. Replace one competency question with a character question, replace one goal question with a calling question, maybe replace one metric question with a spiritual formation question. Again, you still need all those other questions as well, but make your next review about the whole person, not just about the employee. Maybe you're like, Todd we just need some help. Brother, help us out. Maybe you've got, maybe you don't even have a review system at your church. Maybe you've got one, but it's just terrible. It's terrible. Maybe your system right now is just a link that you copied or a form that you copied from maybe somebody that you know or a business type review form. You Google how to do a performance review. Wherever you maybe you've got a system that works really well. Wherever you are, I've developed a church staff performance review system that I think will help a lot of churches because I know a lot of churches struggle with this. If you'd like a little bit more information on this, there is a little bit of a charge to this, but it's very cost effective, I think. You can reach out to me at podcast at chemistry staffing.com. Just say, Todd, send me some information on the job performance review system. I think it'll give you the building blocks to really bring discipleship and really caring about your individual staff members into your staff performance reviews. So just reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com if you're interested in that. When we connect performance to spiritual formation, I think you're gonna find that you're not just building better staff, that we're participating in God's work of reshaping leaders. That's really worth revolutioning or revolutionizing your performance review process. So I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope this series has been helpful to you. We're gonna continue with one more episode tomorrow. And I will mention one more time, we just started a brand new newsletter, and it's called churchleadershipradar.com. You can head over to churchleadershipradar.com. I give you my three top reads for the day, things we don't have time to talk about here on the podcast. Absolutely free. Churchleadershipradar.com if you're interested in that. All right, if there's any way I can help your church, feel free to reach out to me. I'm here. Would love to be able to work with you and your church again, podcast at chemistersnating. All right, that's it for today. We'll be right back here tomorrow. Hope you have a great day.