Earl Creps’ Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders has a challenging chapter on Assessment: The Disciple of Missional Efficiency. Creps argues that an appropriate title could well be “What would Jesus measure?” Within Campus Crusade, we love to measure things. I often hold the teams I help lead for numbers of indicated decisions or of small groups or of multiplying leaders. We toss around different measures such as involved new believers or multiplying believers or numbers of new movements launched. I’m not opposed to such assessments . . . convinced in part that “what gets measured gets done.”
Creps argues, however, that we treat assessment of our ministries as a spiritual discipline. He suggests we continually ask, “Are we participating in expanding the Kingdom of God, or just rearranging it? Are we doing God’s will well?” Certainly not opposed to measurements of effectiveness, Creps suggests that when we measure we need to take extra care that we are evaluating things that need and deserve it—not just the things that are easiest to count. He warns churches (and para-churches) of two errors: assessment drift and assessment shift.
Assessment drift is the failure of churches to capitalize on the power of concentrated effort because they can agree on no common benchmark to call them forward into action. “Having little notion of what they should be doing, there is no basis on which to conclude that it is or is not happening.” Churches experience assessment drift when they either retreat to purely qualitative standards such as subjective, spiritual issues or question the spiritual legitimacy of evaluation itself. Who are we evaluate what God wants to do through us?
Assessment shift refers to working hard at the wrong kinds of measurements. Most ministries, for example, simply invert the iron law of performance evaluation; for them, what gets done gets measured. In other words, ministries tend to back their evaluative standards out of their current activities. They use metrics that basically describe the status quo or are statistically measurable.
As I think of my own ministry, I find I so often want to define my effectiveness by what I’m doing, not by what I should or could be doing. Or I use measures that have become “objectified” — and thus offer a quantitative value to something that is qualitative. In other words, such measures address the legitimately important issue of what we are doing, but neglect the more important question of why we are doing it.
Creps say that “If the why question lacks priority, the what questions ultimately tells us very little, and the potential of performance management to guide the ministry dissipates.” Beginning with the why question will lead us to measures which meaningfully reflect God’s Kingdom. It will lead us to answer the question: What would Jesus measure? To move to the why, Creps suggests asking and answering the following:
How might Jesus instruct us to assess our ministries so as to use the world’s metrics appropriately, but not remain beholden to them?
1. Not everything that needs doing needs measuring.
Jesus would not measure certain things. From the Gospels it is clear that “he would not regard worship attendance as love for God, a small donation as lack of generosity, or religious-sounding phrases for true worship.” Jesus possessed a sort of measurement blindness that kept spiritual issues where they belonged–in the heart. He avoided every kind of secular or religious reductionism knowing that they would lead to scorekeeping legalism.
2. What is the top line? The Kingdom of God, not the world’s bottom line.
The moment of ultimate accountability with Jesus awaits all of us: “For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.” In other words, we are faced with an accountability that addresses our responsibility, not others’ spirituality. Our measurements must focus on us–our spirituality.
Creps argues that we begin the discussion of assessments by recognizing that accountability begins not with measurement in any form but with identification. How are we individually and corporately conformed to His image? Are we fully committed to loving God and others with everything that we are?
When we begin with our identification with Jesus, we develop measures that seek to discern an approximation of the ministry of Jesus–not an utterly precise rendition of our best ideas. This identification with Jesus always makes the ministry more missional, aiming it for the margins with Jesus at the center, rather than us at the center and Jesus at the margins. The new scorecard is thus developed that embraces what Creps calls the discipline of spiritual assessment–which continually asks how closely we are identifying with Christ, co-laboring with Him, being sent by Him just as He has been sent by the Father. Such a scorecard would challenge leaders to think, pray and act in a way more noticeably identified with Jesus.
Beginning with these assumptions, our measurements change and we begin to use the following types of metrics or criteria. (I put Creps’ questions into a Campus Crusade environment.)
What proportion of our largest weekly campus meeting (and our leadership) is present because of a significant faith experience, rather than by transfer?
What proportion of our student leadership did we develop here by spiritual formation and leadership training?
What have we learned about building movements everywhere in our context in the last month? What have we done about it?
How many spiritual conversations have we had this month with lost (pre-Christian, “sought”) students?
What would our campus ministry look like if the pre-Christian student body had a representative with veto power at our staff/student leadership meetings?
What are the best stories we can tell about the things God has done among us since our last meeting?
Who is growing spiritually among us, and how do we know this?
What would we say to a marginalized person (poor, sick, or homeless person) who asked us what we have done to help the marginalized since our last meeting?
Creps concludes his chapter by reminding leaders that the most important commitment behind any performance measurement is telling the truth. Knowing what not to measure and understanding the delicate balance of quantitative and qualitative metrics are vital, as is the rigorous use of a specific set of evaluative criteria (like the questions above). The test, he says, comes not in creating a scorecard but in having the courage to say the truth out loud once we’ve got one.
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