{"id":656,"date":"2013-06-04T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T14:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/?p=656"},"modified":"2013-12-20T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T15:03:08","slug":"a-pastors-weekly-performance-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/2013\/a-pastors-weekly-performance-review","title":{"rendered":"A Pastor\u2019s Weekly Performance Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat just doesn\u2019t seem really healthy to me. I mean, if I <\/b>had my supervisors giving me a performance review every week I would probably go insane<\/em>,\u201d said a concerned youth leader of mine. He was referring to a loosely structured meeting I would have weekly with a couple of my youth leaders. His understanding was that this was mostly to review and talk about the previous week. (Actually it\u2019s to just do some \u201cheads-up\u201d for the coming week.) But all of this got me thinking about how, in a sense, my friend was right. Pastors can be really unhealthy in this way.<\/p>\n

\"Pastor's<\/p>\n

That meeting may not have been a performance review, but I think that something like a performance review happens weekly for many pastors. The reason being: we have a weekly event which is usually looked at as \u201cthe main event.\u201d It\u2019s when our preparation, our study, our phone calls, and our promotion all come to a head and we have our 2 hours of face time with our people and possible new comers.<\/p>\n

Now think of this in most other jobs. An event where everyone gathers together to talk and be motivated to action. The moment you\u2019ve been building up towards. The moment where hours of study and preparation meet the intended audience. That moment probably comes bi-annually or quarterly or maybe even monthly. But chances are an event of this magnitude and importance wouldn\u2019t necessarily happen weekly.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not likely that you\u2019d need to review performance weekly. But we do that in the church all the time!<\/p>\n

How was this past week\u2019s message? How was the worship this last Sunday? How did the flow work out in our last service? How did new comers feel this past Sunday?<\/p>\n

The benefits?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>You can quickly adjust what doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>You can quickly celebrate what does work.<\/p>\n

The downside?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>You\u2019re no sooner \u201ccoming down\u201d from doing the service than you\u2019re already evaluating it.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>It can really demotivate individuals and teams to take the time to nitpick every week what could be better.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>Constantly stopping to evaluate can really cut down on people doing the actual work that needs to be done.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s a possible better option for pastors and church leaders? Evaluate monthly.<\/em><\/p>\n

We love doing sermon series in our youth ministry. So maybe the better option is looking back and saying, \u201cHow did this past series go?\u201d rather than \u201cHow did this week go?\u201d It allows you to try new things and go for it and then look back at a whole month and see how it went.<\/p>\n

It also can keep you from canning something just because it didn\u2019t work one week, because you gave it a 4-5 week trial run. And it keeps your focus a bit more on the big picture rather than on the little one.<\/p>\n

If my friend and leader was right, most other jobs wouldn\u2019t dream of having to go through any type of performance review on a weekly basis. Maybe it\u2019s worth considering evaluating how we evaluate in the church world! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat just doesn\u2019t seem really healthy to me. I mean, if I had my supervisors giving me a performance review Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}