How to Evaluate Your Youth Ministry
Complacency is a killer, both in our personal spiritual lives and in the life of our youth ministry.
[ym360 Note: We wrote this article a
couple of summers ago, but thought it was just as useful now as it was
then. Hope it challenges you to use your summer as a time to take a long
look at your youth ministry and what you might do to be more effective
heading into the new school year in the fall.]
Though the first official day of summer is still a few weeks away,
once you put prom and graduation in the rearview mirror, you know summer
is here. This means for youth workers that our ministries look very,
very different from the rest of the year. For some, summer is a welcomed
break. For others, it can be equally as hectic as the school year,
without the benefit of a familiar routine.
Regardless of what summer looks like for you, it does represent an opportunity to think about the state of your youth ministry.
It offers a good time for evaluation. What's working? What's not? If
you want to improve your ministry, if you want to be as effective as
living out your calling as you can be, you have to be willing to do the
tough work of evaluating your ministry. Below is a suggestion of what
this might look like. It's not exhaustive, or comprehensive. But it's a
good road-map with which to get started. When you're finished, I'd love
for you to offer suggestions on what I missed, or what you would add or
take out.
Here's a suggested path to evaluating your ministry:
Divide and Conquer
Divide your ministry into a few different "sections." The way you do
this will vary from the next guy or gal, but it might look as simple as
something like this: staff, programming, volunteers and students. Then,
identify what you want to measure or evaluate for each section.
Questions need to include something similar to the following:
What is working? Where are we succeeding in achieving our goals? [You have set goals, right? :) ]
What is not working? What goals are we not meeting?
What can be improved? (This has to be asked of us personally, as well.)
What needs to be pruned away?
This is just identifying the questions you want to ask, not answering them just yet.
Complacency is a killer, both in our personal spiritual lives and in the life of our youth ministry.
Gather Data
You've targeted the areas you want to address and you have formulated
your questions. Now it's time to get some answers.There will be
questions that you and your team will be best suited to answer. Budget,
programming, etc. But there will be other areas in which you must seek
other's opinions. You can't be your own focus group. Maybe you love a
certain program or initiative, but the majority of your volunteers feel
like it doesn't work. Gathering data means seeking responses from all
involved. How do you gather data? Start by crafting a survey for your
volunteers and for your students based on the questions and areas you
identified in the divide and conquer stage. Here are some thoughts on
implementation:
Go New School and Old School — Embrace old and new technologies. Mail
surveys to volunteers and students with a self-addressed return
envelope included (old school). But, utilize technology to increase your
responses. Survey Monkey is an awesome online tool to gather data. Or,
simply post questions on a Facebook page and ask people to message you
the responses. Providing both outlets will dramatically increase your
response rate.
Follow Up — Don't send it and forget it. If you do, you'll be
disappointed. Email or otherwise contact folks about five days after you
send the survey and remind them to complete it.
Get Personal — Your survey should be the main way you gather data.
But consider choosing a few key people (volunteers and students) who are
especially invested in your ministry. Seek out their opinions and
thoughts in a lunch conversation, or over coffee. Your survey is
quantitative. These conversations are qualitative. And they can be
invaluable.
Don't let this part bring you down or overwhelm you. Gathering data
is fieldwork and it can sometimes be "not fun." But if you can stomach
the task of doing this the right way, the dividends can be huge.
Look for Trends (But Don't Miss the "A-Ha!" Moments)
Once you start getting responses in, what you're looking for is
trends. Try hard to separate your personal feelings from the data. There
will be students who think your messages are lame. There will be
volunteers who hate Wednesday night large group. Let these types of
comments roll off your back! Look for trends.
Do 15 of your 40 students say they're not spiritually challenged by
your Sunday morning programming? That's a trend. You might want to pay
attention to this. Do six of your 12 adult volunteers think
communication is a problem? Trend. It's time to start thinking about how
you do things. Identifying trends is key and will probably represent
the bulk of what you choose to address in making changes. But don't miss
the "A-Ha!" responses. "A-Ha!" responses are those insightful, creative
nuggets that a student or a volunteer offers that can be game changers.
Maybe it's an idea, or a critique, or a twist on a current plan that is
super outside of the box. Don't miss these. (And don't miss the chance
to let the individual be part of leading out in the implementation of
the idea, if it gets that far.)
Complacency is a killer, both in our personal spiritual lives and in the life of our youth ministry.
Develop a Plan
This is another post for another day, but basically, once you gather
info and address trends, you'll need to make a plan. What will you
address? Can you do it all at once? Are some trends more long-term in
their solution? Do you have big problems? Are you doing more fine tuning
than bulldozing? Your plan will be impacted by your available
resources, but you still need a plan. Don't develop your plan in a
vacuum. Use your team. If you don't have a team, make one. Pull in a few
key student leaders and your best two adult volunteers (or your only
two!).
Find a Sounding Board
Once you and your team have developed your plan, seek out people
whose opinions you trust and run your plan by them. And ask them to
approach it with a critical eye. After all, you're looking for
solutions. Make sure the individual feels empowered to make suggestions.
Consult Leadership
Once you have a plan, you'll more than likely need to put it in front
of your leadership. Don't just show the suggested changes. Be prepared
to walk through the entire process, how you got where you are. Embrace a
spirit of compromise. There may be changes you will have to let go of
or hold off for a while. The goal is improvement. If you can make three
out of five suggested changes, that's progress.
Implement as a Group
As you prepare for fall and you're ramping up for the new school
year, present your findings and your plan to all of your respective
groups. If you have a youth staff, present it to them. Present it to
your adult volunteers. And present it to your students. Incorporate all
affected parties into your plan. Make people a part of the solution.
Empower people to push back or offer suggestions. Keep the plan and the
goals associated with it in front of you throughout the year. Do another
assessment in January. See how you've done and make changes
accordingly.
Complacency is a killer, both in our personal spiritual lives and in
the life of our youth ministry. Change is hard. And implementing
effective change is especially hard. Wanting to change or be better is
not good enough. It takes intentionality and commitment to make real
change.
But by utilizing this summer as an opportunity for prayerful
evaluation of your ministry, you are taking the first step in the right
direction.
