Monday, August 6, 2018
Hey Fletch … I am a new XP to the church I serve and staff evaluations are coming up. My previous experiences at churches are either too formal (a graded scale, points assigned to tasks, overly specific goals) or too relaxed (“so, how did the last year go, Bob?”). Do you have a template or resource to help me frame staff evals this fall?
DRF—It has been a busy season and I have been thinking about your questions. Here is a page on XPastor that talks about reviews and this article may be what you are looking for.
Quantitative reviews are those which score employees on a series of questions. They ask the supervisor to give a rating, generally from one to ten, on a series of questions. The questions cover topics like: participation in the church vision, progress in ministry, morale, initiative, team spirit, development of ministry projects, etc. The results are added and a score is given, such as 78% or 88%.
Qualitative reviews ask open-ended questions. They have the staff member give longer answers, generally written before the time together. These answers can be three to ten lines long, or even longer. They ask the staff member to share about the inner workings, challenges and successes in ministry. After the paperwork is done, a sixty to ninety minute discussion is held with the individual.
My preference is to do regular qualitative reviews. Sometimes, every fourth year or so, a quantitative review might be used, as a way of getting at different issues.
The goal is to get inside the staff person’s head, to hear their thoughts and see how they can be motivated to do better ministry—or applauded for a job well done.
