Evaluating Youth Ministry

Complacency is the enemy of pretty much everything.  Revelation 3.15-17 even spoke of its lameness when John says to the Church in Laodicea, "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.  Would that you were either cold or hot!  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.  For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."

If we are not constantly evaluating our ministries we run the risk of becoming 'lukewarm'.  Maybe our programs are top notch, or we've got the biggest ministry in town, or we take the coolest retreats, or even maybe we have a great discipleship program.  None of these things, by themselves are necessarily bad things.  Every youth pastor wants to have top notch programs, cool retreats, and a great discipleship program, but the point is if we settle for those things and do not push ourselves in our weak points we become complacent; we don't grow.

Growth comes from honest gut-checking evaluation of what you are doing and why you are doing it.  It also comes from asking why are these areas are successful and those areas not?  What are we doing that isn't important and what aren't we doing that we should be doing?  All of these questions should be asked to your leadership team (if you don't have one you need to make one and read through 'Sustainable Youth Ministry' by Mark DeVries with them and get cracking!), your v0lunteer team, your students, and their parents.  From asking these questions to all of those people you will have a pretty good idea of where your ministry is strong and where it is weak AND where it is lukewarm/complacent.

Obviously, you'll have some people who's responses to these questions will be outliers and you have to take those with a grain of salt, but the majority of the answers, if they are honest, will flush out the cold and lukewarm spots while encouraging you for the hot spots you do have.

Do not be afraid to always evaluate where your ministry is at and where it is going.  Blind leadership is a bad, bad thing.  Know your weaknesses and ask for help in those areas, that's one of the many roles your volunteers and leadership team can play!

Also, those questions listed earlier are just as applicable to your own spiritual life as they are to ministry evaluation.  Use those same questions to determine where you are lukewarm in your faith and use your friends to hold you accountable in those areas.