A Balanced Scorecard Approach for Ministry Leader evaluation

Peter Drucker, once celebrated as “the man who invented management,”[1] is often credited with saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”[2] Determined to improve the functioning of society after coming of age in the midst of Nazi Germany, Drucker believed the only way to not let things break down again was to build effective and responsible institutions. Good management, in short, was Drucker’s bulwark against evil.[3] During his long and productive career, Drucker authored 39 books seeking to measure and quantify success to advance the greater good.

In the years since, church consultants and ministry leaders have adapted an axiom in the spirit of Drucker’s original thought. In short, it is said that “what you measure, grows.” Meaning, if as a pastor or church leader you measure attendance, offering, and conversions, these areas of your church will see growth. While wrestling not against a literal flesh and blood, many pastors and church leaders have utilized these metrics as to determine their advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Implied though perhaps not obvious in such an axiom is that it is not the measuring itself which causes the growth. Rather, it is the increased attention, which leads to significant time, resources, and energy into seeing the numbers rise. And, while most any Christian would agree that growth in attendance, offering, and conversions are good things, we all know there can be downsides to evaluating success on external metrics alone, especially when there is no cost too great in achieving such metrics.

Trumpeted by Mega-church pastor Craig Groeschel, it is often said by churches and ministry leaders that “we will do anything short of sin” to reach people. Unfortunately, when such an ethic is held, it came be easy to slip into sin. In truth, there are countless stories of dedicated and faithful leaders being overworked, burned out, and left for dead on the ministry scrap heap after they failed to achieve the desired external metrics. There’s got to be a better way.

Church planting coach and consultant Jessie Cruickshank proposes an alternative to the outcome-based metrics approach and argues instead that we should be measuring inputs—rather that outputs. In short, she writes that “we should only count what we can control… Instead of attendance and tithe, we should measure how we are investing our God-given resources of time, people, and finances.”[4]

Cruickshank’s approach reminds of The Balanced Scorecard, “a set of multiple performance measures” developed by R.S. Kaplan and D.P. Norton in in their 1996 book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action.[5] Where countless companies were obsessed with quarterly profits and Return on Investment (ROI), Kaplan and Norton sought a more holistic measurement approach that includes measurements for customer service, innovation and learning, internal processes, and financial performance.

What might a “Balanced Scorecard” for ministry look like? Cruickshank’s thoughts are again helpful as her questions of “What percentage are we investing in short-term or current ministry that we want to see an impact in 0-3 years,” “How many people [is] each person in leadership is investing in real, relational discipleship,” and “How much time are we investing in the various aspects of ministry (time audit and then alignment to what God is asking us to do)” might each fit within the Scorecard’s “Financial performance,” “Customer Service,” and “Internal Processes” sections respectively. And with the fourth section being “Innovation and Learning,” we could easily continue in Cruickshank’s approach and ask, “How many books are you reading or continuing educational opportunities are you participating in?”

In one real life example, a pastor working in a new ministry context committed to tracking the number of cups of coffee she had with people in the community. Realizing that a critical part of her mission and ministry was meeting and connecting with people, she realized a simple and helpful metric to help her be accountable to herself and her mission was to count cups of coffee.[6] While others might find another data point more helpful in their context, the point is that any pastor or church leader has pro-active actions that are likely to connect with and advance their overall mission.

While we might want to tweak rewrite the Scorecard’s “Financial performance,” “Customer Service,” “Internal Processes” and “Innovation and Learning” titles, broadly speaking, these standards can easily translate to ministry evaluation. Is the pastor being a good steward of financial resources and handling the money in an ethical manner? We do not want the pastor to be about pleasing customers, but like the coffee example, we might ask the pastor to connecting with a certain number of people each week. With internal processes, we might want to encourage a pastor to be faithful with their time. A leader who is always late or not putting in the hours might be in need of some redirecting. And finally, with innovation and learning, many other companies and professions require continuing education. Simply asking the pastor to commit to continued learning as a sign of their dedication and faithfulness to the ministry position is not asking too much.

To be sure, simply not measuring or evaluating at all is not a faithful option. Pastors and church leaders should be held accountable to the work they have been called to by God and the church. In too many contexts, pastors can simply coast along in their job, as nervous elder boards or church councils find themselves unwilling to question the pastor’s work ethic and unable to find a helpful metric whereby to even provide some sort of evaluation. A Balanced Scorecard approach, especially when crafted within and for a specific ministry context from the mutual collaboration of layperson and pastoral leaders, can go a long way in keeping pastors accountable and setting realistic and faithful measures.

Cruickshank goes on to say that “We are created to be goal-oriented in our behavior—it is our most foundational motivation. Determining what we measure shifts our priorities and compels us in ways intuitive and non-conscious. Goals direct our hearts.” It is that last sentence that is perhaps the most important. Goals direct our hearts. We need goals to go after, but these goals must not simply be about external appearances but rather advancing the work of God in a particular ministry context.

Let’s together say enough; enough of the obsession with external metrics, enough with the moral ambiguity of doing nearly anything and everything to achieve results, and enough with the worship and exultation of leaders who have achieved such results. Rather that trying to emulate external success, we should be seeking to emulate the practices of people who have faithfully led others and been true to God’s call on their life. Often that will have us mirroring the practices of influential pastors and church leaders, and more often than we might expect, that will have us mirroring the practices of insignificant and unknown Christian leaders who have been laboring for years in the shadows, not seeking the limelight, faithful only to God and the work they have been given to do by God.

Let us together shift the norms in which pastors and church leaders are no longer evaluated by network leaders and middle judicatories by what kind of external metrics they are achieving but rather, by how faithful they are being to their call and their work. Sure, it will take a little more effort and intentionality, but the time is ripe for performance evaluations being centered not around what someone’s results were, but on whether they were putting in the work or not.

In the end, we can either continue the status quo of glorifying the few, shaming the many, and chasing external results at all costs—the costs being church members, pastoral leaders, and the many, many people who have been burned by churches obsessed with growth at all costs—or, we can encourage people to be faithful to the call of God on their lives, no matter whether they see significant external results or not.

While the signs of faithfulness to a call are not as easy to digitize, to the honest observer, they will be readily apparent. A ministry leader who intentionally invests their own time, energy, and resources into others is a leader we should be encouraging and uplifting. After all, the results are not in their hands, they can only water, it is up to God to give the increase.

Questions to consider:

Kaplan and Norton’s four approaches are “Innovation and Learning,” “Customer Service,” “Internal Processes,” and “Financial Performance.” How might you translate those for the ministry setting?

Within each of the four approaches are often several performance measurements? What might you add to each to evaluate a ministry setting?

How might ministry evaluations by networks, middle judicatories, and church boards change if pastors were evaluated by their efforts, rather than by their outcome?

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[1] "About Peter Drucker,” Drucker Institute, https://www.drucker.institute/perspective/about-peter-drucker/

[2] Carlos Behrends, “‘If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Improve It.",” LinkedIn (Carlos Behrends, January 14, 2021), https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-cant-measure-improve-carlos-behrends/.

[3] "About Peter Drucker,” Drucker Institute, https://www.drucker.institute/perspective/about-peter-drucker/

[4] Jessie Cruickshank, “What Should We Be Measuring in Ministry?,” Send Institute (Send Institute, August 21, 2020), https://www.sendinstitute.org/what-should-we-be-measuring-in-ministry/.

[5] Carl S. Warren, James M. Reeve, and Jonathan E. Duchac, Financial and Managerial Accounting (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2018), 1174-1175.

[6] Karen Rohrer, interview with Loren Richmond Jr, Future Christian Podcast, podcast audio, July 20, 2021, not yet published.