Measuring Success

How do you measure success?

• Is it simply Return on Investment (ROI)?
• Is it something “you just know” whether or not you are successful?
• Is it possible to make goals in character development?
• How would we possibly measure character?
• Are the only real goals in the form of numbers and money?
• Are grades and exam scores really the sign of a good resident?
• What about intangibles?

I mean, are goals the measure of success? And yet, how else do you measure it?

Pastors and parachurch leaders get questions like:

• How many attend your church?
• How many people have come to Christ through your ministry?
• How many have you baptized?

For years I taught a course with my friend Dave and he would always ask this question: “How do you define success in ministry?” It did not take long until I knew the answer–and it was something I never thought I would know, really. But it makes sense.

The follow-up course to that one I taught with Dave was one where I made students set goals with a mentor within their ministry. More often than not, they balked at the idea of a number goal. A goal for ministry competency and a goal for personal character development.

What if goals were not dependent upon someone else, but were, instead, actually controlled by you?

I love this model and use it regularly for myself. And I made students use this model for their ministry competency and personal character goals. Their WIGs included:

• Recruiting one parent volunteer by the end of the term. (X to Y by Z = Zero Parent volunteers to One Parent Volunteer by Last Monday of term)
• Firing one volunteer by end of term.
• Establishing a budget and plan to stay within bounds of it by the end of the year (some youth pastors struggled with money, go figure!).
• Developing a 6 week curriculum for small groups to be used in the fall season by the end of the term.

For each of these WIGs, I would meet with them 2 x’s in the term to help them establish lead measures. They had to share with the class, which met monthly, and they were held accountable at each class session.

Lead measures looked like:

It wasn’t rocket science, but breaking it down was vital to both accomplish the WIG and be clear that you did or did not accomplish what you set out to do. It’s easy to measure the lead measures: you either did them or you did not. And if you do them and it does not lead to achieving the WIG, maybe you had the wrong lead measures to get to that goal. Regardless of where you wind up on the WIG, the accomplishment of the lead measures is what you can control, so when you do them, you succeed! For those who think it is tough to find a goal for their role, breaking things down can be immensely helpful.

If you ever need a coach to help break things down, please let me know! I coach students and others regularly to help them develop goals and hold themselves accountable to them.

But, still, what is success in ministry? Or personal character development? How do you define that?

I teased earlier with what I knew the answer to be. It may not be clean-cut because there is some discernment involved to gauge whether you have achieved success or not, but simply put, it’s obedience. Some may call it faithfulness, but I prefer obedience because you either obeyed or you didn’t.

Obviously, measuring obedience is challenging, but a few things can help with this:

• Processing and speaking what you sense obedience to be in a group setting (Acts 2 demonstrates this importance of community, as does the rest of the New Testament!)
• Creating a scoreboard of the progress of your lead measures. (I don’t know of a biblical framework for this, and trying to fit one might be eisegetical, so I’ll avoid giving a clear reference. But I think that is the point of this blog – we need to know where there is success or not, and it helps to have a measuring stick.)
• Abiding in the vine that Jesus is to discern where you sense he is leading, whether on the straight and narrow or on a different path. (John 15)
• Identifying some goal (Numbers is a book in the Bible, after all! God is in to counting things and demonstrating the details)

I’m 1/7th into a book called What’s Best Next, written by Matt Perman. The subtitle is “how the Gospel transforms the way you get things done.” It’s more than just some Getting Things Done for Jesus book

It was always hard for me as a kid to “just shoot hoops,” something I did for hours daily on the street outside my house. “Game off, game on,” was a regular thing for me. When some kid came out of his house to come play with me, rarely did it not turn into some sort of game, whether one-on-one, H-O-R-S-E, around-the-world, or something else where someone could win. And it ALWAYS turned into a competition when someone came out of my house to join me.

I don’t think we were put here simply to exist, but to accomplish something. Often that some-thing is not always what we think it is, but it is most clear whether to be encouraged or convicted if we know what we are trying to achieve and see whether it is happening or not.

To great news–the gospel–is that we have already attained the most we can. Paul said he strained forward to what lay ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14). The prize we have already received, we have be called by God through Jesus! The resurrection, which Paul says is his greatest end (v. 11), is what he is after ultimately (something that CAN be measured), but not everyone can live into this pressing forward (v. 15). The mature (aka complete, perfect) are to have this perspective, according to Paul, and to live up to the standard Christ has set for us (v. 15-16).

Success is ultimately obedience. Sometimes that is difficult to tell exactly what that looks like. But on your way to obeying what you sense the call to obey, there are numerous steps that can be obeyed or not to help you achieve that which you are straining to obey. Most of those steps can be numbered, which are measurements to success. I think we ought to celebrate such successes as obedience to get to whatever we are obeying. For skills, competencies, or even character building, we can break things down so that we can be successful like this:

• Wanting to shoot 75% from the free throw line in games (WIG);
• Take 1,000 free throws each day for 20 days straight.

If things are hard to set an overarching memorable goal, they can still be broken down.

• Growing in Scripture knowledge and/or memory (WIG – not a good one b/c not X to Y by Z);
• Memorize 1 verse and read 12 chapters in Scripture every week in the year.

Bottom line, measuring success can be hard when working with a patient over a long period of time, and it is especially hard when the work needed does not depend on the one helping set the goals. However, there are ways to measure success, whether lead measures or other creative ways to discover what the goal really is.

If you’ve read this far in this TLDR post (too long, didn’t read), congrats! And I’m sorry you’ve either procrastinated or did not have something better to do 🤣. But if you have thoughts, I’d love your feedback!