“We guarantee all our employees two performance reviews every year,” the personnel committee leader said with a smile. It didn’t work. The staff would happier doing their jobs without this anxiety-ridden exercise in self- and supervisor scrutiny.
As pastor, it’s my responsibility to carry out these reviews, with input from groups within the church that the various staff members relate to directly. I’m not exempt from the experience myself. A team of lay leaders undertakes a review of my performance annually. There’s a mechanism in the by-laws to activate a parish relations committee for more intensive regular meetings if issues arise involving the minister’s performance.
How should performance reviews in churches and other Christian organizations differ from those in the corporate or academic worlds? In an effort to become “more business-like,” churches often look for guidance to corporate human resources practices. As one “business executive software” company says in its pitch to frustrated managers, “chances are you aren’t thrilled with your current performance evaluation process” because “they are rarely easy or effective and they take up your precious time for little result.” This outfit promises “the secret to effective, no-hassle performance evaluations.”
I learned a few things as vice-president for academic affairs at a theological seminary that I carry into my pastoral work in the local church. As academic dean I had to evaluate faculty members, program directors, and support staff. I learned that there is no one-size-fits-all evaluation tool. Program directors must be held accountable for measurable productivity in ways that would make professors, prizing freedom for creativity, bridle. Support staff should be evaluated for efficiency in ways that might belittle program directors. Creativity, productivity, and efficiency are values all employees should strive for, but the evaluation program must to be flexible enough that it’s relevant to each person’s role in the organization.
The seminary followed a corporate model, with a numeric scale to rate all employees (other than professors, who had their own protocol, also with a numeric scale) in a standard grid of performance areas. True, there was space for written comments on the form. But, even with difficult situations where a written record on file was of great importance, it was hard for me to see that marking someone with a 2 rather than a 3 or a 3.5 rather than a 4 was not my subjective judgment. How was faith in metrics, with an all-important average score, more scientific than a narrative analysis with carefully chosen words? Whatever the form, the most effective aspect of the process was always the face-to-face discussion with the employee’s self-evaluation and my evaluation as supervisor both on the table.
At the church I now serve, we have a process that relies on narrative rather than numbers and embodies the idea that work in the church is a mutual relationship. On both sides of the experience -- staff members’ self-evaluation and the evaluation of their work -- we reflect on accomplishments, goals, professional development, and ways these can be fulfilled more effectively during the next period of time.
We have developed a form for my review as pastor that is based on a theology of mutual responsibility in ministry. It assesses relative strength, weakness, or neglect in light of a dozen “areas of responsibility in the senior minister’s call to serve this church.” But it goes on to ask questions like “What did the minister help our church accomplish in the past year?” “What are expectations that, under his leadership, we have not addressed effectively?” “How has the congregation demonstrated effective or ineffective support for the minister?”
Work in the church ought to be a different kind of experience than in the business world. Far from being a haven for lazy habits or lower standards, sharing in God’s mission in the Body of Christ calls us to the highest levels and most humane models of work performance. Employee evaluation practices should be both rigorous and consistent with our ecclesiology.
One more thought: It’s Lent. Performance review has a long tradition in the Church.
Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Connecticut. He was formerly an academic dean at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.
