Playing a Fool's Game Wisely

One of the most frustrating aspects of ministry is knowing how to evaluate our effectiveness. Since only God can make things grow and we do everything by his power, how do we determine the impact of our involvement? How do we know if we are making a difference or whether we are using the most effective methods? How should we assess ministry staff or global ministry partners?  

MRN is working on some tools and guidance for our own work and for churches who want to assess their global mission efforts. (Click here to request a copy of our evaluation questions, and be alerted when the evaluation handbook is released later this year.) I think these tools can be helpful and I know it is important for American churches to get help with evaluation. We count things in our country even if we don’t know how much they count. We are an evaluation-intensive culture. We want to ensure that anything we do, or support, is impactful and efficient. The dread of lost money seems to bother us as much as lost people.  

However, before we get too far into metrics and evaluation, I think it is important to admit that in many ways it is a fool's game. At least that is what the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 10-12. Paul had to regularly contend with critics who did not think his ministry measured up to their expectations. In 2 Corinthians, it was painful for him to defend his ministry to a congregation he planted. The Corinthian believers were comparing Paul to other “super-apostles” who were more impressive in their credentials and skills. Even though they were arrogant and abusive, they “got stuff done” and “acted like real leaders.” Paul felt the need to demonstrate his qualifications and accomplishments in order to validate himself and his influence with this church.  

While Paul engages in a process of validation with great reluctance, and comes out far ahead of others, he repeatedly claims that the entire enterprise is a fool’s game. He said he could not participate in this fool's errand without playing the fool himself. Many kingdom workers around the world and through the ages have felt exactly that same way.  

Why is this? What is wrong with having standards of evaluating kingdom workers? Shouldn’t we measure anything that matters? Maybe, but we need to do so with great humility and caution for a variety of reasons.   

First, evaluating human kingdom workers can easily rob God of his rightful glory and leadership as Lord of the harvest and source of blessing. When God is on the move, he should be the one who is praised. There is ultimately no place for boasting in ourselves or in any other Kingdom workers. It is great to acknowledge and honor hard work, sacrificial service, and exceptional skill, but all these are gifts of God used by his power and only effective if animated by his Spirit. Praising God’s servants instead of God is dishonoring to God.  God should not get some glory and honor. It’s all his. Anything less is robbing God.  

Second, measuring ministers can foster harmful boasting of humans which creates competing camps and corrupts character. Paul must deal with this in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 3. When people start celebrating gifted leaders, camps are formed, jealousy develops, competition ensues, and conflict is inevitable. How many leaders must collapse from the undue weight of unearned glory before we learn to stop contributing to the destruction of God’s major movements in the world?  

Third, assessing workers can cause us to treat ministry as a matter of human skill and mechanistic effort instead of spiritual power. It takes what is a spiritual enterprise and reduces it to an engineering project. Every time a church explodes with growth, or a movement of God takes place in any country, some people rush in to determine what the critical elements were in the process and then attempt to replicate it. But this rarely works because the most important elements cannot be captured by our assessment tools or replicated by our actions. We can even turn prayer into a tool in a mechanical process instead of an appeal for God to act.  

Fourth, numerical evaluations cause us to treat all situations as identical instead of recognizing the complexity of each context. Have you ever noticed that most growing churches are in rapidly growing urban or suburban areas where lots of new people are coming in and are setting up new structures for their life? Most movements of people to God come in the wake of societal disruptions that cause people in mass to consider rethinking their beliefs and lives. You can copy practices, but you can’t replicate contexts. For someone working in a context that is not poised for growth or where God has not yet prepared the way for revival, we cannot force a movement through good technique.  

Fifth, focusing on human contributions to kingdom expansion can create evil power structures which always end up distorting the character of God’s people. When winning is equated with godliness, and loss is judged as spiritual failure, we have given the evil one a perfect setting for undermining the way of the cross. Rome loved a winner and killed our Messiah. Yet, what appeared to be his shame and defeat turned out to be his victory and Rome’s unmasking. Human standards of winning and losing never map well onto God’s mission. When we forget that, we open the door to the god Nike instead of Yahweh. We must resist the urge to “Just Do It.”  

So, where does that leave us? Is there no place for evaluation? Not necessarily, as long as we have a God-centered and gospel-shaped approach to assessment. But it does mean that spiritual discernment must come first and be embedded in the entire evaluation process. Any evaluation we do must start with God and what he is doing. Otherwise, we really are playing a fool’s game. We must understand the times and see the work we do within the flow of what God is doing and blessing. Playing this fool’s game wisely will help us not to turn servants (like statistics) into masters or vessels (like variables) into treasure.  

Thoughtful conversations with kingdom workers about their processes and outcomes can be a way to support them, partner with them, and find pathways for adding value and impact to their service. 

Note: You can find more helpful resources here.