We’re halfway through the year. Have you considered an honest assessment of how effective you and your church have been so far?
By Clint Grider
For many pastors and ministry leaders, summer is an opportunity for much-needed time to relax, rejuvenate, and reflect. Around the halfway point of the year, I pray part of your reflection time is focused on the beautiful calling God has for your life and the life of your church. Amidst the pressures and demands of ministry, have you taken time to reflect on the joy and anticipation of your calling? And have you considered an honest assessment of how effective you and your entire church have been so far this year at living it?
In our fast-paced, rapidly changing world, many pastors confide that their churches sometimes find it difficult to keep up. We all say we want to multiply disciples. But if we’re honest, we sometimes struggle with doing it in a widespread way that deeply connects. Don’t get me wrong; we think we do, and we earnestly try. But leaders often find themselves jumping from one model or idea to another. Success feels temporary or limited and doesn’t seem to consistently sustain across the whole congregation or community.
As a result, many leaders aren’t confident they’re making as big or widespread of an impact as they could. As I talk with pastors, I hear this concern all the time. This is why it’s important to have moments of honest evaluation and a clear way to filter where you stand and how you’ll decide your best next steps.
Maximizing disciple-making in today’s world requires agile, responsive leadership that cuts past the noise of models, and instead focuses on real-time evaluation of outcomes (or fruit) on your people’s journeys. Whatever your context, growing as a responsive leader requires clarity on two gaps that hinder church effectiveness: the awareness gap and the connectivity gap.
The awareness gap
The awareness gap is the gap between what we think is happening in people as a result of our efforts and what is actually happening.
Many leaders admit to not truly knowing how most people in their church are growing or struggling spiritually. Leaders may recognize the awareness gap, yet in their effort to close it, they often gravitate toward a few common but unhelpful solutions.
The first common attempted solution is counting what can easily be counted: participation. Unfortunately, measuring participation doesn’t close the awareness gap, even when measuring participation in activities intended to help people grow. Doing so makes significant assumptions about what is happening in those settings and why people are participating in them. Increased participation is important. But I’m suggesting many leaders don’t have clear ways to examine the reasons for and specific outcomes of that participation.
Even so, virtually every leader knows what’s going on in someone’s life. These success stories activate the second common way leaders ineffectively try to close the awareness gap: spotlighting. Spotlighting is elevating a few success stories to represent what is happening among many people. Spotlighting is great for communicating what God is doing in the life of the church. But it’s critically flawed for overall evaluation.
“Spotlighting is great for communicating what God is doing in the life of the church. But it’s critically flawed for overall evaluation.” — @clintgrider Share on XThe individuals you know who are growing in Christ don’t represent the whole. Quite the contrary—these people gravitate to you (and vice versa) because they are benefiting the most from the ministry. So, while we praise God and celebrate what He’s doing in their lives, their testimonies do little to serve as an assessment of what is happening in people’s lives throughout your whole church.
Leaders who don’t close the awareness gap often default to leading by assumption. And there remains an uneasy sense that the church ought to be doing something more to make a greater impact. Unfortunately, as long as the awareness gap exists, there is no way to know what “something more” ought to be.
The connectivity gap
The second gap is the connectivity gap. It’s the gap between misconnected steps or ministries in your church that short-circuits their effectiveness. In part, this is the gap between the things a person might engage in over time that might not feel connected to them.
Unfortunately, people don’t always engage in things that are biblically important to connecting the dots in their spiritual growth. They get stuck where they are. To overcome it, some leaders experiment with a host of approaches to persuade people to take the right next step. Others surrender to the principle that it’s all in God’s hands and resolve to pray more and wait longer. Most leaders swing between these approaches. When neither work, it can be tempting to blame the people themselves for their stubbornness, worldliness, or lack of commitment.
While any of this may have merit at times, the connectivity gap frequently has more to do with leaders than followers. When people don’t take their next step, it’s often because we haven’t given them the right next step to take.
Leaders only have so many hours to prepare the next moves for people. And people only have so much attention to give and only so many moves they can make at once. So, in the moments we do cut through the noise, what we offer needs to be compelling, and it needs to work. If it doesn’t, people eventually tune us out.
This is the other part of the connectivity gap—not just connection between one activity and another but also between an activity and the difference it’s supposed to make. When leaders don’t intentionally and thoughtfully focus church ministry on outcomes in people’s lives, it’s unlikely to produce those outcomes. And leaders can’t focus ministry on outcomes if those outcomes aren’t clearly defined.
“When people don’t take their next step, it’s often because we haven’t given them the right next step to take.” — @clintgrider Share on XBeing mindful of leadership gaps
The awareness and connectivity gaps aren’t just problems churches face as a whole. People struggle with them first. The church leaders I know got into ministry because God called them to make a difference in people’s lives. They are fueled by a desire to see souls saved, brokenness healed, and people become all God made them to be for His kingdom.
Yet when an awareness gap prevails, many of these precious people aren’t truly seen, heard, and known. And when a connectivity gap is present, they don’t receive the right invitations to the right next steps that open into a transformed life. Being mindful of these gaps, then, is an urgent and critical need. God has placed every leader in the church for this purpose, for the sake of the people He loves.
Leadership gap assessment for your church
Evaluate your church using the following Leadership Gap Assessment and discuss the results with your team:
Rate each statement 1-5:
1 – Not true of us yet
2 – Slightly true of us
3 – True of us
4 – Very true of us
5 – Captures us completely
______ We have written, relational outcomes for our disciple-making approach that our whole congregation identifies with daily.
______ We have clear channels that give us widespread awareness of what is truly connecting and what isn’t in the lives of our people each day.
______ At any point, we have a clear way to validate that at least 85% of our ministries are moving 85% of our people toward the practical growth and disciple-making expressions we’ve defined.
______ Our staff and leaders know they’re focused on the most effective things that they could be doing (rather than assuming or hoping that they are).
______ We have a laboratory ethos on our team, which helps us adjust, reshape, and/or experiment in our ministries in real-time as we learn more about the journeys and challenges of our people.
______ Our staff and leaders know how to clearly differentiate and manage the tension between the most important things vs. the most urgent.
______ We have filters to connect short-term ministries (waypoints) to ongoing ministries (constants) so they clearly point people to their right next step, rather than sometimes seeming unrelated.
______ We know how to evaluate our success based on widespread life change, spiritual sensitivity, and missional growth rather than attendance figures or spotlighted stories.
______ Our training has created a widespread culture of disciple-making disciples who are close, curious, and collaborative in the way they engage with us and others.
______ We’ve created a leadership development system in our church built to adapt to our rapidly-changing culture and unique context.
Assessment results for your church
42-50 You have a system that allows you to consistently close gaps in awareness and connectivity, which is nurturing a vibrant disciple-making culture.
32-41 You are making progress toward realizing the power of closing gaps in awareness and connectivity in your ministry system.
21-31 While you may be counting some successes of growth or impact, you have gaps in awareness and connectivity that are limiting your potential.
10-20 You likely are experiencing significant challenges in ministry and decision-making due to gaps in awareness and connectivity that are preventing you from maximizing your effectiveness.
For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.
Clint Grider
Clint is the chief integration officer and senior lead navigator at Auxano. He is also the author of Mind the Gap.
To learn more, check out “Mind the Gap: Leading Your Church to Agility and Effectiveness in Any Environment.”
