Most preachers are terrified of evaluation and famished for feedback.
The thought of being judged or evaluated can turn naturally effective communicators into quivering, self-conscious, and ineffective performers. All day long we speak to people—without preparation, without notes, and without fear. That’s because we don’t expect to be evaluated on our everyday conversations. What we look for in our ordinary communication is feedback from our listeners to let us know if the message got through. We welcome feedback—we dread evaluation.
Though feedback is sometimes described as positive or negative, the “feedback” I’m talking about is non-evaluative feedback. “How well did I do?” is an evaluative question. It asks the listener to make a judgment, assess value, and assign a grade. A non-evaluative feedback question would be something like, “What did you hear, and how did it affect you?” It simply asks the listener to report what happened.
Some of the best preachers I know are able to handle regular and detailed evaluations. They pass out score sheets and “read the reviews” carefully. Most preachers, though, will be better off to solicit non-evaluative feedback, and specifically feedback which focuses on content rather than delivery.
And it’s not only preachers who are unnerved by the thought of being evaluated. Listeners are very often uncomfortable if asked to evaluate the preacher’s performance. “I haven’t been to seminary—how can I grade my pastor on the sermon?” They suspect that we’re fishing for compliments rather than asking to continue the conversation which was begun in the sermon. If I want their feedback, I need them to know that I’m not evaluating them on how well they understood the sermon.
Sometimes we can make a general invitation for feedback in a bulletin blurb or an announcement —”It’s helpful for me to get your insights on what you heard in today’s sermon. I invite you to leave me a note (signed or unsigned) in the offering plate or the box by the door. If you’d like, you can email me with your feedback.” Having designated “feedback folks” meet with the preacher in a small group can be helpful, but there’s a danger that they may spend more time in the service analyzing the sermon rather than experiencing it.
Here are some questions which ask for non-evaluative feedback: What did you hear as the main message of the sermon? Was there anything else in the sermon which specifically connected with you? What were you thinking and feeling at the end of the sermon? Did the sermon make a difference to you or lead to any decision on your part? Is there anything else about the sermon which you’d like to say to the preacher? What in the sermon did you agree with or disagree with?
Our sermons are regularly evaluated by the listeners, of course—at lunch after the service when we are safely out of earshot. But their non-evaluative feedback will help us know whether the sermon they experienced was anything like the sermon we intended. And that’s how we evaluate ourselves.
