"How did it go?" "How was the sermon?" "What did you think of the service?" "How effective was our worship?

I was at a combination conference/workshop for a new spiritual formation tool last week, and Dallas Willard was one of the presenters. He talked about the near obsession forming in churches around evaluation. He said he had finished speaking at a church recently, and had hardly walked off the stage before people wanted to talk with him about "how the talk went."

Perhaps we are not really in a position to know "how it went," he said. Maybe only God really knows.

This got me to thinking about the whole issue of evaluation and church ministry.

On one hand, some people refuse to ask any questions about effectiveness at all, on the grounds that facing up to ineffectiveness would just be too painful. They run on the "if I can help one fainting sparrow back to the nest, it will all have been worth it" standard, a standard by which it is very hard to fail.

If I'm not good at something, it's best ...