I got a great question today from a church planter who wanted to know if I do reviews or evaluations with our staff and how I do them. It’s a great question because people don’t do what you expect if you don’t tell them what you expect.

So we do a semi-formal review/ evaluation towards the end of the year where we discuss job performance, ministry budgets, etc… But I also meet in a less formal way with our staff throughout the year and remind them of our A-B-C philosophy. What is that?

I believe that ministries vary in importance (I know some might disagree with this, but not every ministry gets the staff support, budgetary consideration, or promotion as other ministries. Those are the facts in every church, whether you agree with my previous statement or not.) The truth is, every Pastor has to decide who to say yes or no to and that should not be an arbitrary decision. It should go by the importance of the ministry.

I’m guessing your Children’s ministry is pretty important in your church. That’s an A ministry in our church. You probably other ministries that you love, that a staff member or leader is passionate about, but that if you had to shut it down at some point, your church probably wouldn’t close. These are B or C ministries.

We have all of our senior leaders overseeing at least one A ministry. This is what they get graded on. This way, they spent the bulk of their time on what is most “mission critical” to us as a church. If you rate every ministry equally and tell each staff member that “all ministries are created equal”, they will spend most of their time of what they like the most. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you have a limited staff, you have to prioritize.

When we have 200 staff members, everyone can focus on what they love. Until then, we organize our work around the A-B-C’s.