Plays Well With Others

We all learn at an early age what evaluation looks like. At first there are behavioral observations in preschool and kindergarten like, knows how to tie his shoes or plays well with others.  As we get older our efforts, academically anyway, are assigned a letter designation. This has inadvertently caused a generations old aversion to the letter 'F' in our culture. We've tried through the years to come up with other measures to communicate our evaluations but, inevitably, someone asks, 'Is that like a 'B' or a 'C'?'

When we get to adulthood and no one is making us evaluate our work our natural inclination is to shy away from it. That's why there are so many businesses, nonprofits, and ministries that struggle to operate day to day. In my experience those that fail to evaluate the work they are doing as measured against best practices in their industry, their own stated goals, Biblical principles and measurable outcomes usually end up just treading water, being marginally effective or failing all together.

And evaluation isn't just about looking at the work you're doing to see if it's effective, it's about looking at what others are doing to determine if what you're doing is even necessary. Within the Christian world the duplication of effort is staggering. Far too often one group of Christians will see what another group of Christians is doing and instead of joining them in the effort will start the exact same thing on their own. Then they make it worse by refusing to learn from those who've done it before and recreate everything from scratch! I can't even begin to fathom the amount of resources wasted in this process.

Sometimes there is good reason for more than one group, business or ministry to be involved in doing the exact same thing. There is also good reason to cooperate together whenever possible. Knowing when to do which of these is a challenge that can only be sorted out through intensive evaluation. In every case it's crucial that all of us in ministry be asking a few simple questions.

• Should we do this?
• Why should we do this?
• Is there someone already doing this?
• Should we join them in doing this?
• If not, what should we learn from them as we do this?

If we ever hope to undo any of the damage done by our benevolent oppression and misbegotten charity; if we hope to marshal the precious resources God has given us and deploy them for the greatest possible good, then there is one evaluation from childhood we must all strive to achieve...plays well with others.