Evaluate everything?

I’ve been "thought silent" for several weeks. It’s not that I don’t have anything worth writing about, it’s just that time of year when I am having a hard time holding a thought long enough to have a complete thought worth writing down.

Evaluate and justify everything. For those who know me, this has been a mantra of mine over the last several years. I am annoyed that few ministries really learn from their successes and failures, and so I tend to over analyze everything in my own ministry.

At the core of this evaluate everything mentality is it’s logical conclusion. I always say to myself , "If something isn’t working, stop feeding it." That simply means that if we are investing our time and energy into something with specific goals and we are not reaching those goals, or are reaping the wrong benefits… then we need to think about not doing it any more.

Of course, this goes beyond numeric goals. It’s not like because youth group isn’t growing or Sunday school is growing that we need to stop doing it. Afterall, a ministry could be accomplishing all of it’s goals and actually grow smaller. Why? Because people aren’t a business… heck, even in business you can do everything "right" and not grow numerically. Even in business there are times when you actually get healthier by getting smaller. Just ask General Motors.

This isn’t a new thought for me. For a long time I’ve thought this way and there are many things we aren’t doing in Light Force because they got "evaluated out." Retreats. Small groups. Regular small service projects.  They all got "cut" because the effort/expense got outweighed by their benefits. It’s normal and healthy for any ministry to do this… even with things that are working somewhere else.

This is my new thought. Some of the best stuff in ministry is a complete waste of resources. What? That’s right. Some of the "best stuff" that we are doing is, goal speaking, utterly unremarkable. In fact, there are things that aren’t going well, have high impact, and have butchered their goals like ordering a steak at Wendy’s. Make sense out of that? We can’t… but we know we’re onto something…

Should those things be cut? Well, no. But it’s hard to justify "wasting time" and "wasting resources" when most of the good stuff happening is merely incidental. Afterall, can life change really be "bad" when it is happening "by accident?"

Bigger thought question: Is this "evaluate everything" mentality even good for ministry in general? Does everything have to be justifiable? What about _____?