What is effective ministry?

From p71 of "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire":

“Our forebearers back in the camp meetings days used to say that if people left a meeting talking about what a wonderful sermon the preacher gave or how beautifully the singers sang, the meeting had failed. But if people went home saying things like, “Isn’t God good? He met me tonight in such a wonderful way,” it was a good meeting. There was to be no sharing the stage with the Lord.”

I spent the first five years of my ministerial career working at Willow Creek Community Church. One of the great legacies Willow left in me was the importance of evaluating ministry. The thesis went something like this: in every domain outside of the church we are expected to pursue our goals and ambitions with excellence and intensity, yet when we are in church we for some reason lower our standards. If church is the house of God, wouldn’t we do the opposite and increase our standards?”

To this day I cannot attend a church service or ministry event without quickly moving through a series of filters as I evaluate whether I considered the event to be a success. But this leads to the inevitable and very important question: “What is the basis of success?” Which filters should be used? Timeliness? Excellence? Quality of delivery? Authenticity? Perhaps these should all be considered. But how about the question Cymbal poses here, rooted in the history of our ‘forebearers.’ Questions like, “Isn’t God good?” and “Did I meet God tonight?”

So here is my challenge: Take a month and use this as your evaluation tool. When you go to your community group, or when you come to a Sunday worship service, or when you go to any environment whose purpose is to lift up God, ask these questions of yourself when it is over. “Did I meet God tonight at community group?” “Did I meet God today at service?” “Did I meet God at this church event?”

This is a wonderful way to calibrate our expectations of a great event or service. If the answer is ‘yes’ then we are moving in the right direction! And if the answer is ‘no,’ then we have to ask some really important questions of ourselves…