Evaluating
Evangelism
By Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the June 23, 2012 Sabbath School Lesson
“Do
your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not
need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” 2 Timothy
2:15, NIV
A paradox pertaining to the modern, Christian church is
that many want to evaluate the various ministries and activities of the church,
but few want to be the recipients of evaluation, whether the evaluation is fair
or not. However, this is not limited to the church. Even in secular society,
for one to be undergoing “evaluation” evokes feelings of trepidation and even
fear. Recognizing this, some evangelists even play to this fear, warning people
of the great “evaluation” or judgment to come. But is evaluation a good thing?
If it is, is it always good to evaluate? What part does evaluation play in evangelism?
While we may fear evaluation, we use it often, every day.
We get up in the morning and look into the bathroom mirror to evaluate our
appearance. We look at the clock to evaluate our available time for breakfast.
We are daily bombarded with huge amounts of information. Some of this arrives
through the media, from school classes, from work leaders and associates, and
even from our own thoughts. We must evaluate all of this information to
understand if it is relevant or simply noise in our environment. If we fail to
make proper decisions because of faulty evaluations, we might believe a
fictional media display to be true. We might fail a class we are taking because
we could not properly understand the material presented. We might place our
career in jeopardy by relegating important information our boss wishes us to
understand to a lower priority than it deserves. We might even find our
thoughts misleading us due to inadequate breadth of experience to correctly
formulate an opinion. In short, without
evaluation we might find ourselves deceived regarding our relationship to the
world around us.
This is not as difficult to achieve as one might expect.
In the field of photography, cameras will often use different colored lenses
called “filters” to achieve unique effects. The filter might be yellow, red, or
blue. If someone starting out in photography were given their first camera with
only a red lens and no explanation regarding its purpose, they might never
question the images they were producing. However, requesting evaluation of
their work from a more experienced photographer would soon reveal the
possibilities available through the use of other filters or even no filters at
all. When we don’t seek evaluation from those more experienced than us in any
field, we limit our ability to move beyond the limits set by our current “filters.”
Evaluation of our evangelistic efforts can result in our
becoming more adept at handling diverse witnessing situations. This is no
different than how life works in general. We take a course of action, and then
we evaluate that course based on the results. Some evaluations produce results
that are self-evident. For instance, if we have a flat tire on our car in the
morning when we go to leave for work, and we discover a spilled box of nails in
the driveway, we can probably safely decide that the two are related and then clean
up the nails so it does not happen again. However, if we find our tire has a
continuous, unexplained slow leak, we are probably better off seeking outside
evaluation of the problem, so we take our car to the tire store for an
inspection by the tire technician. While we are there, we may even ask the
technician what recommendations he or she might have to improve our vehicle’s
performance or appearance. Their helpfulness with one problem can inspire us to
seek evaluation regarding these other issues. We will look at that a little
more, later.
Some evangelism activities may also produce self-evident
ways to improve what we are doing. For instance, if we are having a hard time
finding people who have expressed interest in knowing more about the Bible, we
might decide that it is time to buy a road map or a GPS device to help us find
their address. However, other issues may need evaluation by those more experienced
than us. If we are doing Bible studies or a formal series of evangelistic seminars,
and we lose our audience after presenting a certain topic, we may want help in
understanding how to approach that topic in a more digestible manner. We might
even discover less obvious issues like people being uncomfortable with our
accent, our clothing or even the seating. We might find that our presentation
is too lengthy, and we are exhausting the attention span of our audience. Asking
for evaluation can open up insights we might never have considered without it.
None of us has all the answers, but someone else might have some answers we can
grow with.
Because evaluation is often a matter of experience, we
should, in turn, be prepared to provide helpful evaluation to others who are
less experienced than we are. This can be challenging because it is important that
we understand the difference between enabling a ministry with positive
evaluation and disabling it with criticism. One key difference is that helpful evaluation
is often requested, whereas, hurtful criticism is often simply volunteered by
the criticizer. Another difference can be seen in the response by the recipients.
If we provide input that is helpful, others will beat a path to our door as
they request evaluation to enable the growth of their ministry. But if we
instead provide only criticism of their efforts and point to their failures, we
will find that fewer and fewer will seek our input until eventually, no one will
come to us. For these very reasons, it is not only important to seek evaluation
of our ministries, but to also seek evaluation of how we evaluate others. This
can help us to avoid a critical spirit. If we slide into criticism, we can be
tempted into self-pride in such a way that it can become impossible to even see
or feel our need for evaluation. This is good reason for us to seek evaluation
even if we feel we do not need it.
Perhaps another indicator of how we are evaluating
others would be for us to ask ourselves if what we are considering to be simply
an “evaluation” of someone’s ministry is hurtful or condemnatory as opposed to
uplifting and enabling. For instance a statement such as “Evangelists never
prepare people properly,” would be criticism as opposed to evaluation as it is
condemnatory and, depending on the thickness of the evangelist’s skin, hurtful
as well. On the other hand, a statement like, “Perhaps, people would be better
grounded if we could give them another week of seminars,” would be uplifting
and enabling the ministry as it is not condemnatory and is offering a possible
solution to enable the ministry and help it grow.
One important aspect of evaluations we should remember is
that they are not obligatory for the one receiving them. The recipients are
free to either accept or reject the ideas shared with them. This is very much
the same as those who are free to accept or reject eternal life in Jesus. That sort
of freedom also has inherent consequences. If the evaluation advice is truly
enabling and would empower the ministry to a higher level then accepting the
advice and applying it would produce greater fruit for the kingdom. If it is
rejected then the ministry will suffer from failure to utilize the experience
of others. In any event, the evaluator must resist the temptation to slip from
evaluation into criticism if their advice is not followed. To become critical
would only make it harder for the one evaluated to return for further
evaluation in the future and may close the door to ever correcting what might
have been healed if only the spirit of criticism had not been allowed to enter
in.
Most of us can probably relate to this if we have had
personal experience with the chilling effect of criticism that has caused us to
question whether or not we should even be doing ministry. Some who are
struggling with great obstacles to their ministry may become discouraged beyond
what they are able to bear by a criticism that becomes the proverbial “straw
that breaks the camel’s back.” Our words, if not carefully chosen, may deprive
God’s work of a willing soldier who might have become a general in the Lord’s
army one day, if we had not given them a burden of discouragement to bear. If
we could get a vision for our ability to enable ministries, to lift privates to
higher places where they can become generals, we would never choose to lessen
their stature through criticism. If we can avoid such criticism, we will find
it benefiting our own walk with the Lord. As we help them to move forward and
grow, we are modeling a behavior that will encourage them to do the same for
us. By lifting one another up in this way, the entire work will become
stronger.
God did not create us to become “accusers of the
brethren.” Revelation 12:10 tells us who has that work to do. It is Satan, and
he is very adept at it. Discouragement is one of his favorite tools. If we find
his tools lying about, we should be careful not to pick them up. His tools will
not be a help to God’s work and will do nothing to enable our ministries.
Instead they will divide and cripple every effort we put forth to advance the
kingdom of God. Recognizing the benefits of positive evaluation within God’s
family, let’s provide the kind of evaluation of the church and other
individuals and ministries within the church that we would find uplifting and
empowering for our own spiritual walk. This is the way Jesus taught us when He
said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for
this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12, NIV
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Waters Ministry
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