Dave Baumgartner is not only one of our elders, but he’s going back to school, finishing up a degree. One of the classes he is taking is a youth ministry class. One of his projects of the class was to observe and evaluate a youth ministry…so he picked ours. He observed, asked questions, poked at some of our soft spots, was inquisitive and incredibly insightful.
Here is the paper he wrote after it was all done. The cool thing about observations like this - it shows what you are doing and communicating, not what you THINK you are doing or communicating. Dave is not “in my head” nor can he read my mind or guess my intentions. He’s just watching what actually happens, asks some clarifying questions then processes it all from his perspective.
Do you know how valuable that kind of information is to a leader? It’s not all pretty. There are things we think we are communicating, we think we are accomplishing and sometimes we need someone to love us enough to say - “Great idea…it’s not working, let US try this.” I’m pretty pleased that over the past year we’ve developed that kind of culture in our student ministry.
This whole process was so helpful and good, I’m asking him to do it again next year.
Thanks to Dave for his honesty, integrity, time and insights.
Student Parking 2007 Evaluation by Dave Baumgartner
Tag: student ministry
good stuff.
the whole, “what we think is being communicated and what actually gets heard” is a hard one.
communication, hmmm… i think there has been much written about that one.
interesting read, and i like how he calls you pastor grant. and i can say it did bring great satisfaction to beat pastor grant in 6 square.
Wow! Tell Dave he did a great job. This is gold for a ministry leader. Reminds me of a suggestion a heard once to pay lost people to come to your church and give you a simple evaluation of their experience. Low pressure for them, great feedback for you, and you start a relationship with them in the process. Good stuff.