Church Staff serve the congregation, so they are accountable to them. This means that in administrative matters, the staff will be held accountable. Of course, this can be taken to the extreme, where the staff are criticized for everything they do, right or wrong. Hopefully, in the Church, people have some appreciation for Grace! And staff are human beings, fallible and prone to mistakes.

Should staff have performance reviews like you find in companies? Those reviews are designed to be objective, measuring performance and how well the employee met their stated goals for the year. By setting those with a manager in advance, there is less room for emotional responses to some issue that popped up during the year. And the employee knows what is expected, besides showing up for work every workday. However, having been in numerous performance reviews over the years, they often seem rather sterile and perfunctory.

In the Church, reviews should be more of a reassessment of goals and objectives. Last year’s goals should be discussed honestly between staff and senior leadership. This could be the senior pastor, or an executive in charge of all programs. The goals should be evaluated to see how well they were met, and what could have been done better. This should be documented. And then new goals and objectives should be created for the new year. By taking this approach, the review becomes less about personalities and more about accomplishments. And the results can be summarized to the congregation so they know what was accomplished in the past year.