Assessment

I received an invitation to assist in a church planting assessment at the end of next month. It's the first invitation I've received, and I'm looking forward to it with a bit of trepidation. Sitting on that side of the table lends itself to the expectation that I know something about church planting. In fact, I feel like I know very little about church planting.

Thankfully the assessment is set up in such a way, that it is simply an investigation into the habits and patterns of the candidate. It is based on the theory that past performance is the best indicator of future results. The Assessment takes hours to complete. It focuses on a number of core competencies that are neccessary in church planting. If a person doesn't have any past record of performing those competencies then they are unlikely to perform them in the future without significant attention and training.

The benefit of the assessment is that it gives you a snapshot of who you are as a planter, and what areas you are weak in. It is similar to the Natural Church Development model in that it focuses on the idea of the shortest stave. A stave is a piece of a barrel. One of the wooden pieces. If one is shorter than the rest that is where water will leak from. So that barrel is limited in it's capacity by the shortest stave. If we can learn where our shortcomings are, we can work to improve, thus raising the capacity of our ability.

--Ben