Is It Working?
q
The Journey to Biblical Manhood Assessment Strategy Have you ever looked up a route on an online map? There are two critical pieces of information you need to chart the best path: your starting point and your destination. That’s why the first “stride” in any of the 12 Challenges in the Journey to Biblical Manhood is to Plan & Assess.
Directions To Here, Directions From Here The two components of this initial stage of a challenge let you define both of these important factors. The Faith & Life Objectives communicate to men the destination for the challenge. They answer the questions: What will I learn? What beliefs will we look at? What will I do? We’ll talk about the Faith & Life Objectives in a future piece. In this article, we will discuss the pre- and post-challenge Assessments. The pre-challenge Assessment helps you determine where the men of your church are spiritually and practically in the areas related to the challenge. What do men know and believe right now? What are they doing currently? Where are we right now? Knowing where your men are starting from is critical to determining the effectiveness of your efforts; you’ll conduct a post-challenge Assessment at the end to compare results. It can also help shape the way you implement the challenge itself, showing you needed areas of emphasis, for example.
How Does the Assessment Work? Subscribers to the Journey can download a suggested pre-Assessment form directly from the website. The questions on the form correspond to the suggested Faith & Life Objectives—or goals—for each challenge. You can edit both the Faith & Life Objectives and the Assessment to make it work for your church. As the saying goes, inspect what you expect. In other words, you want to make sure you are measuring the right knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. This means that, should you edit the Faith & Life Objectives, you need to also adjust the Assessment accordingly. Just as every man in the church should receive a Faith & Life Objectives card, every man in the church should fill out an Assessment form as well. The best strategy for getting guys to fill them out is to have them do it on the spot. Some ideas include distributing the forms during a worship service and collecting them in the offering plate; providing a box in the lobby; giving guys a gift for turning them in at a men’s table (like a book from the Books! by the Box program); collecting them in Sunday School classes and small groups; or collecting them on ministry teams. The goal is to get as many back as possible. Continued on page 29
7