Evaluation - Noticing

Over the past several weeks, we've been working really hard to improve the energy level in our worship services. They weren't in a bad place, but we felt that we could make improvements across the board, so we're working hard to get better. 

One of the primary ways we're doing that is a Monday morning debrief of the previous weekend's worship services. All of us who have a part in the worship service (worship leader, senior pastor, teaching pastor, audio visual director, as well as our student ministries pastor) are present for the meeting where we pick apart every aspect of the service. 

We spend some time talking about the things we can do better next week, but also spend a lot of time talking about the great moments we want to re-capture. I think the discussion of the positives is the real value of the meeting. 

I've noticed that if we don't have a planned evaluation meeting, it's really difficult for the small positives (the real difference makers) from the weekend to ever make it across our desk. We'll hear about every negative thing that happened, plus some that are imagined, but we rarely hear about the small things that went really well. We have to plan to surface those, or they won't make it into discussion.

The longer I lead, the more I see the value in noticing. There is a lot of mileage to be had from simply noticing something great someone has done and bringing it to their attention. Of course they noticed, but it means more than you'll ever imagine for them to know that you noticed.