I’ve been told that the notion of ministry assessment is not naturally attractive to today’s young, postmodern youth worker. Being 55 years old, I need to confess that is not how I’m wired. I’ve always wanted to know—check that: needed to know—that what I’m doing is making a real difference in the kingdom of God.

Having taught youth ministry for more than 20 years, I also have wrestled with the theoretical foundations of paid ministry leadership jobs. Given our limited resources it simply does not make sense for dollars to be invested in hiring people who make little impact. Every job is a statement of value. Because the Body of Christ has been designed for all Christians to engage in some form of ministry (Eph. 4:11-16) it seems wise to reserve salaries for those who can accomplish much through others.

This financial scrutiny is a way of life for those of us who work in parachurch ministries. That’s my world; I’ve been associated for years with Youth for Christ. Indicators of effectiveness are necessary for our nearly 1,500 full- and part-time staff across the country to make the case in their communities that investing in YFC is good stewardship for those whose hearts are inclined toward the mission of enlisting young people everywhere to become lifelong followers of Jesus.

For years we blended our assessment and accountability in two ways. We’ve told stories of how individual kids’ lives have changed and inferred that this happens commonly as a result of our ministry all over the school/city/region/country. We’ve tossed around as many reliable numbers as we could to supply a picture of the scope of what we are doing with young people. At a national level, we seem to “work with” about 300,000 young people each year. What does that mean, especially when this formula translates to about 200 kids per paid staff person?

To be perfectly candid, we have struggled for some time to understand that numerical indicators could give us the feedback we crave about mission effectiveness. We’ve settled in the last year on a system for collecting data that fits us well, measuring our efforts to be faithful while giving us some sense of how the Lord may be using us to bring about fruitful life change in young people. We call it YFC Impact and hope to make it available to others who want to assess their mix of ministry strategies.

YFC Impact Helps Us Count What We Care About

Our Youth for Christ national ministry strategy is pretty simple, really. We want to deliver what we call our 5 Essentials through as many locally customized ministry sites as possible. We have long recognized that our mission can be accomplished only as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit to bring about real conversion in a teen’s life. The 5 Essentials give us common biblical ground for our practices while allowing for methodological diversity based on geography, assets or target populations to be reached.