You Don't Have To Guess Whether Your Teaching Is Effective

Just because people learn biblical truth doesn't mean a sermon is successful. Just because they even learn how to practically apply that biblical truth doesn't mean your sermon is successful.

Insight is essential to growth--and also insufficient. Satan has more knowledge and had more interaction with God than us and it's not benefiting him (James 2.19).

That's why one of our member-driven church principles is: measure application, not awareness.

Nice idea, but how do you do that? Are we supposed to follow people home and legalistically measure their lives? No. Not only is that impractical, it's unhealthy.

Instead, you can just ask them. Done right, there's simple (even free) ways to do this well. Once a quarter, for example, you could survey your members. 

There are a ton of free internet survey companies (I use surveymonkey.com) that make this very easy to do.

1. In the last 3 months, what have you done differently as a result of the bible studies at this church? [this question is an open comment box]

2. What percent of the change was due to those bible studies (vs. other life factors)? [this answer is given in percentage format]

The second question recognizes that you might not be only spiritual influence in their lives and makes the answers more realistic and reliable.

If you aren't doing a survey like this, fine. How are you measuring whether your teaching is effective? If you aren't measuring, then how do you know you're doing well? Because it feels effective to you? Because people say encouraging things?

If teaching the Bible is really important to your church, then good stewardship as a leader demands you do more than guess about how well you're doing.