How Well Are You Living Out Your Values?

This article is part four of a 4-part series, based on the following: In your ministry, make sure that you live out what’s important to you by (1) identifying your core values and increasing your understanding of them, (2) leading from your core values, (3) developing practices that reflect your core values, and (4) assessing how well you are living out your core values.

You want to honor God.

He designed you and gave you particular life experiences; both of these serve as the foundation for your core values. So you’re wondering how you can honor God by more effectively living out your core values in all parts of your life, including your ministry.

Something I’ve found helpful is to assess how well I’m living out my core values and use my findings to plan improvements. You can do this whether you work alone or as part of a ministry team.

If you work alone and not as part of a ministry team, do four things:

First, develop questions you want to think about, for example: What are my core values? What are some ways I live out each of my core values? What excites/concerns me about how I am living out my core values? How well do I understand each of my core values? On a scale of 1-5 (5 being high), to what extent am I living out each of my core values? In my ministry, what helps me live out my core values? What hinders me? What will I do to more effectively live out my core values?

Second, think deeply about each of the questions you have developed. You could journal about them (my wife likes this option) or talk about them with a friend or a coach (I like this option).

Third, identify and document the action steps you are going to take.

And fourth, set up a schedule to review your progress and to make new action steps.

If you lead a ministry team, do four things:

First, collect examples of how the team lives out the core values. How? By setting aside time to brainstorm during a team meeting or by including this on the annual performance review.

Second, use a survey to explore the team’s perceptions regarding how well they understand and are living out the values. When developing your survey, remember to keep it short, use a rating scale (for example, strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, disagree, strongly disagree), and include an open response item so team members can share their thoughts in writing. (I recommend using Google to do a survey.¹)

Third, analyze the extent to which team ministry practices reflect core values. Here’s how: List your ministry practices, for example, new team member recruitment, new team member orientation, event planning processes, and meeting guidelines. Next, consider questions like: To what extent does each practice reflect one or more core values? What do we need to keep/start/stop doing?

And fourth, collaboratively develop the action steps the team is going to take to more effectively live out the core values. Be sure to also collaboratively set up a schedule to review progress and to make new action steps.

The point?

In your ministry, make sure that you live out what’s important to you. Assessing how well you are living out your core values can help.

What about you?

1. What are your core values?
2. What’s satisfying/unsatisfying about how you’re living out your core values?
3. What’s important about determining how well you’re living out your core values?
4. How can you find out how well you’re living out your core values?
5. What will you do?

Want to learn more?

Read Values-Driven Leadership: Discovering and Developing Your Core Values for Ministry, in which Aubrey Malphurs outlines how to develop, implement, and preserve core values. 

1. https://docs.google.com/forms/