6 Real Questions to Evaluate Your Events
A few years ago I wrote a post called 5 Questions to Evaluate Your Events. I've shared it countless times and even included it as an appendix in my book Next Level Kidmin.
But after our church's Egg Hunt this Easter, I sat down with my new kids' pastor to walk through the after-action meeting. I pulled up those questions and realized they weren't right for the moment. Those questions are valuable when you're deciding whether to put an event back on the calendar during planning season. They aren't designed for evaluating whether an event was a success or identifying what you could do better next time.
So that's what this post is. These are the actual questions I used in our after-action meeting. They gave us a clear picture of the event, helped us find the wins and losses, and left us with actionable steps going forward. Here are the six questions you can use to evaluate any event.
1. What was good?
No matter how the event went, always start here. Your natural instinct will be to jump straight to the problems. Fight that urge. Spend as much time as possible talking about everything that went well. Look at attendance, salvations, first-time guests, and any other metric you set in advance. Celebrate what God did.
Write all of it down. These are the stories you'll share at vision meetings, share on social media, and bring up at volunteer appreciation dinners.
If you're facilitating the meeting, keep steering the conversation back to the good. People will name one or two things and then try to pivot to what went wrong. Acknowledge their input, write it down, and redirect. When everyone is staring at each other with nothing left to add, it's time to move on.
2. What can we improve?
Now it's time to talk about what didn't work. The phrasing of this question matters. You don't want to leave the room feeling like you failed. These aren't failures. They are opportunities to improve.
The goal here is not to find solutions. It's simply to identify what could have gone better. Not everything on this list will feel obviously bad either. Some things from your wins list can still be improved. If solutions do come up naturally, write them down for future reference, but don't linger there. Stay focused on naming the problems. Solutions can come in a later meeting.
Also, don't convince yourself that everything was perfect. There is always something to improve. Look at the event realistically and objectively, which is exactly why I recommend you don't do this alone. You didn't see everything. You need other trusted people in the room to give you the full picture.
3. What happened that was beyond our control?
Some things that go wrong at an event are simply outside your hands. Rain forces an outdoor event inside. A key volunteer gets sick at the last minute. You can't control those things, so don't beat yourself up over them.
The same is true on the positive side. A kid does something unexpectedly hilarious. A worship song lands better than anyone anticipated. Someone shows up with a group of friends you never could have planned for. You may have created the conditions, but sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle. Don't exhaust yourself trying to recreate those moments. Focus instead on building environments where they're more likely to happen.
This question may produce some overlap with your first two answers, and that's fine. The point is categorization. Separating what's in your control from what isn't helps you put your energy in the right places going forward.
4. What went wrong that was within our control?
While the previous question looked at both sides, this one focuses specifically on the avoidable problems. Not enough volunteers. Dirty bathrooms. Disorganized supplies. A communication breakdown that could have been caught in planning.
Name these clearly, no matter how uncomfortable it is. You don't want to repeat preventable mistakes. Make a mistake once and it's just that, a mistake. Keep making the same one and it starts to reflect on you, your team, and your church.
These are the things you can actually fix, so make sure they're fixed before you run the event again. If something turns out to be genuinely outside your control, move it to the Question 3 category and let it go.
5. Did we meet our goals?
Years ago my pastor asked me what my wins were for VBS. At the time I had basic attendance goals and hoped for some salvations. That was about it. I learned quickly that I needed to set clear, specific goals for every event before it happened, even if the goal is simply to create a fun, low-key experience for families.
When you get to this question, don't go on feelings. Pull up your actual goals and look at the numbers. Did attendance hit your target? What about new families, salvations, or baptisms?
If you hit your goals, great! Start thinking about how to raise the bar next time. If you missed them, this is where you dig into why. The answers are usually already sitting in your responses to the previous questions. There may be legitimate reasons you fell short, and that's worth understanding. You can't make the right adjustments next time if you don't know what went wrong this time.
6. Will we do this again?
This is the only question carried over from my original evaluation post, and it's appropriate to ask here.
If the event was a clear success and you hit your goals, this is an easy yes. But if it fell short in significant ways, give this question the serious consideration it deserves. I never want to repeat an event simply because we did it last year. Every event on your calendar should have a clear reason for being there, one that connects directly to the mission of your ministry and church. If it isn't helping you move the ball down the field, it's worth asking whether you should keep doing it at all, even if people enjoy it. Don't let good be the enemy of great.
Evaluation is an essential part of the event process. Just like follow-through is what makes a bat swing effective, evaluating your events is what keeps your ministry sharp and moving forward. Without it, you risk repeating the same things year after year with shrinking impact, or worse, making decisions based entirely on feelings.
The heart is deceitful. It can convince you that a mediocre event was a massive win, or that a genuinely successful one was a failure. These six questions cut through that and give you an objective, informed foundation to build from. Use them consistently, and you'll see more success in your events and, more importantly, reach more people for Jesus.
