By Randy Knutson, Church planting Coordinator in Southern California. Randy has assessed over 800 church planting couples. His home church is Desert Springs Church, Palm Desert, Calif. (760) 779-8284, email rknutson@earthlink.net - website -http://home.earthlink.net/~rknutson/index.html

Pastoral assessment is the process of actively listening to people's stories. It looks at their struggles, aspirations, disappointments, and whispers of the heart. As we listen, we begin to see a plot immerge that has a beginning, a providential middle, and is growing somewhere to a conclusion. The details of their lives can start to be understood. It gives deeper significance to their messy everyday life. We become a listening post for others to unpack their story and fit it into God's bigger narrative.

  A pastoral assessment is not just a behavior interview! Their past behavior is our best guide, but we also focus upon their dreams as they unfold for the future. People evolve, become, and fulfill their prophetic prompting. We listen for more than their behavior. We can act as guides linking and connecting the lego pieces of their lives together as God is revealing them to us. This is where the art of coaching comes into play. After someone tells their story, they have things to ponder about God's processing of their lives, bringing them closer to understanding their purpose and destiny.

Most people just exist and do not see their unfolding history so they are adrift. But a person's story can fit into God's salvation history as did Ruth's as a Moabite did into Israel's history. No bibilical story is just a story, any more than any person's story is just a story. They all deal with actual events that define our path. Honest pastoring that truly listens to people's stories enables them to distinquish what may lie behind their situation. In other words, they begin to see as Joseph did, "What you meant for evil; God meant for good." God's providence appears through ordinary personal encounters such as negative experiences, flesh acts, family, and even conflict.

A busy pastor can disqualify himself from the true listening prayer and conversation that develops when two people connect and share deeply. The rush from one task to the next leaves very little ballast for conversation and this kind of pastoral integrity. It is easy to be condescending and bored with dull people who don't attend worship regularly, don't read their Bible, tithe faithfully, nor follow the prescribed agenda of the church. However, if we approach apathetic attenders (and we are to) with the same interests and expectations as our active people, all the details of either their stories become important and induce change for the better. Today's apathetic believer may be tomorrow's evangelist!

A good assessing pastor is unwilling to reduce anyone to a formula without a case history. Behind every person that is stuck in sin is a story that reveals wrong thinking about themselves, God, or the Church. It's what we think that kills us. One of the good results of focusing on a person's story with them is that it helps them correct their wrong

thinking. This kind of pastoring is in direct contrast to the kind that bulks people together into broad categories so we can discard them like "divorced", "homosexual", "not a core person", "not a church planter", adnauseam. It is easy to find harsh judgements and those who will point out what we are not. It is rare to find those who can call out what is or is yet to be.

That is the role of a real pastoral assessor: To be a companion to persons who are in the midst of difficulty. We are to acknowledge the difficulty and thereby give it significance, praying with them so that the loneliness is lightened, and faith, hope, and love are maintained.

It is not the pastor's job to simplify the spiritual journey of our people into formulas or to smooth out the path of our people's discipleship so they have no bumps. Some difficulties are inherent in the way of spiritual growth. To deny them, or to offer shortcuts, is to divert the person from true growth. God's providential care is messy, upside down, and inside out. People who hear wonderful stories in which everything works out so smoothly and with such grand results conclude that they must be going about the Christian faith all wrong. Well intentioned as it is, this oversimplification of how to walk out our faith can defraud our disciples with easy stories and fairytale endings that miss the wisdom, love, faith, or endurance that God is placing along their journey in life. The apostle Paul's life would be a classic example of messy, God ordained life.

In listening attentively to a person's dreams and desires and sharing their struggles and painful frustrations, significance is given to them. Becoming skilled in making story out of the details of a particular person's situation is a pastoral art form in keeping with a long line of biblical authors. Take for instance, how Joshua's story fits with Jericho or Achan's does at Ai.

The very act of listening and writing down someone's narrative gives sense to what would otherwise be only fragments of stories or isolated anecdotes. We discover the meaning of the story together. The person sees God's fingerprints on it and comes alive in his presence. We all can learn from it and the community of faith is enriched.