History of the Wesleyan Church Planter Assessment Center

by Dan LeRoy

Assessment centers were an invention of necessity in World War II. The armed forces needed capable leadership in the field of battle, but neither classroom training nor formal education was a sufficiently accurate predictor of capable leadership under battle conditions. Lives were at stake and cool-headed leaders were critical to the nation's war effort.

Out of this, the assessment center concept was born. Officer candidates were placed into highly stressful, hypothetical situations and graded on their leadership abilities "under fire." As a result, the leadership that was then placed in the field showed a noticeable improvement. Lives of our troops were spared, the results in the field of battle improved and the nation's war effort succeeded.

The business community took note of this concept and, after the war, began to use it as a predictor for choosing capable corporate executives.

Since church planting is highly stressful and is so dependent, on the human side of the equation, on the success of the planter, the church began to see the wisdom of using the assessment center model as a predictor for church planting effectiveness.

Dr. Tom Graham was a pioneer in introducing the concept to North American Protestant denominations. Dr. Charles Ridley was instrumental in formulating a base set of characteristics that are most helpful in church planting, and in devising a way to measure those.

The Wesleyan Church has now joined the Free Methodists, the Nazarenes, the Assemblies of God, the Missionary Church, the Southern Baptists, and other evangelical denominations in profitably using the assessment center concept to evaluate potential church planters.

We have now completed our third assessment center and have adopted a current schedule of holding two a year. Plans are being made to increase the number offered annually, and to possibly develop regional centers as districts see the wisdom of sending candidates through the process.

Genetta Herrera, the District Director of the Kansas Center for Church Planting, has been instrumental in seeing this phase of the Church Planting System develop. Genetta received blessing and funding from her District Superintendent Paul James and the Kansas District Board of Administration to pursue starting an assessment center for The Wesleyan Church.

A significant amount of money has been committed to this effort by the General Department of Evangelism and Church Growth of The Wesleyan Church.

Through the encouragement the General Director of Evangelism and Church Growth, Genetta has received training and guidance from his Nazarene counterpart, Dr. Bill Sullivan, and Nazarene Kansas City District Superintendent Dr. Keith Wright. Their district has planted seventeen Nazarene churches in ten years with only two failures. They credit careful assessment prior to appointment as being a major factor in their high success rate.

Dr. Larry McKain, a Kansas City area Nazarene pastor, leads their regional assessment center and has led three for us. Since May, 1998, we have assessed twenty potential church planters and spouses for nine Wesleyan Church districts. Eleven districts and one educational institution, Bethany Bible College, are officially involved to this point, with more committed to send candidates to upcoming centers. For more information on how to get your district on board, call Rev. Richard Meeks, Director of Church Development for The Wesleyan Church, at 317.570.5125.

Anyone who has had the unpleasant, heart-breaking experience of seeing a church planter crash and burn, and take his people down with him, knows two things: we never want to go through that again if we can help it, and whatever we can do on the front end to increase our success before we invest thousands of dollars, would be worthy of our investigation and investment. Call today.