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The government’s No Child Left Behind legislation, intended to insure that every American child gets a decent education, is becoming a cropper because states that administer the law can’t agree on what constitutes a decent education. By what standard shall we measure a child’s progress in school?

On the surface this seems simple, but it becomes extremely complicated when those testing educational achievement cannot agree on what tests to apply and what comprises a passing grade.

Take Kentucky, for instance. Middle-school students took a reading test. According to one method, 61 percent passed; according to a second measurement, 22.7 percent passed; by a third, 10.5 percent passed.

That story came to mind during a session I had with some topnotch missionary educators. We agreed that our goal was missionary effectiveness, but we had no valid way of measuring efficacy on the field. Of course, for some people the standard is very simple. They measure the number of converts. But who decides how many converts are enough?

While conversions should occur on the field, obviously this must not be the only test of effectiveness. If that were the case, missionaries in Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist fields would not pass.

To get around this problem, others suggest that we count the number of exposures to the gospel. This puts a premium on evangelistic meetings, Jesus film showings, radio and TV broadcasts, tracts passed out, conversations in bazaars, and so on. Again, it is important to track such things, but is that our sole determinant of missionary effectiveness?

Our missionary community includes so many diverse vocations that we need different measuring rods for different ministries. Doctors can count patients and surgeries, relief workers can count wells drilled, teachers can count classes taught and pupils lectured, but the assumption behind counting is that effectiveness can be measured by the numbers.

Too often we have tried the statistical approach to missionary effectiveness as if each missionary were like a professional baseball player. We can easily tell if a player is a good hitter by looking at his batting average. Pitchers are measured by their earned run percentages.

Another influence on measuring missionary effectiveness comes from the business world. Workers’ productivity is the yardstick of their worth. Business management theories have infected our missions community. Churches buy into this to an extent when they demand performance reviews of their missionaries.

There is no surefire way to tell if our missionaries are effective or not, short of giving them a weekly checklist. We can measure them against their job descriptions, but too often these documents are so vague they’re useless. Or they are far removed from realities on the field.

This means that sending missionaries is a huge step of faith for both churches and agencies. We just trust and pray that they will do well and make a difference according to the broad outlines of their assignments. Admittedly, this makes supervision a hit-or-miss proposition. Putting people in unsupervised positions can be as risky as leaving a room full of sixth-graders on their own for a few minutes.

Missionaries do not differ from other people doing their jobs. In every plant and office some people leap to the head of the class and surpass expectations. The same is true of missionaries. This does not mean that the less-than-highest achievers are failures. We accept people who work according to their gifts and abilities, regardless if they turn out to be world champions.

Recent years have brought significant efforts in the missions community to improve missionary effectiveness. Churches have sought to insure continuing education and training for their missionaries.

One test we all need to pass is Peter’s: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Pet. 4:10, NIV).