Evaluation is crucial. It creates opportunity to enforce the positives and improve weaker areas of the service. We have several approaches for weekend service evaluation:
First, Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon rehearsals. If we identify something that "just isn't working" we make changes before our first service on Saturday.
Second, our meeting after our 5pm Saturday service. The meeting consists of two parts:
Part One: we evaluate the overall service and the arts. Those attending include: the teaching pastor, executive pastor, pastor of creative arts (me), programming director, technical director, worship leader, and producer talk about the service in detail. Sometimes we will make changes in programming order, lighting cues, sound mix, and very rarely, we may cut an element. Length of service is often a topic.
Part Two: evaluation/tweaks of the message. That involves the teaching pastor, and any of the members of the senior management team (including myself.)
Third, the arts team meets every Wednesday to talk about challenges and successes of the prior weekend. I find this to be the most important meeting in our process because it allows us identify systemic issues and develop long-term strategies to resolve them.
Fourth, we offer comment cards to everyone who attends the service. These often include statements about the weekend arts. Everyone on staff receives comment summaries weekly.
Finally, and for me, the best evaluation tool? We just ask people who watched the service what they thought about it. People can be amazingly (and sometimes brutally) candid, honest and insightful - and that's a really great thing.