A few weeks ago I wrote a post for prospective pastors called, “Before You Say I Do,” inspired by a premarital counseling program that I used in the past.
I gave prospective pastors twenty-four questions to get answered before accepting a call to a church.
Today’s version is for church boards and/or pastoral search committees.
Here’s a caveat I shared earlier which I can repeat with just a bit of adaptation:
If you’re part of a congregational tribe – in which churches choose their own pastors – you can ask these questions directly. If you’re in an episcopalian style of denomination – with pastors assigned to their churches by denominational leaders – you may not have much opportunity to put these questions to prospective pastors themselves. In your case I’d encourage you to pursue answers to these questions as best you can in any way that you can.
Getting back to the questions, I’ll keep my comments brief, but feel free to contact me to discuss my thoughts or to add more questions to my list. I would be delighted to hear from you.
One more thought: Please don’t expect prospective pastors to answer these in writing. That kind of process becomes incredibly laborious for candidates applying to multiple churches. It takes very little effort for a church to ask for the answers in writing and an enormous effort for the candidates to complete the assignment. Get your questions to your candidates in advance – so they can think about them deeply – and allow them to answer them orally. (Regarding giving them to the candidate in advance, what is more important to you: that you find out how well the candidate speaks on his feet or that you get good answers to your questions?)
- What is your understanding of how decisions are made here; how do YOU understand our official documents? If he hasn’t thought about this, he’d better start thinking right now.
- How do you believe decisions should be made in a church of our denomination? Make extensive eye contact as he answers this one.
- To what extent should a church adhere to its constitution and/or bylaws? Ditto, and write down the answer.
- What areas of the church’s ministry do you feel the pastor should be “in charge” of? For example: “the content of all sermons,” “the content of all teaching done by anyone,” “the worship services,” “the music,” “the staff,” or “everything.”
- What kind of relationship do you feel the pastor should have with the church board? If the pastor is brand new at this, he may not know how to answer the question. Examples: the board obeys the pastor, the pastor obeys the board, the pastor submits to the authority of the board but is generally the leader of the board and the church.
- Are you willing to submit to the authority of the church board, the congregation or the denominational leader (depending on the polity of your church)? This sounds like #5, but it goes right to the bottom-line issue of whether or not the pastor will submit to any individual or group or does he feel that he has more authority than Moses? Ask now or forever hold your peace.
- From what you’ve seen of our church so far, what is your dream for it? What would you love to see it become a few years from now? Most candidates won’t have much to say at this point, but some know exactly how they would want the church to change. Again, ask this now before it’s too late.
- Will you provide us with lots of references, including the people you were directly accountable to in your last several paid positions? If there’s one or more of these individuals you don’t want us to contact, will you tell us why? Make sure you give us some references of denominational leaders or others who have mentored or coached you. Do not fail to do this and don’t even think about “checking” references; you need to interview
- What are your expectations regarding your relationships with the church’s paid staff members and/or nonvocational leaders of ministries? Will you see yourself as their supervisor, coach, friend or basically just leave them alone to do what they’ve always done?
- Tell us a bit about what you believe the purpose and mission of a local church should be. What are churches for? Do not skip this question, assuming that we all agree on this. We don’t. Not even close. The disparity between pastors and lay people on this is considerable.
- Tell us – in detail – what you think of our pastor’s ministry description. If you were writing one of these, how would it be different from the one we have? If you don’t have a pastor’s ministry description, write it now and be willing to tweak it as you talk to the candidate, for this should be negotiable.
- Tell us what you feel the pastor’s role should be in a congregation of our size, type, polity and denomination. In the real world, evangelical pastors have radically different views on this subject, ranging from “mostly teacher” to “mostly leader” to “mostly equipper” to “mostly caregiver” to “mostly jack-of-all-trades servant.”
- How do you think the pastor of a church of our size and type should “do leadership”? What should he do to convince the church to change or adopt a new initiative?
- Tell us about a change initiative you pursued in a previous ministry – if possible. What did you do and how did it go? How would you do it differently today?
- Tell us about any experiences you’ve had with church discipline. Why was it carried out? How was it carried out? What was the outcome? It’s pretty important that the pastor and congregational lay leaders agree on this subject.
- Tell us about your idea of a mature disciple of Jesus. If our church tries to make disciples, how are we going to know when we’ve made any? This is important. Five churches in your town have five different ideas of what a mature disciple of Jesus looks like.
- In the real world, what do you expect of church members? What should a church member do?
- Tell us about your spiritual gifts and ministry passions. What aspects of a pastor’s ministry do you not like to do? Because the tasks are so varied, I would be suspicious of any pastor who says that he likes doing everything that’s in the pastoral job description.
- In the solo or senior pastorates you’ve had, how did you spend your time? What were your priorities? If he hasn’t had one yet, he can tell you what he thinks this should look like.
- What is your preaching philosophy? How do you decide what to preach next?
- Please tell us about your family of origin and how do you think it has made you who you are today? If he avoids this question, you need to hire someone to find out a lot about his family of origin.
- Tell us about your “conflict style” and (discretely) tell us about a conflict you handled well and one you handled not-so-well.
- Where do you disagree with our church’s statement of faith or creed(s)? Tell us how you would deal with the differences that you have. Would you seek to change our views or the church’s official doctrinal statement?
- How about our congregation’s denominational affiliation? Are you happy with the group that we’re in or would you desire to see our church disaffiliate with our denomination and/or join another one?
- Tell us what you like and don’t like about our church as it exists right now.
