Disclaimer: This article is NOT for churches already in a search process. You’re welcomed to read it if you are, but you can also save time and contact me via email or phone.
The chief complaint of church people in the pews without a settled pastor is, “What’s taking so long?” “We ought to just hire the interim” is a symptom of a belabored pastor search process. To be fair, calling the interim pastor is a common wish after a few good Sunday sermons. So often the search committee gets blamed for a long, drawn out search when they’ve been left playing catch-up.
Pastor search committees get blamed for taking too long when most of their time is spent playing catch-up.
Deferred maintenance is the culprit to a S L O O O O W search. We are now two decades into the Twenty-First Century and congregations are still not updating their website every day and barely posting anything on their social media pages that isn’t an announcement or narcissistic in nature. When a congregation is guilty of under-functioning with a pastor, the search team is forced to over-function without one.
There is no excuse for a congregation to spend a year in self-reflection, unless they’ve done zero work over the years to re-calibrate and align their vision and mission to their values. How congregations do not know who they are and whom they serve remains a mystery to me. Actually, that’s not true. It’s all about accountability (or the lack thereof). Even if your church has atrophied identity muscles, it’s easy to get back on track.
Keeping your Church and Community Profiles updated keeps your church’s mission at the forefront of its identity.
Use the church’s existing organizational infrastructure, which is a fancy way of saying it’s time for committee meetings! First thing’s first, this should not be the work of the pastor search team; they have a specific, temporary ad hoc function and should not serve as the semi-standing catch-all administrative committee. Depending on your church polity, the Church Council, Session, Deacons, Trustees, Leadership Team, or some other elected body of congregational leaders should convene the catch-up.
That decision-making body will delegate the following tasks and set reasonable deadlines annually for written reports to be submitted and updated on the church’s website:
Church history (Heritage)
Values, vision, and mission/calling statements (Identity/Future)
Theological and denominational commitments (Beliefs/Connections)
Signature ministries (About)
Community and mission partners (Mission)
Staff and leadership structure (Leadership)
High quality photos and videos (Aesthetic)
While the Church Profile is being collected, collated, and published to the website, work on the Community Profile should also commence. Local municipalities may have up-to-date information; contact Economic Development or the City Manager/Administrator or Mayor’s Office for relevant publications and statistics:
Census data (Location)
Average home prices relative to the church’s location and membership addresses
School system information
Primary businesses or industries in the area
Unique aspects of the surrounding community
Possible rankings within the state
Annual area-wide events
Keeping the Church and Community Profiles updated keeps your church’s mission at the forefront of its identity. Who you are and whom you serve are inextricably tied; therefore, when a congregation is not clear on who they are, they’re probably cloudy on whom they serve. Consistently (at least every three or four years) asking the congregation “Who has God created and called us to be?” and “What is God inviting and calling us to do?” will bring clarity to uncertainty. Clarity builds confidence and confidence builds speed.
Clarity builds confidence and confidence builds speed.
The Pastor Profile is the next document that usually takes an exorbitant amount of time to prepare during the pastor search. However, the Pastor Profile ought to be a working document with quarterly iterations. Here’s where the decision-making body should re-focus the efforts of the Human Resources, Pastor-Parrish, Pastor Support, Pulpit, or Personnel Committee. Adding quarterly coaching sessions for ministers instead of just the yearly performance evaluation provides built-in support, accountability, and speed. As pastoral priorities shift, feed-forward coaching keeps clergy from irrelevant to-do lists and from being evaluated on outdated goals. In addition to keeping covenant and compensation agreements current, the HR/Personnel Committee should work with clergy to update the position/job description to reflect their quarterly coaching goals as well as the standard boiler-plate bullet points.
In every organization – including churches – employees are either looking, leaving, or have already left.
The ultimate unlocks for speeding up the pastor search process are two-fold: 1) Nominating the most spiritually mature, well-differentiated church leaders to the Personnel Committee, and 2) re-writing the job description for the Personnel Committee to include scouting talent. Here’s why: In every organization – including churches – employees are either looking, leaving, or have already left. Church leadership is a journey not a marriage and sometimes the journey takes a minister on a different path. Resignations and retirements should not surprise congregations, but they do every single time. Now that you know the reality, solve for it.
The Personnel Committee should meet every month and include “talent scouting” on their agenda, reporting on pastors at all levels who align with the values, vision, mission, and profiles of the congregation. For starters, the Personnel Committee should keep their eyes and ears peeled for local interim pastors and interim staff ministers. Having a handful of potential candidates on deck will immediately lower congregational anxiety once a transition is announced. The Personnel Committee should keep a running list of possible senior pastors and staff ministers across the denomination or judicatory. Calling a new pastor is a lot easier if you have some ministers already in mind. Networking with your church’s denominational affiliates and leaders at the association, conference, state/regional, and national levels will greatly help your scouting efforts.
Re-write the Personnel Committee job description to include monthly meetings and talent scouting.
Some readers will cry afoul, sensing a breach of trust in this new model. Realistically though, in a church with two pastors, the Personnel Committee will meet twelve times a year. In my proposed model, eight of those meetings will include staggered quarterly coaching sessions and updating job descriptions, two of them will include updating the covenant and compensation agreements, which leaves just two full meetings without a set agenda. The typical scope of work for a Personnel Committee involves reviewing compensation and benefits and making budget recommendations, establishing policies and procedures compliant with all applicable labor laws, rewarding and retaining church staff*, and providing emergency assistance for employees. The committee should simply keep a list of potential best-fit candidates and discuss them periodically without contacting those prospective ministers. The importance of nominating leaders who are committed to Christ and the church, spiritually mature, well-differentiated, and non-anxious is vital.
This is my manifesto about how not to hire a church consultant (including me) to help you with your pastor search. If your church will institutionalize these predictable one-off processes, your search team will thank you, your congregation will thank you, and your neck will thank you. That’s right, your neck, because you will not spend a year or more navel gazing. Instead of allocating your time to intensive internal work, your church will be well-positioned to initiate a search when the time comes. It’s much easier to keep up than catch up.
* Here’s another freebie for your church’s Personnel Committee: Don’t forget about your church staff member’s significant other. It’s hard being in the fish bowl of congregational life and a gift card to their favorite restaurant or coffee spot goes a long way.
