The Preacher Search: Lessons for Preachers Searching for a Job, Part 1

I’ve never been in fulltime ministry. For that matter, I’ve not searched for a job since, well, ever.

I practice for a law firm that’s a successor to a firm I clerked for while in law school.

So I’m hardly an expert on how a minister (or anyone else) should go about searching for a job. But I’ve been involved in many, many minister searches. I know something about that process, and so maybe these few observations will be of help, even though surely very incomplete.

1. Know why you’re searching. That sounds obvious, even trivial, but we’ve interviewed ministers who plainly weren’t sure why they were even in the interview process.

I doubt that they’d admit it to themselves, but some preachers seem to interview for the thrill of being pursued. Some seem to put themselves on the “market” to negotiate a better salary at their present job. Others seem to use the search process to put pressure on their elders to agree to some much-needed reform.

In each case, the preacher was guilty of using the churches and their leaders who were engaged in the search process. That’s sin. It’s bearing false witness. It’s wrong to mislead a search committee into taking their time to interview you and perhaps spend money to fly you out to meet with them on false pretenses.

Therefore, before you get involved in a search, check your heart and your motives very carefully. Don’t put your name out there unless you really and truly are willing to leave.

On the other hand, if you’re approached by a church and did not initiate the process, you’re not at fault for not wanting to leave your current church — unless you deal less than honestly with those who contact you. Tell them honestly about your willingness to move. Don’t let them proceed under false pretenses.

2. Return their calls. This should be obvious as well, but the way to tell a search committee that you’re not interested is to return their call, email, or text and tell them. Right away.

If they have to repeatedly call you to get a response, you’re not playing hard to get. You’re being a jerk. Just take the call and say “no.” It’s okay to say “no.” The search committees won’t get their feelings hurt. But if you refuse to call them back, you’re wasting their time and making them angry. And in a few years, when there’s another search, they’ll remember.

There is no better way to poison the well for your career prospects than to be too rude to call someone back. And, no, you’re not too busy. No one buys that excuse.

If you’re not sure whether you want to talk to the committee, the proper response is to call back and say, “I’m not sure whether I want to talk to the committee. I’ll pray about it and call you back in a week or two.” But saying nothing while you ponder the offer may well cause the offer to be withdrawn. It should.

This is not hard. Just be willing to speak the truth. If you aren’t sure, say so. If you need time to pray, say so. If you need to talk to your wife, say so. Search committees will be happy to wait to be sure you’re interested. They won’t like being ignored.

3. Be honest about why you’re leaving. If you’re leaving because you were fired, you may assume that word will leak out to the search committee. It’s a small denomination. Word gets out. Be upfront, explain what happened, and tell them what you learned from your firing. (There aren’t many preachers who weren’t fired at some point in their career.)

If you were fired for sexual misconduct, expect any church to insist that you be out of ministry for a while. You need time to heal your marriage and to get your head straight. You need counseling to learn why you did it and how to overcome it. And all this takes time — and you won’t be much good to any church in the meantime.

However, many a preacher who’s made serious mistakes has been hired by someone else — but only when the preacher was very honest with the search committee and shared the story openly and voluntarily.

If you’re leaving because your elders and you have serious theological disagreements (not uncommon), be prepared to talk through how you dealt with this problem with the elders.

If you’re leaving because of family reasons — to get closer to parents in poor health — just be honest about it.

If you’re leaving because you couldn’t get along with others on the staff, be ready to talk about that problem as well.

There are good reasons to leave a church and there are bad. But there are no good reasons to be less than honest about what happened. Elders aren’t stupid; they’ll want to know, and if they sense anything less than fully honest, you’ll not get the job.

Even when the honest answer is hard to hear, honesty in an interview is refreshing and greatly appreciated. Things go better when you volunteer the bad news and are prepared to talk about your mistakes and lessons learned openly.

(The elders, of course, should be equally honest about the problems on their side.)

4. Be honest about sins in your past. If you’ve committed adultery, if you were arrested as a teenager, whatever black marks there are out there, be honest and open. Some churches will be pleased to have a minister who truly understands grace and whom members can identify with.

I know many very successful ministers who went through dark times, separated from God. It’s part of their testimony. It’s part of who they are. And those difficult times have shaped them to be great servants of God. Shame on a search committee that can’t see that.

5. Don’t expect to be asked for sermon CDs. That’s so 10-years ago … The likelihood is that your sermons are on the internet and the search committee has already listened to many of them. They may even ask about a few.

That means you don’t get to pick which sermons they hear. They’ll likely listen to the most recent several. (You’d better not slack off while you’re job searching!)