One In Jesus

23. What does the search committee reveal about the church? Why were these people selected? For their spirituality? For their cash contributions? For their family connections? For their submission to the elders? For their wisdom?

Don’t read more into the choices than is there, but you can actually learn something about the elders by whom they selected. If the committee is all male, all over age 60, or all wealthy, well, that says something. Continue reading →

15. Talk to your wife. Don’t go for even the first interview unless your wife is sold on the move. If this isn’t obvious to you, you’re going to have serious problems in your marriage.

If she doesn’t want to move, things are not going to go well. And the elders — and their wives — will be sensitive to any reluctance by your wife. And she won’t be able to hide her feelings. Continue reading →

6. Talk to the elders at length. I’d think you’d need at least four hours talking with the elders to really come to understand them. Maybe more. If they won’t give you that much time, look elsewhere.

Ask them about their vision for the church, about their prayer lives, about their Bible study, about their understanding of the role of elders, about their relationship with the staff, how much time they spend on church matters. That is, ask them the same kind of really hard questions they asked you. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

22. Don’t shut down; don’t try to do too much. You can’t install a new church vision during a preacher search. You really shouldn’t ordain new elders during a search. After all, the new preacher will want to have met and be very, very comfortable with the new elders. You can’t do that and be in the midst of an ordination process.

But don’t stop doing church. Send short-term missions off. Institute new mission efforts. Have energetic campaigns for the new adult ed program. Give the sense that things are happening — because they really are. Continue reading →

20. The search committee. I have mixed feelings about search committees. I’ve had good and bad luck with and without one. I’ve been on search committees, and I’ve been part of an eldership that hired without one. I’ve had great successes and great failures both ways.

My misgivings derive from the unique relationship a preacher should have with his elders. The search process is kind of like this — Continue reading →

16. Check references. It’s a pain and often complicated. If the preacher has a job, he will be reluctant for you to talk to his current elders.

However, we’ve sometimes had preachers offer to let us call a particular elder — usually the chairman or an elder charged with working especially closely with the minister. The preacher lets the elder know he’ll be called, and then the search committee or elders can call for a recommendation.

Sometimes those who make recommendations lie. In fact, church people routinely lie to help a beloved former employee get a job. Evidently, it’s the Christian thing to do.

Yep, in the Churches of Christ, elders and fellow ministers routinely bear false witness to help a beloved friend or former member get a job. Continue reading →

10. Don’t prepare a job description so much as a person description. Job descriptions are canned, boring, and unhelpful, in my experience. You aren’t hiring someone to do a job. You’re hiring someone to be in close, long-term relationship with your church.

You wouldn’t write a job description for your future wife, would you? No, what we men all do is imagine what attributes she’d have — her passion for God, her sense of humor, all sort of things. Continue reading →