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Friends United Meeting |
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April 1998
The ABCs of Finding a New Pastor
By David Brock
In my imagination, I picture a huge Pastoral Search Fair. It would include a booth for each church in the yearly meeting looking for a pastor and a booth for each candidate. The churches would display pictures and videos of their parsonage, building, community, and other places of interest. They would have charts of salary figures and attractive benefits they offer. Favorite foods from their "pitch in" dinners would be prepared to be tasted. The pastor's booth would contain a continuous loop video of him or her preaching the best two or three sermons. Pictures of the family would be included showing their love for each other and their love for the church. Age, accomplishments, theological statement and salary needs could all be posted on poster board around the booth. Maybe a private listening booth where tapes of references could be heard to save calling them all. If this could be set up on a special weekend in the spring, all the searching, traveling, phoning, etc., could be avoided and the matches could be made right there on the spot. Monthly Meetings could be held by conference phone link up at the end of the weekend to finalize the arrangements. This should be done early enough in the weekend so that if someone got "your candidate," you could go back to the pastor's booths and look for someone else.
Does this sound like a mockery of our time-honored pastoral search process? Sometimes, it seems as if this imaginary scene would work as well as what we have. On other days it is clear that our process of listening and waiting for the Holy Spirit's direction works extremely well. Time after time, I have been surprised when God has put together an arrangement between meeting and pastor that I thought was a mistake only to find that the ministry in that community began to grow and thrive in ways that none of us could have imagined.
Faith and Practice of Indiana Yearly Meeting, and most others with which I am familiar, puts the responsibility for the pastoral search on the Ministry and Oversight. I've heard comments like these from clerks of M&O's: "Oh, no, I thought everything was going well when I accepted this position and now I am facing a pastoral search." "I am not prepared to do this; I am afraid that I will make the wrong decision or upset some people in the Meeting."
Looking for a new pastor is a big responsibility because M&O must not only reflect its own desires and goals for the pastor, but the desires and wishes of the whole meeting which issues the actual call. The financial package must be set in a joint meeting with the M&O and the Stewardship and Finance Committee and then be approved by the Monthly Meeting. We have a system that requires a lot of people to be focused on the issues and sensitive to the leadership and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Here are some ABCs of the pastoral search process.
Administration
The Ministry and Oversight is responsible to call the Yearly Meeting superintendent and report the need for a new pastor. A meeting may be arranged with the superintendent and the committee to discuss the search process and what kind of a person the meeting desires as pastor. While it is possible to obtain names and résumés from other sources, the best approach is to go through the yearly meeting office. If there are specific pastors your meeting wants to contact, talk to the superintendent about it.
Make a list of the characteristics you desire in your next pastor, write a job description, and evaluate your highest priorities. Then you are ready to look at résumés. Copies should be made for each member of M&O. (Sometimes larger M&O's choose a subcommittee to do some initial screening.) References of top candidates should be checked by phone calls. The M&O should meet, discuss the preliminary work and choose one candidate as their first choice to call and invite for an interview or for a weekend. If the candidates you are considering are fairly close by, an evening interview before coming to preach on a Sunday is a good idea. If the candidate is further away, a speaker phone interview and a tape of his/her sermon could be helpful to save unnecessary travel expenses.
Traditional Friends practice (and the Pastors and Elders Handbook used by several yearly meetings) calls for consideration of one candidate and one meeting at a time. Make a decision before God about that one before going on to another. In today's world of expanded choices and intense desire to find the best fish in the pond, most meetings chafe at that rule. An adaptation I recommend is to consider as many résumés as are available, check references of as many as you want, conduct interviews in person or by phone with a reasonable number, but before you invite a candidate to visit, limit it to that one and make a decision of yes or no before going on to other candidates.
The candidate weekend should include an interview with the M&O, a sermon before the whole church (preferably on Sunday morning), a tour of the community, a social time for interaction with as many from the congregation as can be present, an informal question and answer time with interested people (a combined adult Sunday School class works well for this kind of informal questioning), consideration of spouse employment opportunities and housing possibilities.
Benefits and Salary
We have all seen "Help Wanted" signs springing up. Futurists tell us that the employee shortage will get more intense in the next few years if the economy remains strong. A lower birth rate, increase in number of jobs, higher training requirements are only a few of the factors involved. In church work we know that there has always been a shortage of well trained, competent pastors. Some churches are fortunate to have a choice of several well qualified candidates from which to choose, but many times as June 30 approaches, it becomes all too clear that there will not be enough qualified pastors to cover all the positions.
We are not secular employers, and pastoring is not just a "job." Neither meeting nor pastor should lose sight of the fact that pastoring is a calling. At the same time, the ways in which we release a person to spend effectively his or her time in pastoral work could take many different forms. We need to be creative in the job description. The model of one full-time pastor living in the parsonage with his family is not the only effective model today. Both men and women, single and married, full-time and part-time, are serving very effectively. Co-pastor arrangements, commuting pastors, and a variety of part-time arrangements have worked well. Consider hours, multiple part-time staff, travel arrangements, and freedom to write or speak elsewhere or get further education.
The salary should be clearly spelled out in writing so there will be no misunderstanding. Pastor's salaries are small by comparison with many others, but they seem complicated. Parsonage, housing allowance, benefit package, health insurance, continuing education, retirement, and much more have to be considered. Many times a church looks at the salary "package" and feels pretty good about it because they compare the pastor's "package" to their own salary. Keep in mind that the pastor has to pay normal taxes like anyone else but the pastor also pays the self-employed social security tax rate (15.3% instead of 7.65%). Health insurance and retirement benefits (and reimbursable expenses like travel allowance, conferences, etc.) should be in addition to the salary.
While a parsonage is a nice convenience, various options should be considered. More and more pastors want to buy their own home rather than live in a parsonage.
Communication
After the interview, the candidate weekend, the salary discussions, the decision by M&O, the candidate is notified that M&O is sending his or her name to the monthly meeting for business which will consider all that has been discussed. It is to be hoped that the M&O and Stewardship and Finance Committee have kept in touch with the congregation so this recommendation goes smoothly. Every attempt should be made to clearly communicate to the whole congregation the job description, the call, the salary package, and any other details that are important. Questions should be welcomed from the floor of the business meeting and the members of M&O should be present and ready to answer them.
If the monthly meeting approves, the candidate will be notified and should respond to the meeting within a week. If the meeting does not approve, the M&O should try to discern where the breakdown in communication was so they will be better able to anticipate the congregation's needs as they start the search again. If the candidate turns down the call, the process begins again.
Some other details: The former pastor should not be involved in the search process; the job description needs to be clear about duties and what is meant by "visitation" and other traditional areas of conflict between meeting and pastor. A member of M&O should help the incoming pastor understand the history of the meeting. A good understanding of the past should be helpful in understanding the present and future as well as helping to avoid "land mines" that may be lurking below the surface. Relationships to, and authority over, other staff should be spelled out clearly so that there are not false assumptions on either side going into a new relationship.
It can be tremendously rewarding to observe God working to bring about the right "match." Concentrated prayer by many people in the meeting can make a dramatic difference in the outcome. Even if you are not looking for a pastor this year, please pray for the workers we need to do the work to which God has called us. Pray that men and women of all ages will be responsive to God's call.
David Brock is superintendent of Indiana Yearly Meeting.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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