Effective Pastor Search Processes

In this episode of the Lead On podcast, Jeff Iorg, President of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, discusses the pastor search process. Iorg highlights that selecting a pastor is a critical decision for any church, especially in congregations that operate autonomously. He stresses the importance of forming a pastor search committee with spiritually mature and discerning individuals rather than just a representative body. Iorg encourages churches to approach a pastor search with much prayer, proper evaluation against a realistic profile, and to seek outside expertise when necessary.

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Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:00

Welcome to the Lead On podcast. This is Jeff Org, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. If you're still a new listener to the podcast, remember that this podcast is about the practical issues of ministry leadership. We focus on what it's like to do the daily work of ministry in organizations, churches, mission boards, and other settings. Well, today, I want to talk with you about the pastor search process.

Jeff Iorg: 00:34

You may think, well, our church isn't really going through that right now. Good for you. But it's likely that at some point, you're going to go through a pastor search process. And if you do, there are some things that I'd like to talk about today that I think will make it a more enriching experience and a more positive experience for your church as you go through this important time. This is on my mind right now because I've recently consulted with a church or 2 about their pastor searches and, was reminded in doing so of some of the things that churches typically get right and, frankly, a few things that churches often, don't do as well that can contribute to some confusion about this important issue.

Jeff Iorg: 01:19

And pastor search is an important issue. In fact, it's probably the single most important decision a church ever makes. And in fact, the better the job that's done and the longer that a pastor serves, the more challenging it can be for a church to go through the pastor search because quite frankly, it may have been 10, 15, 20, 25 years since anyone in the church has actually even done this process. So today, I wanna talk about effective pastor search processes. Now this is particularly important in Baptist churches because we are autonomous.

Jeff Iorg: 02:02

Now what does that mean? Autonomous means you're self governing, you're self determining. And in relationship to finding your pastor, it means that your church will select the pastor they choose. No 1 from the denomination will call you and tell you who your pastor is going to be. No 1 from a senate or a court or a or a group, of religious leaders will dictate to you, who's gonna be your pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 02:31

It's a choice the church must make, an autonomous church makes, a self governing church makes, and it's the way Baptist churches do their work. So this means that your church is going to have to have a process by which it can make this important decision. Obviously, a church of any size can't have all the members in a room making a full investigation of every candidate for pastoral, service. No. It's gonna have to be done through some kind of adopted process.

Jeff Iorg: 03:05

Most churches have this spelled out in their bylaws or other governing documents, and they explain how this is going to work. And in the typical church, it works this way. A church, by some means, elects a pastor search committee or a pastor search team. And that team, is charged with the responsibility of searching for the new pastor, and that involves all aspects of the search and then ultimately recommending someone back to the full church body for their consideration as pastor. Now, this means that the selection of the pastor search team is of vital importance.

Jeff Iorg: 03:44

Sometimes churches air in selecting these pastor search teams because they wanna make sure that every single perspective or every single voice or every single department in the church is represented in the pastor search. Well, I understand that, and there's some, certainly, advantage to having some different voices speaking into the process. But let's be clear about this. The most important part of searching of a pastor search team is not that it's a representative body, but that it's a body of people who come together, who have deep spiritual maturity and real spiritual wisdom. So more importantly than having every group represented is making sure that you pick the people that the church has the highest level of confidence in their spiritual judgment, in their spiritual discernment, in their demonstrated wisdom to apply the Bible in complex situations, and to really make the kind of evaluation necessary to get the kind of person necessary to be the pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 04:48

So pastor search committee or pastor search team selection is a vital and important first step in the pastor search process. And don't be too caught up in putting together some kind of representative team. Yes. It's good to have different voices speaking into the process, but mostly, you wanna pick the most spiritually mature, spiritually discerning, most respected people in your congregation so that when they make this decision, this very important decision on your behalf and bring a recommendation back to you, it'll be most likely well received. Now let's talk for the balance of the podcast around the idea of some myths and some truths about the pastor search process.

Jeff Iorg: 05:33

The first myth I wanna talk about today is that most churches can do this process entirely on their own. I think this is a myth. Just like this church that I've been talking with recently called me in as a consultant to help with the them with their process, Most churches will benefit from having someone from the outside invited in to speak to them about their process. Now when I say get help from the outside, I don't necessarily mean that you have to pay someone to do this for you. There are companies out there that consult on these matters, and I'm certainly not opposed to any of them.

Jeff Iorg: 06:10

But that's not the only thing I mean when I say get someone from the outside to consult with you. Who might be a good person to turn to in this situation? Well, 1 option would be a respected and trusted pastor in your community who understands these processes and knows your church and can give you some counsel along the way. Another person to turn to would be a denominational employer, a denominational leader. In Southern Baptist life, these might be directors of missions or associational missionaries or search someone by some other title who serves locally in your area serving the churches and helping meet their needs.

Jeff Iorg: 06:47

That there also might be someone at your state convention, someone who may have the assignment of helping pastor search committees to be trained or, to learn how to do their job more effectively. That's a person you could also bring in and talk with. Then there are also people like me. Now please don't all of you call me. I've got a few other things going on right now with my new job, But there are people in the denomination that you have connected with, pastors, who serve now in leadership roles like state executive directors, pastors who've gone on to be seminary presidents or seminary professors or in other capacities.

Jeff Iorg: 07:22

These are people who understand pastoral ministry, who know the churches in your region or your area, and can give you advice or counsel about how to find how to form an, a pastor search team and how to do a really good job in that process. So don't be afraid to ask for outside help. Now this is important. You're not going to ask an outsider to come in and choose your pastor, and you're not gonna ask an outsider to come in and do your work for you. But you can ask an outside consultant to come in and give you the guidance necessary to put together a healthy process to know how to go forward and get this job done most effectively.

Jeff Iorg: 07:56

For example, when I recently talked with this church, I helped them understand that a pastor search begins not by considering candidates, but instead by considering the profile of the person that you really need to be your pastor at this particular point in the life and history of your church. This particular church I was talking to was a little bit larger. It's not a megachurch by any means, but it's a little bit larger. And I challenged them that they needed to think in terms of finding a pastor who fit an administrative profile, who could lead their larger church and even lead it to become larger as it reaches more and more people with the gospel. And I help them understand that in looking for that kind of administratively gifted person who can manage a larger church with a staff, they're probably going to give up some things that people often perceive to be important in pastors, like high levels of pastoral skill or high levels of pastoral involvement with individual people.

Jeff Iorg: 08:47

Pastors of larger churches just simply can't do that, but they have to have the capacity to train and supervise others to make sure that kind of important ministry happens. When I said this to this particular pastor search team, I could see the eyes lighting up around the room as they thought, yeah. I hadn't really thought of it that way. You see, the profile of a pastor in a church with 75, attenders and the profile of a pastor in a church with 750 attenders are quite different. You need different skill sets.

Jeff Iorg: 09:19

You need different training. You need different capacities, different abilities. That's not to say 1 is better than the other. It's just that different skills, abilities, training are needed in different sizes of churches in different settings of ministry. So an outsider can help you to see this kind of information because they bring a fresh perspective to your situation and can say things that may need to be said in the situation that may be others either don't know how to say or don't feel empowered to say.

Jeff Iorg: 09:49

When you bring someone in from the outside, for example, they can say what I'll call the hard things. They can say, for example, that your salary is inadequate or that your conflict level needs to be lowered before you can move forward, or that some of the expectations you may have about the pastor, his performance, his family, his work style, that they're unrealistic. When you bring in someone from the outside who perhaps has had experience talking to dozens, if not hundreds of other churches in a similar situation, may be able to say some hard things to you that will help you to understand that you're going to make some adjustments in your pastor search process before you move forward. Another thing an outsider can do is provide you what I call a framework for the process. A framework for the process.

Jeff Iorg: 10:40

In other words, how do you do this? I think when pastor search teams often form that there's this expectation, well, the first thing we'll do is start trolling the waters for potential candidates and reading resumes and watching videos, and actually, that is not the first thing you wanna do. The first thing you want to do as a pastor search team is set aside focused time to pray together and build your spiritual relationships and unity before you ever start moving into the normal parts of the process. Spiritual preparation comes first and that should be spent several meetings making sure that we're to you're together spiritually, that you're praying together, and that you're really focused intently with 1 mind on what you're trying to accomplish. And then while that's going on, you start this move you start moving toward the development of a profile, and that's where you simply design what you believe to be the ideal qualities of the pastor you're looking for.

Jeff Iorg: 11:33

And you may say, well, that would be pointless because everyone will just put down the perfect thing they want and no 1 is gonna meet all those qualities. Well, that's why you write a profile because you get rid of the unrealistic stuff. You say, that's not realistic. That doesn't fit who we are. That's not the kind of pastor we need, And here are the 6 or 8 bullet points of the key qualities that we must have in the new pastor who's going to be able to take us forward to the next level of ministry.

Jeff Iorg: 11:59

So spiritual preparation comes first, then profile development comes second, and then and only then are you ready to start really evaluating candidates. This is 1 of the most, confusing parts of the process for many people because they don't know how to evaluate. Well, that's because they don't have a good profile. When you evaluate a candidate, you're not evaluating them comparing them to the last pastor, to the favorite pastor you had in your childhood, to the pastor down the street who does a good job. No.

Jeff Iorg: 12:27

When you're evaluating candidates, you're evaluating them against the standard of the profile. How does this candidate stack up against this model that we've created of what we really believe our future pastor needs to be like? And as you find a person who matches the profile, then you know that you found a candidate who's worthy of consideration. So spiritual preparation, development of a profile, and then the solicitation of and consideration of candidates in that order. Now I could spend a lot more time fleshing that out, but we don't have time to do that on the podcast today.

Jeff Iorg: 13:03

All I'm simply saying here in this first section is it's a myth that a church can do a pastor search entirely on their own. While they are autonomous and no 1 will tell the church who their who their pastor can be, it is important to invite someone to come in from the outside that you trust and respect who has experience and expertise and who can say some things to you that may need to be said and can help you shape your process in ways that will be really healthy and eliminate some of the myths of this pastor search work. A second myth is this, searching for a pastor is solely a spiritual process. Now let me underscore, it is a spiritual process. You should be praying, praying individually, praying as a pastor search team, calling your church to regular seasons of prayer on behalf of the pastor search process.

Jeff Iorg: 13:57

Prayer is essential to the pastor search. Prayer must saturate every aspect of the pastor search. So pastor search is definitely a spiritual process, but the myth is that pastor search is solely a spiritual process. It is also an HR process, meaning that HR laws must be obeyed and HR best practices should be implemented, And that good HR practices in terms of how employees are solicited, evaluated, communicated with, and ultimately decided should be used. Now you don't have to be an HR expert to know how to do this well.

Jeff Iorg: 14:51

1st, consult with someone about some best practices that you need to implement, and then think about how you'd like to be treated if you were applying for a position, and then make sure that you treat your candidates that way. Just show them the normal courtesies that you would expect in a really professionally done HR process, and you'll find yourself in good shape on this issue. Now when I say that the pasture search is also an HR process, it means that there's gonna some be some parts of it that might seem a little cold, little challenging. Maybe things you might not even be comfortable doing in the past when you're thinking about employing a pastor. For example, things like credit checks, background checks, criminal checks, credit checks.

Jeff Iorg: 15:47

These are the kinds of things that need to be done as a part of an HR process when hiring someone who's gonna be a highly visible leader in your church. So remember that pastor search is a spiritual process, but the myth is that is only our solely a spiritual process. That you're just gonna pray and God's gonna miraculously, just appear your pastor in front of you. No. It's not gonna work that way.

Jeff Iorg: 16:13

It's gonna require your devoted prayer and then your systematic application of good HR principles and practices to get you to the place where you are confident that you've selected the right person for the job. And here's the third myth. Most pastors will apply for your position. The reality is pastors don't usually apply for pastoral jobs. In fact, the larger the church, the less likely it is that truly qualified candidates will apply.

Jeff Iorg: 16:50

Now you might say, well, we're a small church. We're looking for a seminary student. We're looking for someone who's just starting out in ministry, and we wanna help develop them for their future life and service. Well, in those cases, the person may very well apply, and that's and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. I'm talking now about those of you who are in more established churches, maybe even mid sized to larger churches.

Jeff Iorg: 17:14

Most of the time, the person that you want to be your pastor is not going to apply for the job. Now that doesn't mean that they're not open to talking with you, but they don't even know yet that they're going to make this kind of a decision. Here's what's happening. Right now, a pastor is just feeling unsettled. He's wondering with his ministry going as well as it is, why doesn't he feel more at peace that he's where he's supposed to be?

Jeff Iorg: 17:44

Maybe his wife is a bit unsettled. His children are not quite settled. Something's just not quite right, and he feels a little bit of a stirring in his soul, if you will, about maybe God has something else for me to do or something different for me to do. That's why it's important to talk to people and say, who do you know that you think might be good for our church and that you could recommend that we talk with? Again, this church that recently reached out to me, I had 2 candidates that I felt like they should reach out to and talk with.

Jeff Iorg: 18:13

And I've reached out to both of those candidates and said, I don't know if you're open at this point in your life to a change of your ministry assignment, but if you are, I think this church that, might consider you would be a really good match for your gifts, your abilities, your perspective. Now, I don't know if either of those will be considered, but I know that they're the kind of person who could be successful in that role, and therefore, I felt the need to make the initial connection for them. Most pastors are serving, are focused, and even if they feel a bit unsettled, are not applying for jobs in other churches. Instead, they are doing their work, and you're going to have to contact them and ask if they would be willing to have a conversation with you about your position. Now, a few years ago, I ran into a really interesting situation about this.

Jeff Iorg: 19:05

I was speaking at a church that was, not a huge church, but it was, you know, 4, 500 attendants. Pretty large church. The pastor had been there at that point for about 25, almost 30 years. He was coming up on his retirement and had announced to the church that he was going to be stepping out. They had formed a pastor search team, and while I was there to preach on a mission Sunday, the pastor search team said, would you talk with us and consult with us about our process and just give us any direction, pointers, information you might have to help us?

Jeff Iorg: 19:38

So, of course, I did. In the middle of that meeting, I started talking about pastoral candidates and where this church that has very strong, 4 to 500 attendance with a pastor approaching 30 years of service where they might likely go to find a potential pastoral candidate. And 1 of the members of the committee cut me off and said, oh, just stop. We're we're not going to take anyone's pastor from them. I was a bit taken aback by that.

Jeff Iorg: 20:10

I said, well, then where do you think you're going to find a pastor? And he said, well, we're going to get someone who wants to be a pastor, but we're not going to take someone who's already a pastor from another church that wouldn't be right. Well, I tried to be gentle, but I said, well, your church is too large. The pastor's leaving has been too successful, too strong for you to hire a novice, someone who's never been a pastor or who isn't a pastor, who has not a does never proven track record as a pastor, I think you'd be, taking a huge risk to hire that kind of person. Well, there were a couple of other people on the search committee that disagreed with me about this, and so we had a good and healthy and friendly conversation.

Jeff Iorg: 21:07

But they had a significant issue they had to resolve. They were concerned about the ethics, if you will, of quote taking someone else's pastor to the point that they were saying, we're only going to consider people who have never been pastors who are not currently pastors because we don't want to do that to some other church. Well, I understand the sensitivity. But in this particular case, this church was not a church that a novice, someone without experience, someone just getting started in ministry was gonna be able to successfully, lead. And so I encourage them to think about the possibility at least of having some conversations with pastors who were at other churches who might have some stirring or inkling or interest in a new ministry assignment that they might receive, from this church.

Jeff Iorg: 21:58

Well, another myth is that pastor searches are always quick. Sometimes they take a while. In fact, most normal searches take about 9 to 12 months. Doing it in 6 months or less, that's remarkable. For it to take longer can happen, especially if a church is troubled or there's difficulty in the situation.

Jeff Iorg: 22:21

But plan on spending about 6 to 12 months searching for a pastor in a normal situation. You say, well, man, why does it take so long? Well, because you're dealing with a lot of people on a search committee and you're dealing with different candidates who have different schedules and different opportunities. And it just takes a while sometimes even to get schedules together. Now if you're getting someone that's been mentored and trained and prepared for the ministry in your context and you're considering what some might consider even an internal candidate or something that someone who's grown up in your church, maybe moved away in in another church and is now ready to come back.

Jeff Iorg: 22:58

Yes. It can take less time. You can do it in just a few months. And if your church is really troubled, you've had divisions, splits, maybe you've had a leadership failure which caused your former pastor to have to step aside for some, reason. If it's any of these things, then maybe it's gonna take longer, and you may extend the search into that 12, 18, 24 month time frame.

Jeff Iorg: 23:26

I just want you to not be too discouraged if it takes a little while longer than you may have hoped. And quite frankly, when a church doesn't have a pastor, it's not uncommon for people in the church to be asking frequently of the pastor search team, when are you gonna find us a pastor? When are you gonna get us a pastor? We really need a pastor. You have to be willing to understand that that pressure is just gonna have to be resisted until you can find the right person in the right time.

Jeff Iorg: 23:53

And know that even in a healthy church with a healthy process, you are probably talking about 6 to 9 to 12 months for the search to be complete. Now, the final myth I want to talk about today is that pastor search processes should be transparent and the whole church should be completely informed about all aspects. This is an impossibility on 1 level and it's just unwise on another. The reason that you choose a pastor search committee or a pastor search team with the wisest, most discerning, most respected people in your church is because you recognize that they're going to have access to a lot of information that not everyone else can know. They're gonna be, accessing personnel information and personal information about candidates.

Jeff Iorg: 24:40

They're going to be, accessing and learning information about your church and about its management and about its leadership and about maybe conflicts or difficulties that no 1 else perhaps even knows about that weren't talked about openly or broadly, but surfaced in the reasons for the pastoral change. You're gonna be talking about personnel policies and how they apply and how to adjust them or how to customize them for candidates that you're gonna be considering. These are all very delicate issues that have to be resolved, and they cannot be dealt with in a big meeting on a Sunday morning with the whole church involved. So pastor search processes need to be, full of good information that's shared in appropriate ways and with appropriate people. And yes, there is a need to publish regular information in reporting to your church about your search process through your website and other means, but that regular reporting doesn't mean that every single aspect of a pastor search has to be made public.

Jeff Iorg: 25:43

There are reasons why some issues related to personnel are private. They're confidential. They're closely held. And those reasons mean that a pastor search, while there's going to be good information shared, are not transparent so that every single person knows every single thing that's happening about the search as it's unfolding. You have to be willing to say to a church, this is the report that we can give, and this is all the information we can share, and this is a complete as complete, AAAA of a report as we can make.

Jeff Iorg: 26:17

And then also understand that there are some things that just need to remain confidential. Well, I know that some of you listening to this podcast today are going through a current pastor search, but I also know many of you have pastor. You're content with your pastor. You hope your pastor never leaves, and I hope you're right in that. But sooner or later, you're going to be involved in in a pastor search or some similar process bringing staff members to churches.

Jeff Iorg: 26:44

When you do, think about the insights in today's podcast and recognize that there are several myths that need to be set aside if we're going to do pastor search really well. This is such an important issue. It is it is fair to say that no church rises to stay of the above the spiritual and leadership capacities of its pastor. Now churches can surge from time to time pastor, pastor's effectiveness, but no church rises to stay above a pastor's spiritual and leadership capacities. So it's important that you do this process well, that you pray much, that you develop a realistic profile of the kind of person needed to take your church to the next level of ministry, That you discipline yourselves to to consider candidates against that profile and only choose someone who really matches up with what you believe the future demands will be in your ministry setting.

Jeff Iorg: 27:48

That you resist the temptation to get a pastor like the 1 you just lost, or to get a pastor like the 1 you loved in your childhood, or to get a pastor like the 1 down the street who's doing such a good job in that church. And instead to get their pastor that you believe fits the profile of what needs to happen in your ministry context as you go forward. So much prayer, good deliberation, evaluation against a profile, and then selection and presentation of a candidate that can lead your church for years into the future. This is important work. If you've been tasked with it, thank you for taking on the responsibility.

Jeff Iorg: 28:27

If you're in a church that's going through this kind of transition, pray for and work toward the healthiest process possible that you might have a pastor who can lead you into the future. And if you're in 1 of those blessed situations with a happy pastor who appears to be serving and will be there for a while, just file this podcast away and use it when that time comes. Because sooner or later, every church goes through a pastoral change. And when you do, it's important to remember these principles, put them into practice as you lead on.