I hope you have a long, satisfying pastorate in your current ministry role. There are lots of benefits to staying at the same church for a decade or more. Be careful not to interpret every difficult circumstance as the Holy Spirit telling you to update your resume.
However, there will be times when you believe God is leading you away from your current ministry context and to another opportunity. You see a posting from a church inviting individuals to apply for a pastoral position. You research the church, the community, the real estate prices and the schools. You pray and spend a lot of time talking with your spouse. Eventually, you both felt led to send your resume and see if God is truly leading you to this new adventure. Then, you receive the email from an individual at the church asking you to meet with their committee. More often than not, this first meeting happens by video. They set the time and send you the Zoom link. Or, it’s by phone. Or, in some cases, it’s an in-person meeting.
How do you prepare for this first interview?
It’s been a number of years since I’ve been an interviewee; however, I have had the opportunity to be the interviewer on many occasions. From my vantage point, there are four critical mistakes I’ve seen candidates make when they are first introduced to a committee and/or potential supervisor. If you want to get the email reading, “Thanks for taking the time to meet with our search committee. We enjoyed getting to know you better; however, we have decided to move in another direction” here is what you should do:
1. Throw lots of shade at your current church / former churches.
When asked, “Why are you looking to leave your current ministry position,” say things like, “This is an incredibly toxic work environment. My boss is a real jerk. None of the elders understand the Great Commission. My deacons aren’t even Christians. My congregation is the worst in the state.”
It’s a sure-fire way to get the ministry equivalent of a Dear John letter within a few days after the interview.
However, if you’d like a shot at actually getting hired by the church, refrain from shade-throwing. Even if your current work environment is toxic, your boss is a jerk, your deacons aren’t saved and the church can best be described as a dumpster fire, start with the positive attributes of your ministry context. Be honest and talk about challenges you’ve faced, but do so with humility and positivity.
Here is why: If you’re in a toxic situation, search teams are nervous that you might bring that same toxicity to the ministry and the church where you are looking to serve. I once served with a pastor who came out of a very legalistic background and left his former church because of the pressures and negativities that legalism put on him and his family. However, in his new ministry context, he still struggled with legalism. It was the culture he’d known. As much as he hated that environment, it was where he felt most at home.
If you come from a toxic culture, you may just be so accustomed to operating in a dysfunctional manner that you negatively affect your next ministry position.
Secondly (especially if you’ve had multiple bad ministry experiences), the search committee may start to believe that the problem isn’t with these other leaders; rather, the problem is with you. In my college years when I went through several failed relationships in a row, I finally came to the realization that perhaps the issue wasn’t with these girls I dated. The problem was staring at me in the mirror.
If you have served in two or three ministry situations where the work environment was unhealthy, perhaps you need to do some serious evaluation of your own contribution to the problems.
Again, be truthful when asked about your current or past ministry roles. Just don’t reveal every frustration you’ve had with bosses or coworkers in the first fifteen minutes of your interview. Be as positive and as uplifting as possible.
2. Lie about your past mistakes.
Let’s say that five years ago you were fired from Neighborhood Community Church. You and the elders were at odds over something. Or you and your pastor locked horns and he told you to clean out your office. Or, you had a moral failure and it was discovered by the church leadership. You were dismissed but your sin was never made public.
When asked about why you left Neighborhood Community Church, give a vague, hyper-spiritual answer. “I felt the Holy Spirit leading me out of that ministry context. God told me to resign even though I didn’t have another ministry job already lined up. I think He wanted to test my faith and grow my trust in Him.”
You may just get away with it; however, the church world is fairly small. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who worked at your former church or in a church in your community. As well, the internet gives us a lot of information. A good, healthy church will check with references and ask those references for other references. They will dig as much as they can, and if they discover that the real reason you left Neighborhood Community Church had nothing to do with Holy Spirit, it’s game over.
If you had a horrible experience, or a major conflict, or even a moral failure at a former church, own it as soon as you’re asked about it. Tell what you learned from it. Even admit wrong. Tell them, “If you talk with Pastor So-and-So, he’s going to tell you that I was completely in the wrong. Here’s my side of the story. The truth probably lies somewhere in between these two stories.”
If it was a moral failure, own it and talk about how you’ve learned and grown from that experience. Tell the team about guardrails you’ve put in your life to protect you from failing in that way again. The people on that team are sinners, too. They understand and can identify with your failure.
What I’ve discovered is that most search teams are very forgiving as long as they feel the candidate is being forthright with them when asked about their past.
3. Ask really poor, vague questions.
At some point in your interview, the search team will say, “Do you have any questions for us?” In a first interview, this likely will not be an opportunity for you to ask every question you have about the church or city. You might only be allowed to ask two or three questions. If you really want to blow the interview, ask something like, “What kind of student pastor are you looking for?” You will demonstrate to them that you haven’t really read the job posting carefully or that you’ve failed to spend time looking through their website.
However, if you’d like to be considered for the role of student pastor, ask questions that are smart and specific. Ask a question like, ““I noticed that you are wanting a student pastor who is good at recruiting adult volunteers. Tell my why this is important to you.”
Or, you might ask this: “A year from now, if I’ve been successful in this role, what kinds of things would you say at that point have been true about my ministry?”
Or, “I looked on your website and noticed that you have separate programming for middle and high school students. Will you expect your next student pastor to continue to offer distinct programming for these two age groups?”
Committees are looking for someone who has a critical mind and is able to properly analyze ministry needs, then put together a plan to meet those challenges. They can’t (and should’t have to) outline every detail of what a minister should be doing in their job. A candidate who asks insightful questions is demonstrating that they will be able to do more than just the basic job requirements and actually move the ministry forward.
4. Don’t spend time looking at the church’s website or social media pages.
Leading up to the day and time of the interview, only glance at the home page and staff page of their website. Maybe go to their Facebook page and look at their latest post. Don’t watch any videos of their previous worship services or pastor’s sermons. Don’t Google the name of the church and the names of former pastors / staff members. Go play golf or watch Netflix instead.
It would seem that any candidate seriously interested in serving at a church would do a deep dive into the church’s website, social media pages, and anything else they could find online about this ministry. However, this is often not the case. I’ve witnessed a number of candidates interviewing for a ministry position who knew very little about the church. When asked specific questions, it became apparent that they hadn’t traveled much beyond the church’s homepage. Needless to say, these candidates didn’t make it beyond the first round.
Conversely, when candidates show that they have done their research, it is impressive. We interviewed a candidate one time who asked about a former staff member who’d faced some legal troubles years prior to this interview. His question showed that he’d done a tremendous amount of digging and wanted to find out how we’d handled that challenging situation. That question alone showed our search team that this candidate was someone we wanted to interview again.
This also applies to researching the community where the church is located, the school system, and anything else that will allow you to get a better picture of the ministry. Do your homework before you meet with that pastor, supervisor, or search team.
While there are many other “don’t’s” about a first interview with a church, these are the mistakes I’ve seen the most often. If you don’t want the job, then be sure to follow the above advice.
