That pastoral candidate pool is deeper than your search team thinks
You just might have to change the way you look at application materials.
Over the past few years I have had more than one pastor search team tell me that the pool of candidates for their open position is not very deep.
There is some truth to this. Many people have departed congregational ministry due to disillusionment and/or burnout. Some aren’t signing up for it to begin with for a variety of reasons, including churches’ unrealistic expectations of their clergy, financial sustainability concerns as congregations and budgets shrink, and a belief that faith leaders can have a greater impact outside the institutional Church. Baby Boomers are at or near retirement, and succeeding generational cohorts of both pastoral leaders and laity are smaller. And fewer people in Generation X and younger expect to stay in the same vocational trajectory for their entire working lives. They recognize that they can be in ministry in a variety of ways and settings. So, yes, there might be fewer pastors applying for your open position.
I reject the idea, though, that candidate pools for senior pastor positions are shallow, because what this statement usually means is that we can’t find the same kind of pastor we’ve always had, typically white, male, straight, with senior pastor experience, married with kids, in the 40s-50s age range.
Well, I have good news for you, Church! There are actually many candidates out there who would make great senior pastors. But they are going to stretch your assumptions about what a pastor looks like, sounds like, and has done, and that means search teams and congregations need to be ready to exercise some imagination and listen even more deeply to God’s nudges.
Here’s what pastor search teams need to know:
You don’t necessarily need senior pastor experience to be a good senior pastor. There are lots of ministers out there who have been leading segments of a congregation as associates. Their work has included vision-casting, supervising, overseeing financials, communicating, and more - all responsibilities that are often listed on a senior pastor job description. And it’s not just work in the church that can prepare a candidate for a senior pastor role. Recently a friend said that if someone can run a Girl Scout Cookie Sale - those sales are involved and intense - they can certainly administrate a congregation. I cosign that sentiment.
There is more than one senior pastor leadership style. I cannot count how many gifted clergywomen have said to me, “I can’t be a senior pastor because I’m not a visionary.” (Many search teams say exactly this about pastoral candidates who have no senior pastor experience.) My response? There is more than one kind of visionary leadership. If you can lead a discernment process with staff and/or lay leaders and then collaborate with them on implementing it, that is also visionary leadership. You are shepherding the emergence of a collective vision, which, by the way, will be more exciting, fruitful, and long-lasting for your deeply-invested congregation.
The shape of pastoring is changing. Ministry used to be all preaching and pastoral care. Those tasks are still applicable, plus some: the ability to lead processes, to broker partnerships with the larger community that are life-giving for all, to understand and embrace the role of technology in ministry, to be a community organizer for positive change, and more. There are pastoral candidates who have the strengths to do all of these things, and these candidates (and their application materials) will probably look different than most people’s image of “pastor.”
What this means is that pastor search teams need to learn to read resumes and profiles more carefully, looking not just at past job titles but at responsibilities and accomplishments, looking for potential in transferrable skills and not just experience that looks exactly like pastoring. Pastor search teams also need to broaden their networks of people they contact for candidate names, and they must communicate the heart of the skills they are looking for (e.g., not “someone who will grow our church” or “someone who preaches well” but “someone who will offer joy, wisdom, and gentle challenge to our congregational life”). This is hard, time-consuming work. But if your search team can do it with a mind open to what God might be doing in your midst, you will be delighted by how the Spirit will surprise you.