Finding great candidates for your ministry opening can be challenging even in the best of situations. I’m a firm believer in the principle that great candidate pools must be built through a combination of advertising, networking with your peers and most especially outright recruiting. Let me tell you a cautionary tale about the search for a new pulpit minister at the Anytown Church of Christ where their pride made a tough job even harder (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).
The Anytown Church of Christ is a large, conservative congregation with an average attendance of about 600 people on Sunday mornings. Anytown is an idyllic small town located in the “buckle” of the Bible belt with scenic beauty, a low crime rate and an even lower cost of living. They are known for their stable leadership and have been blessed with very little minister turnover over the years. In other words, this is the dream job for many ministers.
At their first Search Committee meeting, the Committee Chair stated his belief that candidates would “line up to apply for this job”. He didn’t want to advertise the position on the Internet or in publications because “that might attract too many candidates.” If I were to use a fishing analogy, he expected big healthy bass simply jump into the boat on their own. The Committee would take their pick from among these fish and release the rest back into the water.
After two months, the Committee stopped to assess their “catch”. As they reviewed and interviewed candidates, they soon realized that some of the fish were catfish, not bass. Other fish were too small and still others lacked the strength and vitality that they had hoped to find. They didn’t have a single keeper in the whole bunch.
They then asked their ministers to pick up a rod and reel and cast a line out into their favorite fishing holes. The ministers made about forty phone calls over the next two weeks to their friends across the brotherhood and netted five names for their efforts. As the committee pursued these five names, three of the ministers wouldn’t even nibble on the bait. Another minister nibbled on the bait but soon decided to remove his name from consideration. At the end of 120 days, they only had one real candidate for the position.
They then decided to advertise the position on the Internet for another 60 days. Unfortunately, that too failed to produce the volume or quality of candidates that they had hoped to find. At the end of 6 months they returned to their one and only candidate. While he didn’t have all of the skills or experience that they set out to find, they offered him the job and prayed he would accept so that they didn’t have to start the search all over again.
Does that sound like a healthy way to hire a minister to you? The morale of the story is that you might be part of a great congregation, but that doesn’t mean that the “right” candidates are going to come running. You have to cast a wide net to develop a quality candidate pool. Someone has to make dozens (if not hundreds of calls) to find these candidates. As your committee plans for the development phase of the Minister Hiring Process, please don’t underestimate the work required to build a great candidate pool.
