Posted in Church Staff

Seminary or Experience – which one's best?

If you’re hiring a minister at your church, would you prefer they have three years of solid experience serving in a church, or is it more valuable to have a seminary degree?

A seminary degree can indicate:

They’ve shown they can complete something they started.
Solid writing skills, which should translate well to ministry work.
Commitment to a calling. No matter the degree program, seminary is a commitment of time, focus, and of course, finances.
Solid theology. Their home-made theology has been challenged, and hopefully their theology has formed…
Critical-thinking skills.

Obviously, a degree can indicate more than just these items. A good student will take in all they can, and bring several other transferable qualities to ministry work. But even then – is seminary all that is necessary? There is also a lot of value in experience.

Three years of ministry experience can indicate:

Although perhaps young, someone thought they could do the job.
Healthy expectations. Nothing can replace reps… Three years of dealing with church-members, budget, hospital-visits, and teaching should provide a more balanced perspective of vocational ministry.
They know their gifts, strengths, and weaknesses. They’ve had time to self-examine in the crucible of ministry. They’ve had time to determine where they’re deficient in ministry leadership, and begin a development plan.

What I consider to be the best of both worlds is of course…both.

When I see seminary experience on a resume and no concurrent ministry experience (volunteer or paid), I have hesitations.

When I see ministry experience on a resume and no seminary experience, I have questions.

If your calling is vocational ministry, get involved in ministry as soon as you feel called. Seminary accentuates and prepares, but in my opinion, it doesn’t beget ministry. Seminary is most beneficial to the minister already participating in active ministry.

While in college or seminary, find a place to serve. If it can be a paid role, great. That streamlines your time so you don’t have to work an additional job to pay for life (and a paid staff role versus a volunteer role will get you deeper and more truer experiences).

Both ministry and seminary experience are valuable. And if I have to choose one over the other when considering a ministerial candidate for our staff, I make sure to use lots of other vetting ideas to help me determine the right choice (I’ve blogged previously about some of our hiring processes).

Takeaways:

As a hiring church, don’t let seminary completion be the sole or even primary determiner of who you hire.
If you’re called to ministry, get experience and begin seminary as soon as you can.

Key Interview Component: the Cultural Call

Photo contributor: Grafner via iStockphoto®

As a church, before you start asking a lot of interview questions of a ministerial candidate,

first, talk about you.

We recently hired a campus and teaching pastor for our newest regional campus. For this pastor, I followed the same selection process we use for all ministerial hires. In one of his last group interviews with us, he commented about one step in the section process. He spoke about the value of the “cultural call” we had with him. At the time, he was unsure of the benefit of the hour long call that unpacked our church’s history, mission, community demographics and more. One it was a lot of information. Two, I was talking the whole time and not asking him any questions (even though he’s the candidate). And three, much of the information wasn’t about the specific church campus he would pastor. Despite his natural reservations, we’ve discovered great value in the “cultural call” (click here for PDF template). It was created prior to my time, I’m just a grateful recipient of the work. Benefits of the cultural call:

It provides context for the ministry opportunity to the candidate
It’s shameless about presenting the facts about your church’s situation (whether they’re selling points or not)
It establishes things that are in place, and will not be heavily influenced by the candidate
It lets a candidate know what they’re getting into
It gives them an understanding of the church’s leadership structure and how decisions are made

When they’re done with the call, a candidate has a pretty clear picture of where the church is at, where it’s been, and where it’s going. They can then determine if it’s a church they want to be a part of.

Practical takeaway:

Create a “cultural call” template for your church to use in your own selection process. Ours can provide you an outline and then you can tweak it and add in your needed information.

There’s been a time this call ends the interview process with a candidate. When a candidate gets this much information, they can often determine whether they can see themselves serving with us. And in some cases, they don’t see themselves fitting well. And there are other times when our unapologetic explanation of our mission, objectives and where we see God leading us is a big affirmation to what God has burdened their heart with.

p.s. If you want to read about what I consider to be the needed first step in hiring, click here for a blog post and free resource.

Is Your Ministry Calling Too Comfortable?

How comfortable should you be, in the place you’ve been called?

Every once in a while, God chooses to show me what my ministry-calling could look like…how uncomfortable it could be.

He showed me once when I was interviewing with a church. On the weekend I was there for an interview, a 160 missionaries were being commissioned to international service. It put my “sacrifice” of moving 800 miles within my own country into perspective.

He showed me again this past week when I visited a church pastor in the inner-city, who explained to me his calling for his neighborhood. I didn’t find many things attractive about his neighborhood. He puts his four kids in physical danger by living in that neighborhood. Only 20% of his congregation has jobs (and those pay minimum wage). The thing that’s most attractive about his neighborhood is God’s calling him to it.

Sometimes God reminds me my calling could require more sacrifice than it currently does. I also hear Him whispering, “It might require that sacrifice in the future.”

I believe I’m where God has called me to be. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with living in suburb and working in a healthy church where the largest danger I face daily is driving to work. There’s nothing wrong with all that…Unless God has called me to be elsewhere.

It’s all relative. But, there’s something about seeing fellow ministers whose calling doesn’t provide them with security or soft furniture in their office that teaches me to be grateful.

It teaches me how to pray for others.

It should teach me not to get comfortable.

It should teach me to not trust the place of my calling, but rather, to trust the One who called me there.

I want to be able to always say “yes” to whatever God’s calling is on my life, without hesitation – whether it’s to a nation with ISIS militants, to Chicago’s inner-city, or to Williamson County, Tennessee.

Comfort is fine… as long as the feeling of comfort comes from knowing you’re exactly where God has called you to be.

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