18 Search Results for hiring

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.

Threatened By (the talent) Another Minister

There’s a danger when you hire someone to work alongside you. The danger increases when they have similar responsibilities to you or they report to you. And the danger is even greater when the person is talented.

The danger: their work or they themselves get more attention than you do.

What happens if their talent overshadows yours?
What if their influence is greater than yours?
What if church members or staff like them better than they like you?
What if their work becomes a huge win for the church?

I’ve recently welcomed this threat. We’ve added an Executive Pastor to our staff. He comes with his own experiences, gifts, and skill sets. And more than that, I work with a bunch of talented and smart people. (Seemingly, when the Holy Spirit was providing gifts to those I work with, He was feeling generous. Somehow when it became my turn to receive gifts, He all the sudden became a minimalist!)

You can be threatened by those around you who are capable leaders, or you can embrace what they bring to your church and figure out how to best serve, together.

It’s the Education Minister who hires a new student minister. The student minister is not only younger, more fun, but also really Biblically astute. Does the Education Minsters celebrate this, or does he make sure the influencers in the church also know about the new guy’s shortcomings?

It’s the Music Minister who has effectively led worship for many years, but organically, a vocalist from the praise team seems to be getting the attention. His voice and worship of God are clearly impressive. How does the Music Minister react?

Many times this threat plays out in the hiring process. The hiring minister foregoes a qualified candidate because they can see how that person might out-perform or get more accolades. It’s poor Kingdom management, but it happens.

Biblically, we know how we should respond.

Theoretically, we know we’re better together, even if we feel marginalized in that pursuit.

But methodologically, we often handle it differently. And sometimes sinfully.

We try to relegate these high achievers to small work so they can’t be noticed. We don’t encourage them or brag on them in front of others. We remind others of their weaknesses. We’re constantly looking for errors they may make.

Some practical reminders for when you feel threatened by the talent around you:

Pray for them.
Don’t worry about image management. Let the God who put you in your position, and them in theirs, deal with how others perceive you.
Get to know them really well. It’s harder to be threatened by someone you know well, and actually, perhaps like. (I’ve written about church jealousy syndrome previously).
Acknowledge your weaknesses, know theirs, and then develop a plan (with them) for how you can each excel in your giftedness and mitigate each other’s weaknesses through mutual cooperation.
Memorize and put into practice Ephesians 4:29 and then adhere to it when speaking about them.

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