In light of our recent search for an Assistant Pastor at Main Street Pres. I want to offer some advice for candidates preparing to apply to churches for a pastoral ministry position.
I offer the following points in all humility and in no particular order, in the hope that someone out there might find them useful…
1. Think long and hard about different social contexts and what kind of language fits which context. What I’m trying to get at here is that Facebook and Twitter engender a certain kind of casual, light, playful informality which is perfectly appropriate in that context, but quite out-of-order when writing to a potential employer. A word to the wise: emoticons are not suitable punctuation in an email asking to be considered for a pastoral ministry position!
2. Read your emails, Ministerial Data Forms, resume’s and any and all correspondence before you send them off to a church or search committee. Read for spelling errors. Read for punctuation. Read for basic legibility and coherence. After all, the calling you hope to devote your life to is the verbal communication of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you think sentences without verbs will commend you to your potential employer as a good candidate for such a ministry?
My advice here is to give your information to someone you trust, preferably an older person not given to Tweeting from their iPhone at Starbucks, and ask them to read it through. Ask them about legibility. Ask them about style. ‘Are my sentences cumbersome and overly complex? Have I used correct punctuation? Am I being verbose?’
3. Practise humility. Now I know this is harder than it sounds since a resume requires that we attempt to present ourselves in the best possible light, displaying our gifts and qualifications so that potential employers can make informed decisions about us. There is a certain amount of salesmanship involved in compiling a resume. I understand.
But having just waded through a stack of them, one feature that really irritated me was the tendency to cross the line between the wise articulation of our gifts and qualifications and flagrant boasting and self-promotion. Now I may sound awfully British here, so please forgive my squeamishness over this sort of thing, but I just do not find myself drawn to people who assert, on line after line, how excellent they are at this or how finely honed their skills are in that. Just tell me what you are qualified for. Show me your experience. Outline some of your achievements and let your resume speak for itself. Being told that “Jonny is an outstanding leader” makes me suspicious. If an applicant has to resort to assertions I start looking to see if it is because they simply do not have the experience to demonstrate the point they want to make.
3. If you have a blog or a Facebook account, be careful what you post! ‘Nuff said.
4. Try to tailor your application to the church your are applying for. The mass mail approach may get you wide coverage but it will show in your application and leave churches asking, “does this guy really want to come here?”
5. While in seminary cultivate respectful relationships with your professors, and the pastors who supervise your internships. If you are a recent graduate you had better count on it that churches will call the seminary and ask about you. Personal recommendations to a search committee from a seminary professor or pastor count for a very great deal.
6. Be realistic. Most PCA churches are under two hundred members and are located in the South. The competition over urban and suburban multistaff megachurches is extremely fierce so think hard about how realistic it is to apply there. Also think hard about how well prepared you will be for your next ministry position if you do go to such a church.
7. Don’t send your details to a church without calling and speaking to the pastor with whom you’d be working first. We received a lot of applications but only one person thought to call the church to speak to me. The simple fact is that most vacancies in mid-sized PCA churches will receive a lot of interest and pastors will spend a large amount of time wading through MDF’s and application letters, sifting and praying and reflecting on candidates. It is a kindness to them to phone and enquire about the vacancy first to ascertain if it really is a good fit. You will be wasting their time otherwise. But bear in mind that a brief call will also help you tailor your presentation wisely, it will fix you in the pastor’s memory as one of the few who took the time and had the gumption to make a personal call, and it will cut down on his wading through your details if it turns out you’re not best suited for the post after all.
8. Do yourself a favor and read T David Gordon’s “Why Johnny Can’t Preach” carefully, and take it to heart.
25 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 2, 2009 at 15:31
Sage Advice to Pastoral Candidates « Heidelblog
[...] Advice to Pastoral Candidates Posted on October 2, 2009 by R. Scott Clark From PCA pastor David Strain. Related HB [...]
October 2, 2009 at 16:36
David A Booth
David,
While your comments are certainly appropriate guidance given our current system of evaluating candidates for ministry, I can’t help but think that the whole system is badly broken.
The fact that a candidate would tailor his application to a particular church is perilously close to the candidate trying to sell himself in a manner more fitting to hirelings than to pastors. The current system also leaves churches calling men whom they don’t know based on rather flimsy criteria. Unless a church has a close relationship with the person giving the recommendation – strong recommendations are virtually useless (of course bad recommendations are helpful in weeding out candidates!).
Perhaps we need to put more resources into (full salary) post seminary internships and then to focus pastoral searches on those men who are filling these internships within the Presbytery our local church is a part of.
David
October 2, 2009 at 19:18
David Strain
David,
Thanks for this. Re: tailoring their application to the needs of the church, I see what you mean. I merely intended that an applicant might adjust his application to highlight the areas of particular experience or gifting that best suit him for the position applied for. I certainly did not intend to imply that candidates should engage in ’spin’ or deception.
But one can be more or less helpful in the information and the format one provides that information when one applies for a post. I’d encourage thoughtful response to each church applied for in an application rather than a one size fits all approach, simply because the one size never fits all and can be quite unhelpful to the search committee, who want to know specific things about you, and detrimental to the candidate appliying for the position.
Like so much else motivation is key. The worldly attitude of a hireling is an abomination. The thoughful composition of a resume that shows a real interest in the particularities of a local church and their needs can express servant heartedness.
As for the wider issue surrounding the system and the general quality of candidates out there I think you are onto something important. I have been thinking for a while now that our whole system is breaking down.
I guestimate that there are probably four or five times the number of applicants out there to the number of ministry positions available (somone may know the real figure. If so do tell. I’d really like to know). If I’m right then either Jesus, the King and head of the Church got his arithmetic seriously wrong and called too many men for the needs of his body, or only one in every four or five men are actually called to the ministry in the first place.
So here is my question: At what point does the church step in and say to a man, “dear brother, I know you have invested a great deal of yourself in this course of action, but it is our judgment that you are simply not gifted and qualified for the work of the preaching ministry”? I have been a minister in two denominations now and in both I have seen men licensed or ordained who were great guys: godly, faithful, loving men of God- but who could not preach.
I fear we are not loving them well when we shrug and assume that the call process will weed them out as they begin to apply for jobs so we can go ahead and license them for now. What a lot of heartache and dissillusionment could be spared if we had more courage and love!
It seems to me that local sessions need to take a more proactive role in vetting men who want to proceed into gospel ministry in the first. Then presbyteries must think long and hard about more hands on, mentored oversight of every candidate throghout their training. Having talked to a couple of seminary professors about this recently it really is not the place of the seminary to decide if a man is gifted or called. Session and Presbyteries seem to me to have almost entirely abdicated responsibility for candidates to the Seminary however, assuming that if they pass the exams and get a degree then they are fine unless some heinous red flag of heresy pops up during presbytery examination. I tend to think that by the time licensure exams come along a mentored internship, as you suggest, will be too little too late. I think yours is a good idea, but Id want to add some kind of closer mentoring role for presbytery throughout training. Presbytery should be striving to promote godliness, practical piety, and finely honed pastoral giftedness among all its candidates at every stage. Whether presbyteries shoul hold candidates conferences, workshops and retreats I don’t know. But simply handing over training needs to seminary seems to me to be a strategy failing the wider church badly.
Some form of extended mentored interneship before ordination as you suggest might well be wise. In the Church of Scotland, where I originally trained for ministry, every candidate must spend 18 months in a ‘probationary period’ as an assitant minister somewhere. Only upon completion of that probationary period are they free to apply for a call elswhere. Perhaps something like this would help.
The role we have sought to develop at Main Street approximates to this. It is a three to five year ‘ordained apprenticeship’. We want to conduct a rigorous search for a promising graduate and then give them an opportunity to ‘cut their teeth’ in a context deisgned for deliberate mentored development of ministerial gifts and vision etc. Who knows how it’ll work out.
Its a vexing question and another sign that all is not well in NAPARC land.
October 3, 2009 at 15:44
Mark Horne
“But having just waded through a stack of them, one feature that really irritated me was the tendency to cross the line between the wise articulation of our gifts and qualifications and flagrant boasting and self-promotion.”
I agree with the need for humility, but I also remember the pressure of competing with classmates coming out of seminary and realizing that I had no way to make a living once I was done. In the PCA there are more seminary graduates than pulpits. It is a buyer’s market. This doesn’t mean your point is wrong; I just want to say that there are pressures that may mean that this impression does not reflect the person’s general character.
And how does he fix it. Suddenly he sees your wise rebuke and tries to sound humbler than the other candidates, desperately hoping to get a job…
It is hard.
Also, there is a general problem that the people who go to seminary are partially motivated by visions of ministry in suburban or cool urban churches. The nature of College ministry in our day really promotes this (not on purpose).
It is a bad mix for the actual available churches in the PCA, as you point out.
Thanks for the post.
October 3, 2009 at 15:49
Mark Horne
PS. If nothing more than an economic level, you are right about the need for vetting (and you are probably right on other levels too, I just think it is worth calling attention to). A glut of pastors results from low opportunity costs at the front end, creating disappointed seminary graduates. The glut will eventually teach people to not go to seminary unless they have more reason to believe they will be able to get a call, but there is a lot of lag in that sort of information dispersal–resulting in a lot of graduates having, from a career standpoint, wasted a lot of time and money.
October 3, 2009 at 21:38
David Strain
Mark,
Thanks for these comments. Very helpful.
Re: humility, I quite agree about the pressures that produce the kind of overly assertive self promotion, and I fully sympathize with seminarians caught on the horns of this dilema.
I suppose my answer would be to simply tell the truth. Humility is not the same as self-deprecation. We need not leave off the facts about ourselves for fear of sounding arrogant. Pride cannot be identified with a clear articulation of the facts about where you are gifted and what your experience is.
The problem comes when, as is so often the case today, we no longer know how to distinguish between these things. We flit between self deprecation and self promotion, instead of learning how best to simply state the truth about ourselves winsomely and clearly.
When I read a resume (can anyone tell me how to get the accent above the ‘e’ in resume?) I am looking for someone whose actual experience of ministry speaks for itself. Granted many are seminarians with minimal church ministry experience, yet if they are serious about pastoral ministry they will have worked hard at gaining whatever experience was available to them throughout their training. Their references will speak highly of them and without qualification.
What I struggle with is bald assertion, where a candidate asserts his giftedness or personality competence in ways that cross the line from simply trying to give a brief, clear, synopsis of their suitability for the job, to puffing their own excellencies. It begins to sound like desperation or arrogance or both.
This is one area where an experienced set of eyes are helpful. Show your resume and MDF to someone older who knows you well. They can test it for accuracy, truthfulness, humility, clarity, honesty and so on and measure the whole humility-pride thing better than we usually can.
I’d also urge people to think about presentation. Style is not even close to everything, but a resume that looks hastilly thrown together does not best convey the seriousness with which we are, presumably, taking the process of applying for what is after all not a mere job, but our first venture into the excercise of a calling that will consume our lives.
October 3, 2009 at 15:53
Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Advice to pastoral candidates
[...] Read the rest at Advice to pastoral candidates « Letters from Mississippi. [...]
October 4, 2009 at 08:07
Paul Baxter
Is the basic grammar error in the first line of point two intended to be humorous or is it an ironic failure?
October 4, 2009 at 09:01
David Strain
Paul, it is an ironic failure I noticed but overlooked when proof reading. It actually proves my point about having someone wiser read over your material before sending it on. (Hence the irony I guess)
I will correct it now. Thanks Paul.
October 4, 2009 at 16:25
Paul Baxter
Ok,
hope I didn’t come across as a smart aleck. I’m not an ordained minister myself, but your advice seems to be pretty reasonable generally. I suppose in any field of employment it is good for the job seekers to hear from the people who hire and read the resumes to find out what they think.
October 4, 2009 at 20:50
Justin Weeks
David,
Thank you for this post. Just starting out on what promises to be a rigorous next 3-4 years of my life in seminary, these are words that I need to be thinking about not just in my last 6 months, but over the next couple years. One question I would have for you, as well as other pastors out there who have been through the hiring process, is what sort of things would you think it would be good for a seminarian to have done in their internships and other activities outside of class?
Grace – Justin
October 5, 2009 at 08:07
David Strain
Paul,
You made me laugh out loud. If you were acting the smart aleck it was a helpful antidote to my acting the pompous ass. Thanks for taking me down a peg or two!
October 5, 2009 at 13:30
Dave Van
To type the accent over the é in resumé, simply hold down the alt key and type on the number pad 0233. This creates the é you are looking for.
October 6, 2009 at 00:14
Michael
Suggesting that one read “Why Johnny Can’t Preach” might be considered pummeling the candidate about the head and ears; however, if you have any pride at all and want to preach better, then you must read it.
To call or not to call, that is the question. Is that a desire of the advice giver, standard practice, or just for those looking for an assistants/associates position? I have pondered the question of a phone call on several levels, but it can be difficult when looking at a charge that has no pastor. What would one do then? Would they try to call an elder or the pulpit search committee chairman and/or member?
October 6, 2009 at 06:56
David Shedden
Dave, as someone just finished the “training” process, and as someone who (in theory at least) remains “under care” of a presbytery and pastor mentors… I’m fighting against bitterness as I think about your post and other circumstances related to it.
Your post sketches another facet of the organisational and systemic problem that is Presbyterianism. When will Reformed Christian leaders take the word of God seriously? For example, how many current pastor leaders can really say that they have been tested and trained according to the principles of 1 Tim. 3?
October 6, 2009 at 07:02
David Shedden
And if pastor leaders have not been tested and trained… how can they test and train others?
October 7, 2009 at 06:58
cath
Forgive an intrusion from the pews (and the wrong side of the atlantic) – there’s also a concern about the possible tendency to see a pastoral appointment as not much more than another form of employment, instead of an event where the church solemnly recognises an individual’s divine call to the work of the ministry by marrying (if that’s not too extreme a term) the man to the particular congregation. The call they should be concerned about is not primarily their ability to secure a call to some poor congregation but whether they have the divine call mandating their preparation for pastoral work in the first place. Your post from a couple of weeks ago about the rarity of people who *don’t* think themselves qualified for every job going in the church is perhaps part of the same picture – a guy being bright and interested in theology and making it through seminary is simply not good enough as evidences of a divine call to the ministry. Imo.
October 7, 2009 at 12:32
David Strain
Cath,
I quite agree about calling and its importance. My post was narrowly focussed on the oddities of the pastoral search pricess in the PCA/American context which, for better or worse, tends to use a method not unlike that found in the secular job market. I sought to offer some very narrowly practical advice that might help someone engaged in the rpoces as a candidate.
Re: calling… I agree that the work of the elders/congregation/search committee is to discern as far as possible the divine call. But how are they to do this? It is surely not a subjective matter merely? Surely the way they do so is to evaluate carefully what the candidate says about his convictions, philosophy of ministry, and to evaluate his giftedness for the work. The scrutiny of the church in its various deliberative assemblies determines whether a man is to be recognized as called to ministry in general and the eventual call of a particular congregation to a specific ministry alone confirms it.
I agree that some inner sense of call is important even before beginning the process of preparation and training for ministry, but I do not think it is an infallible communication from the Lord (not that you are saying this, of course) that the candidate in question is in fact called.
While the problem in the USA seems to be the lack of careful thought about how best to connect with congregations and serve them wisely by providing carefully articulated information about ourselves so they can begin the hard work of discerning what is best regarding those candidates, in Scotland in my experience pietism has a lot to answer for. I have talked with men sitting in a room, waiting, just before an interview with the Training of the Ministry Committee of my old denomination, to discern if they ought to begin ministerial training, and listened to them as they asserted with utter confidence that they “knew” that God had called them to be preachers. Such confidence sends chills through me.
I believe there are three dimensions of the call to ministry- the personal and subjective, the wider recognition of the denomination (presbytery or equivalent) and the final call of a particular church to serve among them as their pasotor. No matter how convinced a man is that he is ‘called’, if the Lord never opens a door for preaching ministry, he is wrong. He has not been called to the preaching mininstry. This added dimension of humble submission to scrutiny by the wider church and God’s wise superintendance of providence is vital and too often sadly missing.
October 8, 2009 at 17:38
cath
Definitely & definitely. Didn’t intend to divert things too wildly – original post sounds like it meets its purpose – candidates competing for congregations is the reverse situation from what i’m more familiar with (congregations vying in terms of their need for a pastor) but the seminary system (apparently in the nature of things & not nec a bad thing) allows more people to qualify than are called to the ministry. If I was to comment on discerning a call it would obviously be from an entirely speculative perspective! but the points you make about a sense of call needing outward ratification/confirmation in providence are so vital.
Along roughly the same lines, I hunted down this article which i vaguely remembered from a while back, ‘Some advice to pulpit committees on selecting a pastor’ – turns out to have some relevant things to say about the call and what a ?kirk session (?) should be looking for in a candidate.
Coupled with this more recent offering, on how not to be a disgusting pastor, from Martin Downes
October 7, 2009 at 13:09
Michael
Nothing like a little confirmation of your post by a good Southern Presbyterian!
James Henley Thornwell. The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell. 4 Vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, reprinted 1991).
It is the prerogative of God, and of God alone, to select the men who shall be invested with authority in His Church; and the validity of this Divine call is evinced to others and rendered satisfactory to ourselves by the testimony of our own consciences, the approbation of God’s people and the concurrence of God’s earthly courts. Conscience, the Church, the Presbytery—these do not call into the ministry, but only declare God’s call; they are the forms in which the Divine designation is indicated—the scriptural evidences that he who possesses them is no intruder in the sacred ministry. (4:24)
No one is to show cause why he ought not to be a Minister: he is to show cause why he should be a Minister . . . He is not here because he can be nowhere else, but he is nowhere else because he must be here. (4:25)
The testimony of conscience, however, is not final and conclusive. We may deceive ourselves as well as be deceived by others; and to fortify our hearts and diminish the dangers of deception, God has appointed the approbation of His own people and the concurrence of the courts of His house as additional links in the chain of evidence which, in all ordinary cases, is to authenticate a call from Him. (4:35)
The approbation of God’s people is an element in the proof of God’s call, which no conscientious man should be willing to relinquish. He should know that he is able to edify the saints before he undertakes the solemn task. (4:36)
. . . he who can edify no congregation can, under no circumstances, become a shepherd of the Lord’s flock. (4:39)
October 7, 2009 at 13:22
David Strain
Thanks Michael,
Extremely helpful.
October 11, 2009 at 20:20
In Light of the Gospel » Blog Archive » Advice to Pastoral Candidates
[...] Read the full explanation for each point at his blog. [...]
October 12, 2009 at 10:02
scottw
Speaking from the candidate’s side of the aisle, I find your remarks very helpful.
In my experience, you are fairly unique in your recommendation #6 about calling to speak with the senior pastor.
In my search it has been significantly more common to hear “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Maybe this is due to the high number of candidates (typically between 50 and 150 per position in the PCA). I’m glad you hear you would happily dialogue with men calling to inquire. It seems many search committees, staffs, and senior pastors, do not have the time to field a high number of calls and use the paperwork for initially screening candidates.
For what it’s worth.
November 2, 2009 at 09:53
Feeding on Christ » Blog Archive » Advise to Ministerial Candidates
[...] My friend David Strain recently wrote a post with some very important counsel to ministerial candidates. You can read it here. [...]
November 7, 2009 at 08:03
Vincent J. Skwarek
I was reading through the March 1993 edition of the Covenanter Witness and found the following article published by Robert McFarland, former Director of Education for the RPCNA.
THE PERFECT PREACHER HAS BEEN FOUND!
After hundreds of years, a model preacher has been found to suite everyone. He preaches exactly 20 minutes and then sits down. He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone’s feelings.
He works from 8 am to 10 pm in every type of work, from preaching to custodial service. He makes $200 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books regularly, has a nice family, drives a good car, and give $100 a week to the church. He also stands ready to contribute to every good work that comes along.
He is 26 years old and has been preaching for 30 years. He is tall and short, thin and heavyset, handsome. He has one brown eye and one blue, hair parted in the middle, left side dark and straight, the right brown and wavy.
He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spends all his time with older folks. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work.
He makes 15 calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing the unchurched, and is never out of his office.