I’m continuing to share thoughts on how to approach recruitment of new pastors and I thought ti might be worth homing in on the interview. Now, remember that I write as someone who favours a relational approach and developing leaders from within. However, many churches may still find that they need to look outside of their own immediate circle and if they do, then at some point, some form of interview may become necessary.
And yet, we tend to remain nervous about interviews, interviewer and interviewee alike. There are good reasons for this. First, interviews are artificial situations. Your successful candidate is not expecting to repeat the experience anytime soon and nor are you. This also means that neither party may have much experience of either interviewing or being interviewed. There’s an art to it but it’s not an art you expect to put into much use.
Second because we also assume that people are skilled at them and therefore will use them to perform, to say the right things, to appear confident but we are not confident that we can verify their claims. It seems that we risk either missing someone because they didn’t perform at interview or being taken in by someone who did.
It’s true that both those risks exist but I believe they can be mitigated and also that interviews do have something to offer, providing we know exactly what it is that that provide. What exactly is that? Well, it’s an opportunity to get to know things about the candidate that may not necessarily come out in other ways. This means that you are not looking for a performance, nor are you trying to catch them out. As the examiner often says to the students “This is to find out what you do know/can do not to discover what you can’t.” This also means that for candidates, the interview is not about trying to show off, not about trying to hide things you don’t want to come out etc.
A good interview, especially in a church context relies on trust and this requires a level of honesty. If you aren’t sure if you should trust the candidate at the start of the interview then you probably will be none the wiser at the end.
Remember that at the end of the interview, you should be asking “what do we now knoew about them that we did not know before?” You shouldn’t be asking questions so much about how they came across, about their communication skills or whatever. There are other contexts and means to assess that. This is perhaps a little different from the secular workplace where you probably are trying to judge those things in the interview itself but a workplace interviewer may well have had significant training in how to use the interview to do those things.
I would meet prior to an interview as a leadership/search and selection team to plan ahead. First of all, you want to ask the question “are we interviewing the right person?” Now, you don’t know yet if they are best for the job but I wouldn’t be calling someone for interview if I didn’t already have a strong sense that they would be right for it. This means reading their application carefully. First make sure that they do have the relevant experience and skills on paper. Don’t just assume a match. I once was in the embarrassing situation of being interviewed and realising one question in that I really wasn’t qualified for this particular job. The interviewer realised too. I’d made some assumptions from a job advert which was perhaps open to interpretation. He’d made some assumptions from my CV and letter based on my job title and the company I worked for. The problem was that the job title I had at the time was broad in its potential scope and meaning and our company was large. So there were people who covered the type of work he was recruiting for in our company often with the same job title but there were also plenty of us with that job title who did very different things.
It also means asking whether there any alarm bells/red flags. These may have jumped out at you a you read the application or may have been raised with you by other people. Now, too often, we hope that those red flags will be proved wrong but the reality is that they won’t be. You won’t want to waste their time and yours. This is also important if you are going to include an opportunity to preach and teach as part of the interview. Would you usually let someone preach with those question marks over them? If not, then don’t make an exception on this occasion.
What do you do in such a situation? Well, it depends. Sometimes, the level of concern will be strong enough and certain enough for you not to proceed at this stage. However, there may be times when in every other respect the candidate seems to be a good fit. You may like a lot of what they have said, you may have received positive references from people you trust, you may have had the opportunity to listen to them online. However, there may be a couple of unknowns that would be show-stoppers if your fears were realised.
So, first of all, its important to be as well informed as possible. Get those references in, talk to people who know the candidate. Check out what they have been doing, saying and writing online. You should, based on their church background and existing online talks abd blogs be able to get a feeling for their theology. If you aren’t confident about being able to spot theological issues, then get someone else you trust to have a look with you.
If possible and as much as possible, I would talk to the candidate in advance of interview. They will usually appreciate that. In fact, when I was looking at churches, I would usually try to make some contact even before applying including email exchanges, phone conversations and even informal visits. Indeed, I would be concerned if a candidate hadn’t done these things first. It’s best to make it clear upfront, e.g. on an advert that you welcome these things. So get in touch with them and explain that there are a few things you want to check through with them. Be up front. Don’t be embarrassed to ask the tough questions or the seemingly obvious ones. You have a responsibility to the flock. What is the worse that could happen? They might get the hump with you and not come but did you want such a person as your pastor.
Once you have done this or if you are not able to then meet again and ask the question “What do we still not know that we either need to know or would like to know.” Then make sure that you really do need to know it. For example, I once spent far too much time in a church interview fielding questions about my wife’s food allergies and whether that would affect her ability to participate in hospitality. It wouldn’t’ have. She has given plenty of hospitality over the years and we had already spent time in a couple of food centric church activities there. More importantly, she wasn’t being interviewed and the question was therefore not relevant to an interview with me.
Now, here’s a clue. You can check out their doctrine based on prior history. You will get to see them preach. You are also going to see a bit of how they do in social and one to one contexts. The big unknown and the priority of an interview is to be able to work out how they will get on in pastoral situations. This is the hard bit as you can’t go and observe them.
There may be some outstanding unknowns and questions such as theological ones that you have. You may want to agree on some questions to answer those but also you may realise that good questions about pastoral care will tell you about the person’s theology because what we believe affects how we live. You are looking for pastoral competency and this will be based on knowledge, skills and experience. So what I’m looking for and how I would design an interview is to set up a series of case studies/scenarios. These might cover anything from a marriage in trouble through to addiction. You may think of scenarios to do with physical and mental health, bereavement etc. You might want to include scenarios to do with apologetics and evangelism (how would you handle this objection?) and church leadership and decision making scenarios. Try to cover the full range of issues.
Make sure you have agreed.
- What questions will be asked
- Who will be asking them
- What method of noting observations will be used
- Who will be noting observations.
What I’m then looking for as the person answers the questions is for them, ideally unprompted by the panel to cover the following in their answer.
- What are the doctrines and principles hat underpin the issue? Why is it important.
- What do they understand that God’s Word teaches on the issue?
- How would they advise/answer?
- Evidence through examples of when they themselves have had to deal with this or a similar issue.
That last point is crucial. Are they able to show, unprompted that they have experience in this particular area.
Afte the interview I would review again with the team and I would consider the following questions.
- What new things did we learn about the candidate?
- Have any outstanding questions/concerns been addressed?
- Have new questions been created?
- Are there any showstoppers which mean we should not continue.
Make sure that you’ve had this conversation before any further activities such as follow up interviews, social context meetings with the church family or a preach with a view. Incidentally, in this day and age, you will probably have been able to watch or listen to multiple sermons by the candidates so when they come to preach, there shouldn’t really be any surprises and you should know what their preaching is like. This is more about what it feels like in the room, do they fit with your context. It’s also an opportunity for the church to get to know them. Indeed, I would only have the person to preach when the leaders are happy that this is the preferred candidate. Going early with preaching and having multiple candidates incited to speak gives the impression that this is a competition, may well lead to the church family splitting equally between preferred choices and confusing the candidate and their family.
Keep your discussion focused on objective questions about what you heard and what you learnt. Make sure that you have consensus on those things before you move to how people felt and any recommendations.
Your next steps should include
- Deciding whether you would be happy to proceed with the candidate’s application. At this stage, simply on their own merits alone. If you are interviewing several candidates then you won’t be able to decide which one(s) you are definitely taking through until you’ve interviewed them all.
- Provide them with feedback.
- Pray and prepare for the next stage.
Faithroots 