Some jobs give the candidate opportunity to demonstrate one of the core skills. Whilst it is very difficult to observe a counsellor or engineer in action, you can observe a teacher at work and you can check out whether or not a potential pastor can preach. Of course there is always the risk that the candidate turns up with their one “interview sermon” and puts an amazing performance in. So how do we make sure that we are just bamboozled by the one off performance on the day or just as bad, turn someone down because they happened to have a stinker, which equally could be a one off?
Well, crucially here, we are looking for what those in education have taken to refer to as “typicality.” The point is that you aren’t looking for the person who can turn in the occasional outstanding performance. You are looking forsomeone who will faithfully teach the flock.
So, first of all, I would make sure that you have heard him preach more than once. This is increasingly easier because so many sermons are available online. You will get a feel for his content and style. However, being in the room is different to listening to a digital version of a talk and so there is benefit in getting them to come and speak at your church on a few occasions.
I would also mix it up. I would give them at least one free choice where they preach a stand alone sermon of their own choosing. This will enable you to begin to look at how they decide what to preach and how they approach preaching generally. One important thing to watch out for is whether they instinctively come, ready to preach on a specific Bible passage or do they come with a theme/topic and multiple Bible readings and references?
Why does this matter? Well, I don’t have a problem with a church looking at themes and topics from time to time but that comes best in the context of systematic expository preaching through books and where the topic is identified by those who know the church well from the inside. The risk with the topical preach with a Bible safari being typical is that it encourages eisegesis where the preacher chooses passages to support the position they have already taken and read their preferred meaning into them. Incidentally, it is also not at all helpful to newcomers and young Christians who end up struggling to keep up and wondering how they will ever get to find their way around the Bible. Finally, it also makes it hard for people to scrutinise and check what you are saying.
When it comes to giving them a subject or text to preach on, I’d make sure that at least one of the sermons is part of your existing preaching series. This will help you find out whether thy can fit into a plan and a team. It will also tell you whether they do their homework, have they listened to the talks that came before? Have they checked up on what is coming after. This is also an indicator of whether or not they’ve shown a genuine interest in your church and are ready to love it.
Things that you might want to listen out for during the sermon include.
- What kind of language does he use? Is it accessible and understandable?
- Is he able to contextualise things to your situation?
- Even in the case of someone coming in from outside, I’d be looking for evidence that they’ve exegeted the congregation, that they’ve begun to pick up on the things you are facing as a church.
- Are his illustrations credible and authentic or do they have the feel of being plundered from a website or book of illustrations.
- How much time and space does he give to application? What, if anything, does he actually have to say?
- Does he know when to stop?
- Does he have a habit of citing Greek and Hebrew words? Does he know Greek and Hebrew.[1]
Make sure that you have two or three people taking notes and feeding back. You can set up a feedback form for them to do this. Get a cross section of the congregation to do it and include people not on the interview panel.
Make sure that the process includes opportunity to feedback in person and discuss his sermon. In fact, it may well help to have part of your interview with him after he has preached at least once.
Questions to include in that part of the interview would be:
- Can you tell us why you chose the topic/passage you did?
- How many times have you preached that sermon before? What if anything did you change from last time?
- How do you think it went?
- Could you talk us through your preparation for the sermon? This is both to give an idea of how they generally approach preparation but also to get them to show you their working out. Let them know that this is one of the things you will want to cover and encourage them to bring their preparation notes along with them.
- Was there anything you left out? Why?
- Is there anything you would change?
- In what ways did God’s Word challenge and disagree with you?
By the way, a pastor will love having this kind of conversation and your next pastor will love having that kind of conversation with you.
[1] My rule of thumb is that the more Greek and Hebrew preachers actually know, the less likely they are to refer to “The Greek” and “The Hebrew” in the pulpit. I must admit that I have far too often heard someone announce confidently that “The Greek means x” when it probably doesn’t or at least, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
Faithroots 