When considering working for a church, you may have a certain checklist in mind. Often we ask:

• Do I esteem the lead pastor?
• What is the staff culture like?
• Do they provide decent coffee in […]
  

The cost of a bad hire could be up to $250,000! That figure is from the Society of Human Resource Management, an expert HR organization. Say what?!? How can that be? When you consider the […]

You can learn from other’s mistakes. If you avoid these areas, the chances of a long-term successful career at your next church will be greatly improved.

I recently had the opportunity to correspond with a group […]

Long before I entertained the idea of being on staff at a large church, I was asked by our Executive Pastor to go to dinner with a candidate for our open Children’s Pastor position. I […]

David Middlebrook talked with Fletch in the webinar, “Federal Courts Adopt Pro-Intern Approach.” A question came about applications and checklists for interns. Dave was so kind as to offer to make these documents available. Thanks to […]

Great interviews hinge on one key component: great questions. And most great and wise people are always on the lookout for good questions. Have you ever noticed how often the Bible says, “Jesus answered them […]

Everyone has regrets, but after a bad hire, those “should have asked” questions pile up quickly! While typically an employer thinks ahead of time what questions they want to ask someone in the interview process […]

Tiffany Henning, the Chief People Person of HR Ministry Solutions, is making available to the XPastor community her Church Hiring Toolkit. This is an excellent 24 page resource. She says “Afraid of strings attached? There […]

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Hey Fletch … I’m a Senior Pastor and we are looking for a proficient African-American XP. We don’t know where to go to find good candidates. Can you help?

DRF—It is so nice […]

Monday, September 24, 2018

Hey Fletch … As a Senior Pastor of a new and growing church, I have a staff member leaving. The role is the 10 hour a week, director of the worship services. […]

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Hey Fletch … Hey I have a first interview for a position on Friday. Any tips? What kind of preparation should I do? What questions should I ask them?

DRF—Before I drafted my […]

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Hey Fletch! We are a small but growing church that typically hires from within our own membership. We are considering adding an employment application but don’t know where to begin. Can you […]

Churches have asked for sample Employment Applications. Use this as a basis for your own application form. XPastor supplies this information for education purposes only. Consult an attorney or labor specialist to determine the needs […]

Friday, April 20, 2018

Hey Fletch … Here in Nigeria I have a question. I would like to know if there are templates on church staff recruitment decision making … like a decision grid.

DRF—I’m not sure […]

Monday, April 9, 2018

Hey Fletch … I am just working to word up some Key Selection Criteria and interview questions to present and get signed off so we can move to advertise the XP position. […]

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Hey Doc … I’m in XPastor’s class on Staffing. The class is going well! Most is fairly straightforward and there are nuggets of insight that I am able to pull from […]

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Hey David … I will become an Assistant Pastor within three months. Initially, this will be an unpaid position. It will become paid once the church can afford me. How do I […]

Even this title, Volunteer Hiring, probably gets a lot of strange looks and you can hear the words, “You don’t hire volunteers, they volunteer. Their help is a service and a gift to you.” Their […]

The church is not properly educated when it comes to understanding what their options are in hiring a pastoral staffing firm. Until recently, there was really only one option: Retained Pastoral Search Firms. Understanding the […]

Do you have a preferred path for making a hire at your church? Everything works better with a plan, including the selection of your next team member. The author of this article wrote up these […]

The hiring process of a new pastor or ministry director is like going to a school dance. When you know the candidate, the process is like a high school dance; if you don’t, then the […]

“I wasn’t able to lead my church during the Christmas Eve service this year.”

It was just a few short weeks into the New Year and I was with a pastor friend from a neighboring community. […]

In churches, universities and nonprofits across the country, search committees gather with high hopes and the intention to see a great leader chosen to lead their organization. None set out to fail, but in our […]

One question I frequently receive when talking about recruiting and retaining church volunteers is what to do about a volunteer who isn’t working out. In other words, how do you “fire” a volunteer? This is obviously […]

At the start of the XPastor Online Course on Operations 101–Staffing, I had been in my current role as Director of Ministry Operations at Calvary Bible Church for fourteen months. Calvary is a multi-campus church […]

Thinking of hiring internally? When a church needs to fill a staff position, one of the first questions is always, “Do we want to hire someone from somewhere else, or do we want to hire […]

One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of working together in a staff context is finding the right hire to fill an open position. The excitement comes from understanding that the staff group/team is […]

I’ve hired a handful of staff members in my time; however, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I’ve never committed the full process to paper—all in one place. After processing the XPastor Online Course material […]

Gary McIntosh’s book, Staff Your Church for Growth, is ambitious in its broad coverage of topics related to developing a team to […]

I am not an XP yet, but I do hope to be one when I grow up. In my pursuit of knowledge about the role and the many areas an XP has to keep track […]

To get to the in-person stage of the interview process, the candidate has successfully gone through one or two phone interviews. Below are some ideas for how the in-person interviews should proceed. Included are some […]

XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church—one of these items is an Opportunity Profiles. An Opportunity Profile should be prepared to aid in orienting candidates to the […]

In my career, I have hired dozens and dozens of pastors, ministry directors and church workers. There are huge differences between hiring people in each one of these categories. To name just a few, there […]

In most churches, the ministry year begins September 1. Kids get promoted to new classrooms, youth programs have new plans and preachers begin a new series. Many people decide to find a church in September. […]

XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church—items like job descriptions, employment applications, review forms and church policies. Below is the 2005 Opportunity Profile from Grace Covenant Church in […]

Never forget to laugh! Here is some great fun from Joel Kilpatrick, founder of Larknews.com. You don’t know about Lark News?  It’s a Christian version of The Onion … so put on your sense of […]

David Fletcher gave this PowerPoint presentation at Dallas Seminary in 2002. There was a “snappy” discussion on the topic that was highly animated at times. This 28-slide PDF begins to explore some of the issues of getting […]

Executive Pastors face an enormous challenge—hiring great staff. An XP called me because he had a hiring dilemma. “I think that I have a great candidate, but I need your input.” In working with church […]

There are many steps to successfully hiring a new pastor or director. In the first five steps of the process, you have posted the job, received resumes and conducted interviews by telephone. The sixth step […]

Hiring. Just saying the word out loud for many pastors produces audible groans, pained expressions and rolling eyes. Hiring. Everyone knows it’s a necessity; hardly anyone sees it as glamorous. Yet a few, perhaps, see in it […]

An important word when talking about hiring is chemistry. And it seems to me that there’s hardly a topic that could be more important or relevant for today. Every winning sports team seems to have and talk […]

In the art of hiring the right candidate for a position, I’ve found that the last step is the most important. After all the work of creating a position, describing it accurately, and reviewing numerous […]

This article is for Senior Pastors and Executive Pastors that are involved in the hiring process. For some of you, you’ve been there, done that and have some great insights to share with us. For […]