Hiring
What are the best practices for hiring staff? Should you hire from inside or outside the church? Should you hire quickly or take your time, even if it stresses out the staff filling in temporarily? Should you check references and do background checks?
All Rise—Church Staffing
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 [...]
The Interview Process and Sample Questions
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 [...]
Employment Application
XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church---items like job descriptions, employment applications, and opportunity profiles. Below is a link to an Employment Application from the Old [...]
Opportunity Profile Example
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 Hidden Step in Hiring: Get to Know “X”
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 [...]
The Cost of Hiring Mistakes
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. [...]
Opportunity Profile Example
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 [...]
“Calvin Grads Dominate 2006 Pastors’ Draft”
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 [...]
How to Get Hired at a Large Church
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 [...]
Ten Steps to Hiring Great Pastors and Directors
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 [...]
How to Hire: The In-Person Interview
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 101: How the “Great” Ones Do It
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 [...]
Hiring For Right Fit
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 [...]
Hiring: Last Step, Best Step
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 [...]
Hiring an Executive Pastor?
A couple of months ago, I was asked to give a presentation entitled, “Executive Pastor: If, When, Why, How?” As you can guess from the title, the focus was on churches that were thinking about [...]
When Hiring a Worship Pastor
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 [...]