The phone call usually comes on a Tuesday night. “Our pastor just announced he’s retiring, and we don’t know where to start.” I have heard some version of that sentence from dozens of churches, and what follows it is almost always the same: a committee is formed, a posting goes up, resumes come in, and six months later the church is tired, divided about what it wants, and no closer to a pastor than the day it started.

It does not have to go that way. A pastor search is one of the most significant decisions a church will make in a generation, and it is also a process with a shape. Churches that know the shape finish in nine to fourteen months with a man who fits and stays. Churches that improvise take two years and often end up with a hire they regret. This guide is the shape. It follows the structure of my book Finding the Right Pastor, and the book goes deeper on every stage, but everything a committee needs to run a faithful search is here.

What’s in this guide

1. The committee: who serves and how it works
2. Clarifying who you are
3. The church profile
4. The job description
5. Compensation
6. Where candidates actually come from
7. Screening in stages
8. Interviews and references
9. The candidate weekend and the vote
10. The offer and the first ninety days
11. A realistic timeline
12. When to get help

1. The committee: who serves and how it works

Most committees are formed badly. A church announces it needs a search committee, a dozen people are nominated so no ministry feels left out, and the group that results is too large to decide anything and too loosely committed to do the work. The committee is the foundation of the whole search. Build it deliberately.

Who should serve

When the early church needed to choose men to oversee the distribution of food in Acts 6, the apostles gave the qualifications in a sentence: “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” A search committee is not the same office, but the standard holds. Look for three things in every member:

• Spiritual maturity. A person who walks closely with God and shows it. The committee will spend months in prayer and in hard conversations; it needs people who can do both.
• Wisdom. The ability to evaluate a man thoughtfully and biblically, to listen to a sermon and know what they heard, to read a reference check and notice what was not said.
• Good reputation. Respected inside the church and known in the community. The congregation must trust the committee’s recommendation when it comes; that trust is earned before the committee is formed, not after.

Size and makeup

Five to seven members. That is enough to represent the church and few enough to reach a decision. Within that number, aim for diverse perspectives without extremes: different ages, different ministries, different life stages. Include at least one elder or deacon, at least one person who holds no office, and at least one woman. Include someone who has been at the church long enough to know its history and someone with young children who knows what families are looking for.

Avoid two kinds of people: the one who will dominate the room, and the one who is new enough to the church that he does not yet understand its culture. Do not put the departing pastor on the committee, however beloved he is; his presence will shape every conversation toward finding a copy of himself. Do not put his family on it either.

The chair

Choose the chair for ability to run a meeting, keep a confidence, and hold the group to a schedule. The chair does not need to be the most senior leader in the church. He does need to be able to say, kindly and firmly, “We have talked about this for forty minutes. Let’s decide.”

The committee covenant

Before the first working meeting, have the committee write and sign a short covenant. It sounds like a formality. It is not. Six months in, when the committee is tired and two members disagree about a candidate, the covenant is what they return to. Here is one that has served churches well:

How the committee works

Meet weekly in the early stages, every two weeks once candidates are being screened. Open every meeting in prayer, and not a token prayer. Keep minutes. Decide at the start how the committee will decide: most churches use consensus with a fallback of a two-thirds vote, and agree that a candidate will not be presented to the congregation unless the committee is unanimous or nearly so. Agree on confidentiality in writing: candidate names do not leave the room until the committee is ready to present one man, because a pastor who is currently serving can lose his church if word gets out that he is looking.

Consider a one-day retreat before the search begins: pray, discuss the church’s mission, read the chapters of this guide together, and commit to working as a team. Committees that start with a retreat move faster and fight less.

2. Clarifying who you are

Before you write a word of a job description, your committee needs to be able to say in two sentences what your church is and what it must not become. Most committees skip this because “everyone already knows.” Then, in month six, a gifted candidate says something in an interview and half the room nods while the other half goes quiet, and the committee discovers it never agreed about what it wanted.

Survey the congregation

Send a short written survey to every member. Keep it to one page. Ask what they value most about the church, what they hope the next pastor brings, what concerns them about the transition, and what they would not want to see change. Do not ask them to describe their ideal pastor; you will get a list of contradictions. Ask them to describe the church. Read every response. Patterns will emerge, and they are usually different from what the leadership assumed.

Work through your doctrine

Take your doctrinal statement and go through it line by line as a committee. For each article, decide: is this non-negotiable, a strong preference, or a matter where faithful men differ and the church can live with either? Then do the same for the issues your doctrinal statement does not mention but your church has a settled practice on: church government, the role of women, spiritual gifts, end times, worship style. The Doctrinal Alignment Worksheet walks you through this. Do it before you look at a single resume.

Name the season

Churches are in one of a few seasons, and the pastor who fits one does not fit another. Is the church healthy and growing, needing a man who will not break what is working? Is it stable but aging, needing a man who can reach younger families without alienating the people who built it? Is it coming out of conflict, needing a shepherd before it needs a visionary? Is it in decline, needing a replanter? Be honest. A committee that will not name its season will hire for the season it wishes it were in.

Write the two sentences

When the survey is read and the doctrine is worked through, write two sentences the whole committee agrees on: what our church is, and what our church must not become. Put them at the top of the job description, at the top of every interview outline, and in front of you when you vote. Those two sentences are what let you say no to a gifted man who is not your man.

3. The church profile

The church profile is the document a candidate reads to decide whether to take your call seriously. A good one is honest, specific, and four to six pages. It should include:

• History in a page: founding, the pastors who have served and how long, the turning points. Say why the last pastor left. Candidates will find out anyway, and a profile that avoids the question tells them the church does too.
• The congregation now: average attendance (give the real number, not the Easter number), membership, age distribution, how long people have been there, where they live.
• Finances: annual budget, giving trend over five years, debt, missions giving, and the compensation range for the position. A candidate who has to ask about money in the first interview starts the relationship badly. Tell him.
• Staff and structure: every paid position with hours, the leadership structure, how decisions get made, how the pastor relates to the elders or deacons.
• Ministries: what actually happens week to week, with numbers. Not the ministries you wish you had.
• The community: the town or city, its economy, who lives there, what it is like to raise a family there, housing costs, schools. A pastor’s wife will read this section first.
• Strengths and weaknesses: both, honestly, in the committee’s own words. The churches that write “declining attendance, aging congregation, not reaching younger families” in their profile get better candidates than the churches that hide it, because the candidate who responds to honesty is the man who can handle it.
• The two sentences.

4. The job description

The committee sits at a whiteboard and starts listing: preaching, leadership, relational, visionary, administrative, good with youth, good with seniors, counseling, evangelism. An hour later the board is full and the description describes three different men. That is how most job descriptions get written, and it is why they attract the wrong candidates.

Start with Scripture

Open 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9 and read them aloud as a committee. “An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well.” These are not suggestions. They are God’s qualifications, and they come before anything on your whiteboard. Build the first section of the job description straight from these passages.

Three sections

A job description that works has three parts, in this order:

1. Biblical qualifications. Character and competence as Scripture defines them. This section is non-negotiable and should say so.
2. What this church needs. Drawn from the clarity work in section 2. If your church is aging and needs a man who can reach young families without losing the older saints, say exactly that. If the church has been through conflict and needs a shepherd before a strategist, say that. Three to five specific needs, not fifteen.
3. Responsibilities. Preaching (how often, what services), pastoral care, leadership of staff and volunteers, administration, community engagement, and anything else the role genuinely requires. Be honest about hours and expectations. If the church expects the pastor’s wife to lead the women’s ministry, say so, and then reconsider whether you should.

Describe a man, not a list

Read the finished draft and ask: could one actual human being do all of this? If the answer is no, cut. A job description that asks for a brilliant expositor who is also a gifted administrator, a dynamic youth communicator, a warm hospital visitor, and a strategic visionary describes someone who does not exist and signals to real candidates that the church does not know what it wants. Decide what the man must be, what he should be, and what would be nice. Put only the first two in the posting.

5. Compensation

Set the compensation before you post, and publish the range in the posting. Postings that say “commensurate with experience” get fewer and weaker responses than postings with a number, because candidates assume a church that will not say is a church that cannot pay. The Pastor Salary Benchmark gives ranges by church size and region, and explains what a package actually costs once health insurance, retirement, and moving expenses are included.

Two rules. First, a pastor with a family who is serving well somewhere will not move for less than he makes now, and he usually needs more to cover the disruption; set your range by what the man you are describing is likely making, not by what the last pastor made in 2012. Second, decide the benefits before you interview anyone, especially health insurance for the family. That is the question every candidate’s wife asks first, and “we’ll figure it out” is not an answer.

6. Where candidates actually come from

Here is the part most committees learn the hard way. The man you most want is, almost without exception, pastoring somewhere else right now. He is not reading job boards. He is not sending resumes. He is preaching on Sunday, visiting the hospital on Tuesday, and raising his kids. The resumes that arrive in your inbox are from men who are looking, and some of them are fine, but the field you see is not the field that exists.

Cast the net

Do post. Put the position on your denominational board and the two or three major church job boards, with the salary range and a link to the church profile. Tell your seminary contacts; most seminaries keep placement lists and will circulate a good posting. Ask pastors you trust, especially ones who train other men, who they know. Ask your denominational leaders. Every one of these produces names.

Then go find him

Someone has to pick up the phone and call men who are not looking. This is the part committees skip, because it feels presumptuous to call a pastor and ask if he would consider leaving his church. It is not presumptuous. A pastor who is content will say so graciously and may suggest someone else; a pastor whom God is already stirring will be grateful you called. Build a list of twenty to forty men serving in churches like yours, in your denomination or tradition, within a size range above and below your own. Get their names from your pastor network, denominational directories, and the staff pages of churches you respect. Then call. The first conversation is fifteen minutes, it is confidential, and it asks one question: “Would you be open to a conversation about our church?”

If no one on the committee can do this, that is the single most common reason a search stalls at month four, and it is the main reason search firms exist. More on that in section 12.

What to send a man who says yes

The church profile, the job description with the compensation range, your doctrinal statement, and a short written questionnaire (see section 7). Give him a deadline of about ten days. Ask for his resume, his testimony and account of his call, three recent sermon links, and his written answers. Set a date for a first conversation.

7. Screening in stages

Screen in stages so the committee’s time goes to the men who deserve it. Interviewing everyone who applied, out of politeness, exhausts the committee and is not kind to the candidates.

Stage one: paper

Two committee members read each resume and doctrinal response against the non-negotiables from section 2. Does he meet the biblical qualifications? Does he affirm the doctrinal statement without qualification, or with qualifications the committee has already decided it can accept? Does his experience fit the needs in the job description? Most candidates are set aside here, and they should receive a kind letter saying so within two weeks. A church’s reputation among pastors is built on how it treats the men it does not hire.

Stage two: sermons

For every man who passes stage one, the whole committee listens to at least three sermons, preferably from different books of the Bible and at least one from the Old Testament. Listen for whether the sermon comes from the text or uses the text as a springboard. Listen for the gospel. Listen for whether he applies the passage to real life or stays in the abstract. Listen for whether you would want to hear him every week for fifteen years. Take notes separately, then compare. Committees are often surprised by how differently members hear the same sermon; that conversation is valuable.

Stage three: the questionnaire

Written answers to eight to twelve questions covering his testimony, his call, his theology on the points your church cares most about, his philosophy of preaching and ministry, his family, and why he would consider leaving where he is. Written answers tell you how a man thinks when he has time to think, and they give the committee something concrete to discuss. A man who cannot write two clear paragraphs about the gospel will struggle to preach it.

Stage four: the first conversation

A video call, forty-five minutes, with the chair and one other member. Not a full interview; a conversation to confirm what the paper suggested and to let him ask his questions. Most committees find that this call sorts the remaining field quickly. Three to five men come out of it as serious candidates.

Keep a scorecard

From stage two onward, have every member rate every candidate on the same five or six criteria, drawn from the job description, on a simple scale. Not to add up the numbers and hire the winner, but to surface disagreement early and keep the committee honest about whether it is evaluating the man or just liking him.

8. Interviews and references

The full interview

Interview the top three to five men with the whole committee, in person if at all possible. Plan it: define what you need to learn from this man that you do not already know, write the questions in advance, assign who asks what, and decide how you will record impressions. Start with prayer. Begin with his story, not his resume; move to theology; then philosophy of ministry; then practical scenarios drawn from your church’s real situations (“a long-time member tells you he is leaving because of the new music; what do you do?”); and leave real time for his questions. The Interview Question Bank has the questions, what a good answer sounds like, and what should concern you.

Make the environment comfortable. You learn more from a relaxed man than a defended one. And remember you are being interviewed too; a good candidate is evaluating whether this committee represents a church he could serve.

Include his wife

Meet his wife, with her permission, in a separate and gentler conversation. You are not interviewing her for a job. You are learning whether this family can thrive in your church and town, and whether she is being asked to carry something she has not chosen. A call that does not fit the pastor’s wife will not last.

References, done properly

Reference checks are where more bad hires are prevented than anywhere else in the process, and most committees do them badly: a quick call to the three names the candidate supplied, who say he is wonderful. Do it this way instead:

• Contact multiple references, including ones he did not give you: the chairman of the elders or deacons at his last two churches, a staff member who worked under him, and, if you can find one, someone who left his church unhappy. Tell the candidate you will do this. A man with nothing to hide will help you.
• Ask specific questions. “Would you hire him again, and why?” “Tell me about a time he handled something badly.” “How did he handle conflict with leadership?” “How is his marriage?” “Is there anything I should know that you would want to know if you were in my seat?” Open-ended praise tells you nothing.
• Verify what you’ve heard. If the candidate told you he led the church through a building program, ask the reference about the building program. If he said he left on good terms, ask whether he left on good terms.
• Check for consistency. Does the man the references describe match the man you interviewed? Small inconsistencies are usually nothing. Patterns are not.
• Trust the process. If a reference raises something, follow it. A committee that has already fallen in love with a candidate will explain away a warning; that is why references come before the committee decides, not after.

9. The candidate weekend and the vote

One man

Bring one man to the church, not two. Two candidates on consecutive weekends turns a call into a contest, and the congregation votes on preaching style and personality rather than on fit. The committee’s job is to do the comparing in private and to present the church with a single, confident recommendation.

The weekend

A typical candidate weekend runs Friday evening through Sunday afternoon:

• Friday evening: dinner with the committee and spouses. Informal. Let him see who you are.
• Saturday morning: meeting with the elders or deacons, then with the staff. Give the staff real time with him; they will work with him every day.
• Saturday afternoon: a tour of the community, the schools, and housing with his wife and family. Someone from the church who moved there with young children is the right guide.
• Saturday evening: an open congregational gathering, question and answer, moderated by the chair. Announce the ground rules in advance.
• Sunday: he preaches in every service. Lunch with the congregation. The committee meets briefly with him before he leaves to answer anything that came up.

Presenting to the church

Before the weekend, the committee should tell the congregation, in writing and from the pulpit, who the man is, why the committee is unanimous, how the process worked, and when the vote will be held. Be transparent about the process. Celebrate the journey. Introduce the pastor personally. Give people a way to ask questions. And emphasize unity: the church is not choosing between candidates, it is confirming a call.

The vote

Hold the vote according to your bylaws, one or two weeks after the weekend, after a season of congregational prayer. Announce the threshold in advance. Most churches require a substantial supermajority to call a pastor, and they should; a man called by 60 percent of the church starts with 40 percent against him. If the vote falls short, the committee resumes its work, and the candidate is told quickly and gently.

10. The offer and the first ninety days

The written offer

Everything in writing, before he accepts: salary and housing allowance, benefits with specifics, retirement contribution, professional expense budget, vacation and study leave, sabbatical policy, moving expenses, start date, and the expectations of the role. Ambiguity in an offer letter becomes resentment in year two. Have an elder and a finance person review it. Then let him take a week to pray over it.

The transition

The search is not over when he says yes. The committee’s last assignment is to see him in well:

• Help with the move, practically. Someone meets the truck.
• Plan a public installation service and invite his former church to send a representative.
• Introduce him to the community: the mayor, the school principal, other pastors in town.
• Schedule conversations at 30, 60, and 90 days with the chair and an elder. Ask how it is going. Ask his wife too.
• Set clear expectations with the congregation: he needs a year to learn the church before anyone should expect him to change it, and he needs the church’s prayers more than its opinions.

Then the committee dissolves. It does not become a shadow board, and its members do not become the people the pastor is accountable to. That is what the elders are for.

11. A realistic timeline

Nine months is fast and requires a committee that can call pastors who are not looking. Fourteen months is normal. Longer than eighteen usually means one of the stages above was skipped, most often section 2 or section 6.

12. When to get help

Not every church needs a search firm, and I wrote a whole chapter in the book to help committees decide honestly. If your committee has the time to do the work, the discernment to screen well, and at least one person who can get a pastor who is not looking to take a call, do it yourselves, and use everything on this site.

If you are in month four with a stack of resumes that are not the man you described, or if nobody on the committee can make the calls in section 6, that is what Premier Church Staffing does. We call pastors who are currently serving in churches like yours, men who would never answer a posting but will take a call. We screen them on doctrine, preaching, character, and references before you see a name. Then we present three who fit, and we back the hire with a 12-month guarantee. Your committee and your congregation still make the decision. We put the right men in front of you. Talk with Will if it would help, and read chapter 14 of the book skeptically first.