Silent Force Shaping Pastoral Search and Expectation
The story is becoming all too common. A church needs to hire a pastor. They form a search team, draft a job description and post the position. Resumes come in, sermon videos are viewed and social media feeds are reviewed. The pool of candidates is narrowed, interviews scheduled, a finalist is chosen and presented to the congregation for a vote.
Just as the excitement for the new pastor begins to evolve into normalcy something hidden comes to light. Misaligned ministry values, a hot temper, need for control, financial impropriety, or an affair. Church leadership, members and attendees wrestle with a wide range of emotions.
Shock, disappointment, anger, sadness, bewilderment, guilt, betrayal and grief now reside where there was once pure optimism. The leader was likable and their ministry skillset was strong based on a careful review of their past accomplishments. Their references spoke highly of their abilities and the denomination did not express hesitation.
Focus shifts quickly from what took place to an attempt to explain why it happened and what needs to occur next. Examining how we may have contributed to the current reality is painful in a different way. So we reflect long enough to feel the discomfort and move quickly towards forming our next search team.
What could happen if we spent more time in that middle space? Mining our personal desires, church culture and what we aspire to as a church will be difficult and revealing. The deeper we are willing to go into the recesses of our own heart the more insight and awareness we will glean. What we learn can shape how we move towards what is next.
It is within that center space, the place where we evaluate our own hearts and lives that questions like this arise: how might celebrity pastor culture be affecting our pastoral search and what should we be measuring?
The leader is articulate and projects confidence, never stumbling over words or losing train of thought. They speak with enthusiasm, wit and a warmth that feels genuine. Production quality is flawless. Tight camera angles, professional sound quality, and graphics that tie in with every point made. The leader is fit, well dressed and projects the ideal picture of health and success. Social media, podcast feeds and YouTube subscriptions offer constant access to what we perceive to be the best that there is.
The only thing that would be better is if we had all of this at our church. Either consciously or unconsciously the celebrity pastor becomes the template. We might look for an impressive work history on the resume or measure charisma in sermon video samples. We may listen closely to try to determine if the candidate has “it” during the virtual interview and if we would be proud to post on social about this person as our pastor after the in-person interview.
The allure of this is not new to us. It is an age old problem. In the Old Testament of the Bible we find a story about a priest named Samuel who served during the waning days of King Saul’s reign. God instructed the priest to go to the home of a man named Jesse and anoint a new king from among his eight sons. Samuel entered the house and saw Eliab, the oldest son, and was instantly convinced this man was the one that God had chosen to become king. God corrected Samuel in that moment telling him that he shouldn’t consider height or appearance. Despite these attributes and his position as oldest son, which was highly esteemed in that culture, God had not chosen Eliab as the next king.
Here is the problem (and the solution). The people I know who have led an organization through an extended season of lasting transformative growth rarely end up going viral. They are known for their quiet fortitude, unhurried presence, deep convictions and there isn’t a gap between who they are on stage or off. These characteristics are hard to monetize on social media but are priceless when you suddenly find yourself in the midst of tragedy or when conflict surfaces in the board room and threatens to fracture relationships. They remember names, return calls, show up even when it is inconvenient, are transparent when things become difficult and stay when leaving seems like the easier option. Their social media presence is unremarkable but what is remarkable is this: there is a sacred bond between them and the people they lead.
A pastor like that, and his wife, helped shape and influence my wife as she was growing up. Their influence didn’t come by way of a viral moment, it was nurtured through friendship over many years. The fruit of their pastoral labor is far more than temporal; it will be eternal. He has since retired. We still keep in contact. His church was small. He didn’t have a radio program or author a book or serve as a headline presenter at a conference. If he were to apply for a pastoral opening at your church would he make it into the first round of virtual interviews?
If you have not served on a pastoral search team consider how celebrity pastor culture may be quietly influencing how you view your pastor. Do you experience dissatisfaction with your own pastor’s sermon after listening to your favorite Bible teaching podcast? How is the production level at the church you watch on YouTube influencing your expectations at your local in-person church worship gathering? Consider this: skills the algorithm rewards and what actually sustains a congregation over time are not the same.
As the pastoral hiring cycle unfolds… the search, the hope and the unraveling… it seems we must evaluate the metrics we measure. If the unspoken template we use in our pastoral search is the pastor we watch on YouTube each week we will keep selecting for charisma and miss the shepherd.
“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 New International Version
