The Pastoral Search Committee

The following is a brief listing of some of the problems and limitations in forming a "pastoral search committee." Many churches wrongly assume that if a pastor is to be secured for their congregation, they must immediately begin to form such a committee. Yet, how many of us have ever stopped to question the scriptural legitimacy of this common practice? Please consider the following points:

1. There is absolutely no hint, suggestion, or command within the New Testament to form a pastoral search committee for the purpose of importing pastors from afar whom no one really knows – and yet this practice has become the norm for most churches! Is it any wonder why so many "pastors" in our day are transitory and self-seeking?

2. Church leaders are to be raised (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5), trained (2 Timothy 2:2), and tested (1 Timothy 3:10) within the very churches they already serve. Commenting on some of the problems in having a pastoral search committee, Greg Ogden, a pastor in Saratoga (CA), notes:

The irony is that the final step in the development of calling is to receive "a call" (job offer) from a church that barely knows the candidate. The calling body hopes this unproven, fledgling pastor will bear fruit. How contrary this is to the New Testament model! Leadership was nurtured within the body the people served, in order to serve the body from which they came. David Watson writes, "In the early church the leaders were nearly always appointed from the area in which they served. They had the advantage of knowing the local scene intimately, and were therefore naturally placed for fulfilling an effective pastoral and preaching ministry according to the gifts given to them by God." The calling of a pastor transplanted from one locale to another is analogous to grafting skin from one body to another. Often the skin graft does not take and is rejected by the body. The reasons for a new pastor’s failing to "take" are myriad . . . This process has led to a failure rate of about fifty percent in matches made between pastors and congregations in my denomination (The New Reformation [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990] p.146).

Carl B. Hoch, Jr., professor of New Testament at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, has written:

In the New Testament days, local ministry consisted of people called to serve and lead in their own locality. Ministry used to be performed by ministers who came from within the community, rather than by those who came from the outside and who stayed for only a few years before moving on to the next church. Today the church looks to a school or agency hundreds of miles away for its "pastor." Further, the turnover rate among pastors is tremendous with many remaining in a church for less than five years (All Things New [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995] pp.239-240).

3. The members must first personally and intimately know those who will potentially serve as their elder(s) (1 Thessalonians 5:12), which simply cannot occur within the brief time that a candidate is evaluated. A couple of sermons and committee meetings do very little in fully examining a man’s qualifications for the eldership. Remember: It is very easy to put up a front of spirituality when persuing a salary or a prominent position within a church. According to Mike Parker:

Every one of the qualifications set down in Scripture presupposes a thorough familiarity between the candidate for bishop and the church considering him. But contemporary churches have debased this relationship into a mere process, an interview for employment. The better churches usually insist on more weekend visits than their sisters, but it is rare in the extreme for a church to look for its chief teachers among those who meet the Pauline qualifications. For Paul did not ordain men for all the churches, nor is there any indication that he sent men to the churches to be ordained, but he directed that men be ordained in every church. The transient "pastors" who shift from flock to flock every few years find no precedent in Scripture. And the churches who ransack their lists of external contacts as soon as a pastoral vacancy emerges are likewise guilty of denying the sufficiency of biblical methods. I am fully aware of the dearth of qualified teaching elders to be found among the "laity," but I have supreme confidence that the revealed directives of the Lord are [a] sufficient answer to our weakness. After all, have we not brought this anemia on ourselves by insisting on a theologian/layman dichotomy? By reserving the difficult questions of Scripture for the professionals, the church has salved the consciences of her "laymen" concerning their laziness. This practice confirms them in their ignorance, and preserves their dependence on the elite leaders who seem to love to have it so. But the gifts of the Spirit are distributed throughout the church with no such sharp dividing line. Therefore, let us oppose the hiring of preachers, even good ones. And let the church, in which God has promised to distribute gifts, seek out from among themselves blameless, holy, temperate elders to guide the flock ("The Basic Meaning of Elder," Baptist Reformation Review [Summer – 1978, Vol.7/No.2] p.44).

Gene A. Getz, author of Sharpening the Focus of the Church (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1975), wisely warns:

It must be noted that you cannot make accurate judgments regarding a person’s qualifications without some careful and long-range evaluation by those who have lived in close proximity to that individual. This is why a church who calls a "pastor" on the basis of hearing "him preach" may make some serious errors in judgment. The person may be able to sway the people with his oratory and yet woefully lacking in the qualifications spelled out so clearly in the New Testament (p.169).

4. If one of the apostolic qualifications for church oversight is that a man be able to manage his own household well (1 Timothy 3:4-5) and have a good reputation with those outside the church (1 Timothy 3:7), how is a committee, in a distant state or region far removed from the man’s home, able to fully and effectively investigate his reputation or daily home life?

5. Most pastoral search committees do not even first consider the gifted and qualified men within their own congregations. By doing this, they are suggesting that the spiritual men among them are not competent to shepherd the saints. Thus, those desiring the oversight (1 Timothy 3:1) are not even given the opportunity nor seriously considered.

6. Those people evaluating a potential candidate are, most often, the least qualified in making such a determination (e.g., ignorance of theology and New Testament ecclesiology, shallow spiritual lives, etc.).

7. Most pastoral search committees either ignore or down-play the pastoral qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. There tends to be a greater emphasis upon one’s educational achievements and administrative skills than one’s character and spiritual maturity. This is because many congregations are looking primarily for an administrator who can manage the church’s bureaucracy or "programs," and only secondarily one who is a shepherd. E.M. Bounds was correct when he said, "The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men."

8. A large percentage of pastoral search committees have bought into modern professionalism. Following the world, it seeks the professional specialist or administrative expert who can introduce unique business strategies to make the church numerically grow. Thus, our churches often end up with leaders patterned after the corporate executive, rather than the servant-shepherd model as presented in the New Testament (Matthew 23:8-12; Mark 10:35-45; John 13:1-17; 1 Corinthians 4:1; 1 Peter 5:2-3).

9. A church without a pastor may be lacking, but it is still a church. Paul’s pattern was to first establish a church and then, after a period of time, as gifted leaders naturally emerged, to appoint those men as elders within the congregation (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5). Thus, a church is still able to function apart from an "official" leadership. This demonstrates that a church does not have to immediately rush to secure a pastor in order to function as a church, but instead, can wait for qualified leaders to rise from within the congregation.