After seminary, I was coming to the end of my one-year residency as a hospital chaplain. I was a few months from unemployment and had turned up the heat on finding a position.
After a miserable experience in a church job during seminary, I was determined never again to get caught not asking sufficient questions. Going into that interview, I knew the job was going to provide a house. I went to the interview just wanting the house and didn’t ask enough questions. Despite many great people and experiences, it was not a good fit. At the end, I told my family: “I will flip burgers, but I will never again take a job just for its financial benefits.”
Brad Bull
During my subsequent Ph.D. work, I told my students in a professional development class, “The questions you ask at an interview are as important as the answers you give.” I offer the following examples.
‘When do you want to start?’
Toward the end of my chaplaincy residency, after a sermon I delivered in the hospital chapel, I was approached by a man. He told me he was chair of his church’s pastor search committee. He wanted to bring his committee to hear me preach. They came the next week.
After the service, the eight-member committee and I filed into a spacious consultation room. We took our seats. The committee chair said, “Well, Brad. I have one question for you: When do you want to start?” Everyone laughed. He then said, “Brad, as you look around this room, you see the young people of this church.” The youngest person was in her 50s. The seven other people looked to be in their 60s, 70s and 80s. The chair went on: “We are an aging congregation. We are a small congregation. But we are an affluent congregation. We can afford to pay you and pay you well. Do you have any questions for us?”
I kid you not. That was it. Have I mentioned I was nearing unemployment? That my internship stipend was $15,000 a year? Now, all that separated me from my first healthy paycheck was, “When do I start?”
“Thank goodness I chose the road less traveled.”
Thank goodness I chose the road less traveled. Rather than pouncing at the opportunity, I cautiously replied, “Well, I don’t know how to say this without sounding critical, but I’m wondering why you don’t have any more questions for me. I mean, we’re talking about me being the pastor of your church. But you haven’t asked me anything about my theology, my vision, my philosophy of leadership — things a 20-minute sermon couldn’t possibly tell you.”
A deer-herd-in-headlights awkwardness filled the room. Slowly questions emerged. A man who looked to be in his 70s or 80s asked a long, rambling question that boiled down to asking my view of the inspiration of Scripture. I said, “Let me see if I understand the question. Are you…?” He interrupted and angrily said, “Let me put it to you this way: Do you believe a whale really swallowed Noah?”
I smiled, thinking he was affecting his anger, and this was a trick question. I said, “No, I do not.” He jerked in disbelief, and I could tell he had been serious.
I continued. “I do, however, believe that a big fish swallowed Jonah.”
The room exploded in laughter. The man looked confused. The person beside him said, “You said ‘Noah.’ The story is ‘Jonah and the whale.’” The man spent the rest of the meeting glaring at me with eyes that said the retired-sailor version of “smart aleck.”
Years later, I posted on social media an essay about the book of Jonah. I said the passage that most made the book seem more like an allegorical short story rather than a historical event was that in a city of 120,000, every single person in the city repented when called to do so. I think I quoted Madeline L’Engle saying, “I take the Bible far too seriously to take it all literally.” A Facebook friend scolded my opinion and sent me a link to a 50-minute sermon and said it would “help” me. I listened to the entire sermon. I listened to the last 10 minutes two more times. I then told my friend to listen to the last 10 minutes again, pointing out the preacher came to the conclusion I did about Jonah being allegorical. My friend wrote back: “Oh.”
As the interview proceeded, I asked if the church had a written constitution and bylaws. I was assured they did. I told them I would like to see them at some point before in subsequent conversations.
“We are looking for someone young and energetic to lead us to do new and exciting things.”
Eventually, the chair said, “Brad, as I said, you are looking at the young people in this church. We are looking for someone young and energetic to lead us to do new and exciting things. Could you give us some examples of new and exciting things you would lead us to do?”
“Certainly. I think churches work people to death. It’s well known that 5% of the people do 95% of the work. It leads to burnout. We’ve turned the sabbath into another day of work. I think sometimes we need a sabbath from the way we do sabbath. Maybe we could take every seventh Sunday and not do anything that requires preparation. No Sunday school lessons; no rehearsed music. We could be like the Quakers and just sit in silence and share our spontaneous testimonies. Or maybe we could all carpool to another church, worship with them and see how they do things.”
I’m laughing now as I picture the looks on the faces — of all but one woman — as they looked at me like I now had scaly green skin, red eyes, antennae and a ray gun pointed at them. I felt like using a robotic voice to say, “Take me to your leader.”
It was at this moment in my young life I discovered “We are looking for someone to lead us to do new and exciting things” actually means “We are looking for a new face to lead us to do the same old thing.” I later found out the same applies at even secular jobs where leaders ask you to shake things up when they really mean for you to blend into the wallpaper.
The chair of the committee finally broke the stunned silence and said, “Brad, we’re going to ask you to leave the room so we can talk about you. We as a committee will meet later in the week to talk about you again.” The meeting that began with “When do you want to start?” ended with “If you get a copy of our constitution and bylaws in the mail, we want to meet with you again. If not, thank you for being here today.”
Of course, I never got those materials. It turned out the friendly-faced woman on the committee was the aunt of a friend of mine. My friend informed me he had been told the committee had a 50-50 knock-down-drag-out fight over me. My friend’s aunt reportedly said, “I think he was the first person who wasn’t just telling us what we wanted to hear.”
Since the meeting had been quickly arranged, and it was in 1994 before I had internet, I had not done any homework or networking prior to the meeting. My friend told me the most recent pastor had taken early retirement and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. The one before him died by suicide.
The friendly-faced woman on the committee sent me, on church letterhead, a sweet handwritten-in-elegant-cursive letter on behalf of the search committee — or at least the dissenting minority. After affirming me as a dedicated servant of Christ, she averred, “As much as we would love to have you serve at our church, we do not feel that our church would be a good place for you to begin your career. We hope that you will not be discouraged but will continue exactly in the same manner that you did with us. I cannot express enough to you how much I appreciated your honesty and loving spirit. Believe me when I say that we consider this our great loss.”
I have tears in my eyes as I transcribe this passage from my correspondence archives. What a blessing.
(123rf.com)
‘Why are there no youth on this committee?’
Two weeks later, I was invited to interview for a youth ministry position at a large church in a mid-sized city. I looked around the long conference room table and saw the youngest person appeared to be in her late 30s or early 40s. The committee was entirely parents and grandparents. Eventually, the male chairperson in his 40s or 50s asked, “What questions do you have for us?” I said, “Well, I don’t know how to say this without sounding critical,” (do you see a pattern here?) “but I’m wondering why there are no youth on this committee.”
The chairman flushed red across his face and bald head. With utter indignation he said, “Well, I don’t think youth members have any business on a committee.”
I calmly said, “Well, that’s a philosophical issue we need to resolve right now. My college roommate, at age 16 or 17, was on his church’s pastor search committee. This is where we teach young people how the church functions, and it’s how we nurture future leaders. If you think youth have no place on this, of all committees, I’m left wondering if you want a youth minister or a babysitter.”
The chairman’s head turned a deeper shade of red.
“Well, we had a youth on a committee one time, and it didn’t work out.”
A grandmother rescued the awkward silence. “Well, we had a youth on a committee one time, and it didn’t work out. They didn’t come to the meetings.”
I said, “Well, if you had just one youth member on the committee, that probably was the problem. Most young people would be intimidated in a room full of adults. At a church this size, you need at least two youth members on this committee.”
She replied, “Well we have been interviewing folks for nearly a year, and no one has raised this issue.”
Red flags and flares began waving faster and exploding more brightly in my head. I decided to withdraw with my own bang. I said, “There are only three reasons no one has raised that issue. Either your prospects have been stupid, cowards or desperate for a job. No youth minister worth his or her salt wouldn’t wonder why there are no youth on the youth minister search committee.”
I didn’t wait for an objection. I plowed on: “Look. This obviously isn’t going to work out. I’m withdrawing myself from consideration. But I want to speak to you as your brother in Christ who wants good things for your church. You need to call timeout on this process. You need to reformulate this committee with at least two youth members. That way the youth group will have a sense of investment and connection. That will be good for them, for your church and for your next youth minister.”
A month later, they hired someone fresh off the seminary graduation platform. A friend in that church told me about the new minister’s second worship service. Shaking his head, he said, “I honestly wondered if he could read. In the middle of the reading, he turned to the pastor and said, ‘Who picked out this passage?’” As I recall, he was there less than two years.
About a week after that interview, I ran into a silver-headed pastor friend who gave me the name of a local church seeking a minister of youth and young adults. In short order I had an interview. I walked in the conference room and saw a committee of 13. There were two high school students and a college student. During introductions, I learned the college student was missing band practice at the University of Tennessee to attend the interview. Anyone who knows the rigor of that band knows why I saw deep commitment to the church and immediately saw green flags. More green flags waved when the chair told me they had asked a state convention consultant for questions to ask, and each member of the committee, including the youth, would pose the questions.
I spent eight years at that church when the average youth-minister tenure was 18 months. Truly, my patience and refusal to take the quick money or prestigious appointment paid off.
(123rf.com)
Must have ‘senior pastor’ experience
Fast forward almost 12 years. I was coming to the end of my Ph.D. program in human ecology. My plan had been to finish my coursework and, while writing my dissertation or immediately after, get a position as senior pastor for the magic number of five years, so I could then have my ticket punched to virtually name my position teaching at a seminary or university. Yet, I knew I had my work cut out for me.
A church once had asked me to consult with them on an initial stack of resumes for senior pastor. I recommended a dear friend. Compared to the resumes I was shown, even an objective viewer would say he was by far the best candidate. However, a church poll — you know the kind that concludes “We want a pastor who is 32 with 15 years of experience and has a beautiful wife and three perfectly behaved children” — had deemed the next pastor needed to have at least five years of senior pastor experience — presumably at a church even smaller than their own.
“The church learned a candidate having five years’ experience as senior pastor was not an adequate predictor.”
My friend had been associate pastor at one large church for 12 years — during two interims, serving as the senior staff member. However, he had not had the title “senior” pastor. As such, his resume was tossed without an interview.
The church subsequently learned a hard lesson about the difficulty of what predicts a good fit. While it is very difficult to predict a good fit, the church learned a candidate having five years’ experience as senior pastor was not an adequate predictor.
A retired pastor once angrily opposed the hiring of a pastor because he never had been a senior pastor. The candidate had been an associate pastor and served as a vice president of a denominational agency. The retired pastor told me, “By the time I was his age, I had 12 years’ experience in six churches!”
I said, “If you had been in six churches in 12 years, you didn’t have 12 years’ experience; you had two years’ of experience six times.”
He staggard back like I physically hit him and blurted, “I’m not going to stand here and be insulted by you.”
I said, “I’m not insulting you; I’m just saying there are many different kinds of experience.”
(123rf.com)
‘You are being too honest’
In light of all this emotion over the title “senior pastor,” I knew even with one year’s experience as a hospital chaplain, 13 years as an associate pastor, and holding a Ph.D. in human ecology, the deck was still stacked against me to land a position as senior pastor. I believed in efficiency, and I didn’t want to waste time forcing churches to dig to find out who I was.
Based on an advertising slogan, I came to endorse what I called the Holiday Inn approach to job hunting: “The best surprise is no surprise.” Wanting to put all my cards on the table, I created a glossy dossier with an in-depth but reader-friendly description of my views on theology, hermeneutics, church polity, philosophy of leadership, etc. I bumped along for a year of dissertation writing, applying for jobs at churches and universities. Churches said I looked like a professor. Universities said I looked like a pastor. Every so often, I would get a letter of interest, but I rarely got an interview.
“You are never going to get a job as a pastor. You are being too honest.”
Remember the silver-headed pastor who pointed me to the church with whom I served for eight years? I asked him to give me feedback on my dossier of beliefs and mission. He called me and said, “Brad, you are never going to get a job as a pastor. You are being too honest. These are not the things you say up front. You get the job first and then lead folks to these kinds of understandings.” (We must ask ourselves why the previous pastors at all these churches had not led the people to the understandings this sagely retired pastor clearly held.)
Fans of The Hunger Games will understand when I say I heard my mentor telling me to be Plutarch Heavensbeee — to pretend to be something I wasn’t in order to become an insider with leverage to affect heavenly change in the long-term big picture of a living hell. To some degree, I could understand that notion if we were in the context of undermining a murderous tyrant like President Snow. But in the church of Jesus Christ? Yes, there is a struggle between idealism and pragmatism, and I don’t pretend to have found the balance.
I told my silver-haired mentor, “If they don’t want me, they don’t want me. It will just be a bad fit.”
I kept sending my dossier. While chaperoning a group at church camp, I met a member of a church seeking a pastor. I was intrigued by her description of their church. I looked it up. It was a dream church. I sent my materials. I never heard back. I later found out an acquaintance of mine got the job. I knew we were nearly blood brothers in ideology. Why had I not gotten at least an interview? I don’t know, but I know a few years later he was out of church-based ministry entirely, badly burned by that congregation.
‘What questions do you have for us?’
Then I got a contact from a church well outside my region. They were a well-educated, middle-class congregation who clearly represented a good fit with my sense of mission. They invited me to an initial phone interview. It was my first interview for a senior pastorate since the “When do you want to start?” experience.
In the meantime, the internet had become part of our lives. I was still in my doctoral program, burning the candles at both ends with a double full-time course load, two part-time jobs and two young children to feed. An hour before the interview, I realized I had not finished my pre-interview homework. I had thoroughly read up about the church, but I had not prepared questions. I was graduate assistant in a class where we taught: “The questions you ask at an interview are as important as the answers you give. Create questions that help you understand if this will be a good fit.”
“The questions you ask at an interview are as important as the answers you give.”
So, I hopped online and quickly searched “questions for pastor interviews.” One of the first hits was a webpage by Mennonites. It was interview gold. It had pages of questions for the church to ask the prospect and vice versa. Plus, the questions were categorized. Since this was an initial interview, I decided to ask one summarizing question from each category.
This was well before Zoom. The 11 committee members, a near even mix of men and women, were gathered around a conference table speakerphone. The interview felt like a conversation between old friends. We got to “What questions do you have for us?” Leading into my final question, I put on an air of awkwardness. I was going to ask a question that cut to the heart of many church conflicts. It was not a specific question recommended by the Mennonites. It was an allegorical question that captured the category of “physical property management.”
I haltingly said, “Umm … I do have … uhhh … one more question. Iiii … uhhh … want to apologize in advance for raising such a potentially … volatile issue. But let’s just get the hard stuff on the table.” I audibly sighed. “Who sets the thermostat temperature in the sanctuary?”
They exploded in extended laughter. Beneath the din, I heard a male voice say, “What an insightful question.”
When the laughter settled, the female chair of the committee said one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever heard for dealing with the eternal battle of the thermostat. “Our sanctuary has two separate HVAC systems and two thermostats. Folks who regularly come to our church know which side to sit on.”
It was a delightful conversation. They were impressed and said so. I’m not sure why I wasn’t invited for an in-person interview. However, I learned one of their consultants was someone with whom I’d once gotten into what I thought was an honest and productive debate on boundaries between secular politics and the pulpit. I eventually admitted I had been more wrong than right.
(123rf.com)
‘They have a not-so-nice name for driver helpers’
Meanwhile, I worked as a seasonal driver helper at UPS to make enough money to buy my kids Christmas presents. When I went for that interview, the head of HR said, “I’ve never interviewed a Ph.D. for a driver helper position.” I became the most highly educated driver helper in the history of Knoxville, Tenn.
On my first day, my daughter’s school secretary asked my plans for the day. When I told her, she smirked and said, “My husband used to work for UPS. They have a not-so-nice name for driver helpers. … Bitch.” I said, “If anyone calls me that, I’ll say, ‘Hey, buddy. That’s Dr. Bitch to you.”
It was a great experience that earned Christmas-present money and led to multiple sermon, classroom and counseling illustrations.
The next month I started working as a therapist at a counseling center. Then I got an invitation to interview for a teaching position at a small Christian university. Interviewing at Christian universities is a story for another day.
For now, if you are interviewing at a church, remember this: There are things worse than unemployment. Better to do menial labor in a great environment with good people than to be well paid and miserable.
A good verse to read before any interview is Romans 8:28 — “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to (God’s) purpose.” Of course, that doesn’t mean all things are good; rather, they can be used for good. So, even the interview from hell will lead us to manifestations of heavenly blessings when we are patient for the fruit to grow from the manure used as fertilizer.
Brad Bull serves as a private-practice therapist in Tennessee and Virginia, after 15 years in parish ministry and 16 years as a university professor. He is the author of Restacking Our Caps and Loving the Monkeys who Took Them — Blunders, Conflicts, and Redemption in the Early Journey of a Peddler of Soul Mending (which, being a title, contains an Oxford comma he can’t remove to please the BNG editor). His website for therapy and retreat speaking is DrBradBull.com.