Good Questions to Ask a Pastor
Twenty questions about the work itself rather than about your own faith or about the building. They suit an interview, a long conversation with a minister you already know, or anyone who wants to understand the job before assuming what it involves: how the week is actually spent, how a sermon gets written, preaching on subjects that split a congregation, sitting with the dying, who pastors the pastor, and what the role has cost their family. For the practical answers a first-time visitor needs instead, the questions to ask a pastor about their church cover that ground.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What does a normal week look like for you, outside Sunday?
Why ask it
Most congregations picture the sermon and the services and little else. The real week usually includes hospital visits, funerals, budgets, buildings, and meetings, and hearing the proportions changes how people treat their pastor's time.
When did you know this was the work you were going to do?
Why ask it
Some describe a long process of being talked into it, others a single week. Either way, asking for the story rather than the calling gets you a person rather than a role.
What part of the job did you not see coming?
Why ask it
Common answers are administration, conflict between members, and how public a family becomes. It is one of the few questions that reliably gets a candid sentence early in a conversation.
How do you decide what to preach on?
Why ask it
The mechanism matters: a set lectionary, a book worked through in sequence, or a topic chosen each week. Choosing weekly gives more freedom and makes it easier to avoid difficult texts, which is the trade-off worth asking about.
How long does a sermon take you, start to finish?
Why ask it
A specific number of hours is more informative than any statement about preparation. If it is very low, ask when the thinking happens, since some preachers work through a text for weeks before writing anything.
What do you do when you have to preach on something you are still wrestling with?
Why ask it
Listen for whether they let the congregation see the struggle or resolve it before Sunday. Both are defensible positions, and the choice tells you what kind of room they are trying to create.
How do you handle a subject that will divide the congregation?
Why ask it
Ask for the last time it happened rather than the principle. What they did, who they told first, and what it cost in attendance is the practical answer, and avoidance is itself an answer.
Who pastors you?
Why ask it
Clergy who have no one in that role are at real risk, and the good answers are specific: a spiritual director, a peer group outside the congregation, a therapist, a bishop or supervisor. Vagueness here often precedes burnout.
How do you keep a prayer life when it is also your job?
Why ask it
The occupational hazard is that scripture and prayer become material to be prepared rather than practised. Practical answers, such as praying with texts they will never preach, are useful to anyone whose work and convictions overlap.
What do you say at a hospital bed when there is nothing to say?
Why ask it
Experienced ministers usually say very little, and will tell you that presence and silence do more than explanation. If the answer is a set of verses, ask what they do when those clearly are not helping.
What have you learned about grief from sitting with people in it?
Why ask it
Expect the timescale to be longer than most people assume, and expect something about the weeks after the funeral when visitors stop coming. This answer is worth having before you next try to comfort someone.
How do you hold what people tell you in confidence without carrying it alone?
Why ask it
Ask about the boundaries: what they will not repeat, what they are required to report where a child or vulnerable adult may be at risk, and where they can talk things through under supervision. A pastor with no outlet is carrying a great deal.
Where is the line between pastoral care and professional counselling?
Why ask it
A clear-eyed answer includes what they are not trained for and who they refer to. Anyone who believes prayer replaces treatment for a mental health condition is a risk to the people who come to them.
How do you preach the Sunday after something terrible happens in the congregation?
Why ask it
The prepared sermon usually has to be abandoned on a Friday or a Saturday. Ask what they keep and what they cut, and whether they name the event from the front or leave it to the people who already know.
What do you do with a sermon you know did not land?
Why ask it
Nobody in the congregation will tell them, so preachers develop their own read on it and their own recovery. Ask whether the text gets revisited later or quietly retired, and who they talk to about it on a Monday.
How do you hold together keeping long-standing members and reaching new people?
Why ask it
Nearly every congregation is negotiating this, usually through music, service times, and language. The interesting part is what they have already changed and who was upset by it.
What do you say to the congregation about people who leave?
Why ask it
How departures are treated says a great deal about the health of a church. Listen for whether people are allowed to leave without being characterised, and whether anyone follows up with them at all.
Which part of your tradition do you find yourself defending most?
Why ask it
You learn where the pressure comes from, whether inside the congregation or outside it, and how they respond under it. The answer is often more revealing than a direct question about their beliefs.
What has this work cost your family?
Why ask it
Ask gently and let them decline. Answers often involve moves, a lack of privacy, unpaid expectations of a spouse, and children growing up observed by a whole congregation.
What would you want said about your work here in twenty years?
Why ask it
It asks for the long view, and most pastors answer in terms of people rather than programmes or buildings. It is a good closing question because it usually reveals what they think the job is actually for.
Talking with a Pastor
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Arranging the conversation
Do not do this on a Sunday morning
A pastor between services is working and mid-conversation with a dozen people. Email or ask the church office for a scheduled half hour midweek, and say roughly what you want to talk about so they can prepare.
Say which kind of conversation this is
Interviewing them for a project, considering joining the church, and asking for help with something in your own life all call for different answers. Naming it in the first minute saves both of you from the wrong conversation.
If you are coming for help
- 1Say what is going on in the first minute rather than working up to it, so the time goes where you need it.
- 2Ask what they can and cannot keep confidential, including anything they are required to report, before you share something sensitive.
- 3Ask what practical help the church can offer: a fund, a meal rota, a lift, a referral to counselling or debt advice.
- 4Ask directly whether they think you should be talking to a professional as well. Most will say yes and can name someone.
- 5Agree what happens next and who contacts whom, so the conversation does not simply end.
If you are deciding whether to join
- Ask to see the budget and the most recent accounts, and note who reviews them independently.
- Ask for the safeguarding policy and who holds it. A healthy church hands this over without hesitation.
- Ask how leaders are chosen and how they can be removed.
- Ask what happens when the pastor and the board disagree, and for the last real example.
- Ask how the church treats people who leave, then ask someone who left.
What to avoid
- Do not ask them to settle a doctrinal argument with someone who is not in the room.
- Do not ask about individual members, even indirectly. They will not answer, and the question changes the tone.
- Do not treat their spouse or children as unpaid staff, or ask them to explain the pastor's decisions.
- Do not save a serious question for the end of the time. Ask it first.