Good Questions to Ask Your Pastor
For the pastor you already sit under, where you have enough standing to ask something a visitor could not. These twenty go after where they personally stand rather than what the church officially teaches: the doctrine still moving for them, the strongest argument against their own position, what they keep out of the pulpit and why, and what they have changed their mind about since ordination. If the thing under strain is your own faith rather than your curiosity about theirs, the deep questions to ask your pastor are aimed at that instead.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Which parts of what you preach are settled for you, and which are still moving?
Why ask it
A gentler opener than it sounds, because it grants that some of it is settled. What they put in the second category is the map of everything else worth asking about, and it is usually shorter and stranger than a congregation expects.
When you read the Bible for yourself rather than for Sunday, where do you go?
Why ask it
The occupational hazard of the job is that every text becomes material. Naming a book they read without preaching it tells you what actually holds them, and it is rarely the one they preach from most.
How do you keep your own faith fed when you are the one leading everyone else's?
Why ask it
Listen for anything outside their own church: a peer group, a spiritual director, somewhere they worship on vacation without leading. A pastor whose only spiritual input is the sermon they wrote is running on empty.
What do you do in the weeks when you do not feel like praying?
Why ask it
Everyone in ministry has those weeks, so the question is what they do about them. Useful answers are unglamorous: a fixed time, a psalm read without feeling. A pastor who denies it ever happens will not be much help when it happens to you.
Is there a doctrine you hold because the tradition holds it rather than because you are persuaded?
Why ask it
Almost everyone in ministry has one, and almost nobody volunteers it. Naming it is a sign they can tell the difference between inherited belief and their own, which is the whole thing you are trying to find out.
Which part of the Bible do you find hardest to preach on?
Why ask it
Naming one means admitting something is unresolved. The answer tells you whether they work through the whole text or quietly route around the passages that raise awkward questions.
When two passages seem to contradict each other, how do you work it out?
Why ask it
This asks for their method rather than their conclusions, which is the more portable thing to learn. An answer about it all fitting together in the end means you will get no help with the specific verse that is troubling you.
What is the strongest argument against what you believe, and how do you answer it?
Why ask it
Asking for the best version of the opposing case is the fastest test of whether someone has actually thought. A weak or caricatured version of the objection means the answer they give you is worth very little.
Do you think God still speaks to people directly, and have you experienced that?
Why ask it
The second half is what makes this worth asking, because the doctrinal position is usually predictable from the tradition and the personal experience is not. Expect either a specific account or a careful distinction, and both are informative.
Where do you land on suffering, and is that answer any use to you personally?
Why ask it
Every tradition has a stock reply here and most ministers know it is thin at three in the morning. The gap between what they would preach and what they lean on themselves is the honest part of the answer.
Where do you land on faith and science, and has that changed over time?
Why ask it
Ask whether the view has moved, not only what it is. The presence or absence of change shows how they handle a question where the honest answer may be inconvenient for their tradition.
Is there something you believe that most people in this congregation would disagree with?
Why ask it
Uncomfortable and worth asking. A pastor who cannot name anything either holds no independent views or will not say them aloud, and either way that changes how much weight to give their teaching.
In practice, not doctrine, what makes this church different from the one down the road?
Why ask it
In practice means what a visitor would notice: how decisions get made, who is allowed to preach, what happens at communion. A doctrinal summary tells you nothing about what belonging there is like.
How do you decide when the church should speak publicly about something and when it should stay quiet?
Why ask it
You are asking for the criteria rather than the politics. Someone with an actual rule has thought this through; someone without one will end up following whichever part of the congregation is loudest.
How can someone be sure they are saved when they do not feel it?
Why ask it
Assurance and feeling come apart for nearly everyone eventually. Whether they point you to promises, to experience, or to your circumstances tells you a great deal about the tradition you are sitting in.
Has anyone in this congregation ever changed your mind about something?
Why ask it
Teaching runs one way most of the time, so this asks whether anything comes back. A specific person and a specific subject is the good answer, and it tells you how much of what you say here actually lands.
What would have to happen for you to leave this tradition?
Why ask it
Nearly everyone has a line, and hearing where theirs sits tells you what they think is load-bearing and what they think is furniture. An answer of nothing at all is worth following up gently rather than admiring.
Which of your own convictions do you keep out of the pulpit, and why?
Why ask it
The reasons vary enormously: it would split the church, it is not settled yet, it is not what preaching is for. Whichever reason they give is a clearer statement of how they understand their own authority than any answer about doctrine.
Have you changed your mind about anything significant since you were ordained?
Why ask it
A reversal shows they read and think rather than defend an inherited position. If nothing has shifted in twenty years, ask what they have read recently that disagreed with them.
What is the question you get asked most often that you still do not have a good answer to?
Why ask it
Ends by treating them as a fellow believer rather than a dispenser of answers. What they name is often the exact question you were most nervous about raising.
How to use these questions with a pastor
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting the conversation set up
Ask for a meeting, not the doorway after church
The ten minutes after a service is the worst slot in a pastor's week: they are tired, other people are waiting, and they cannot give you attention. Email or ask for half an hour midweek, and say roughly what you want to talk about so they arrive ready.
Say whether you want advice or a conversation
Pastors are trained to move toward help, so an open question about doubt is often heard as a request for a fix. If you want to think out loud rather than be counseled, say so at the start and the whole meeting changes shape.
Two or three questions is the right number
These are subjects people spend years on. Bringing a list produces short answers to all of it. Pick the ones you actually care about and let the rest wait for another meeting.
Reading the answers
Prefer specifics to positions
On doubt, suffering or conflict, a story about one person beats a statement of principle every time. If you keep getting principles, ask what they did the last time it came up.
Treat I do not know as a good sign
On suffering and hard passages, an admission of not knowing is more trustworthy than a tidy resolution. Someone with an answer to everything is not going to sit with you in the parts that have no answer.
Notice what gets deflected upward
Answers that go straight to church policy or denominational position when you asked what they personally think usually mean the honest answer would cost them something. That is information, and it does not have to be held against them.
What to keep in mind
- Confidentiality has limits. Most pastors are obliged to report disclosures about harm to a child or a credible risk of serious harm, and in some places they are legally required to. If you need to know the boundaries before you speak, ask directly at the beginning.
- A pastor is not a therapist, a lawyer or a doctor. On depression, an abusive marriage, addiction or a legal problem, the right question is who they would refer you to, and a good pastor will have names ready.
- Do not use these questions to test whether they pass. Questions asked to expose a wrong answer are obvious from the first one, and you will get careful, useless replies for the rest of the meeting.
- If you are asking because you are considering leaving the church, say that. It is a harder conversation and a much more honest one than asking around it.
- Their answer on a contested subject may not be the church's official position, and repeating it as though it were can cause them real trouble. Ask before you quote them.
Afterward
Follow the one referral
If they suggested a book, a group or a person, do the one thing rather than all three. Coming back having actually done it is what turns a single meeting into an ongoing relationship.
Offer something back
Asking what would help, and then doing it, changes the balance of the relationship. Most pastors are asked for things constantly and offered very little.
Go back with the follow-up question
The second conversation is nearly always better than the first, because the surface answers are out of the way. Say which part of the last answer you have been thinking about since.