Hardest Questions to Ask a Pastor
Twenty questions a pastor is rarely asked to their face, ordered from the ones that work over coffee to the ones that need a closed door: unanswered prayer, hell, passages they find difficult, where they part company with their own denomination, how the church handles harm done inside it, who holds them accountable, and what the work has cost them. For members, seekers and anyone considering joining a congregation.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What made you want to do this work, and does that reason still hold?
Why ask it
An easy opener that is not a soft one. Pastors who entered ministry in their twenties often find the original reason has been replaced by something quieter, and saying so out loud is the first honest answer of the conversation.
What is a question about your own faith you have never found a good answer to?
Why ask it
Asks for an unresolved question rather than a defense, which changes the register of everything after it. If the answer arrives instantly and neatly, it is a sermon illustration, not an admission, and worth following with "and what about now?"
Has your belief ever gone quiet on you, and what did you do while it was quiet?
Why ask it
Clergy are often warned that admitting a dry spell will unsettle people. What they describe doing during it, still preaching, still visiting the sick, is usually more instructive to a doubting member than any argument for God's existence.
Which parts of scripture do you find hardest to sit with?
Why ask it
Almost every reader has passages they skip. Naming them, the conquest narratives, the treatment of slaves, verses about women, shows whether the pastor reads the whole text or a curated version of it.
How do you decide which commands in the Bible still apply and which belonged to their time?
Why ask it
Everyone draws this line somewhere, so the interesting part is the principle behind where they draw it. An answer of "we take it all literally" cannot survive one follow-up about food laws or head coverings, and both of you will know it.
How do you read the opening chapters of Genesis alongside the age of the earth?
Why ask it
Less about geology than about how the pastor handles a conflict in public. Watch whether they can describe a reading other than their own without contempt, because that predicts how they will treat you when you disagree with them.
Why does God allow suffering that seems to serve no purpose at all?
Why ask it
The qualifier matters. Most stock answers depend on suffering producing growth, so naming the cases where nothing is produced, a stillbirth, dementia, a famine, tests whether they have an answer or a formula. "I don't know" is a respectable answer here.
When you have prayed for someone and they died anyway, what do you think happened to that prayer?
Why ask it
This puts the abstract problem in the pastor's own hands, since they have almost certainly done it. Listen for whether they blame the faith of the person praying, which tells you something important about how this church treats the sick.
What do you believe happens to people who never heard of Jesus?
Why ask it
The point where stated doctrine and private conviction most often diverge. Some will say they hope for more than their tradition promises, and the way they hold that gap is more revealing than the doctrine itself.
Do you believe hell is eternal and conscious, and how do you hold that alongside a loving God?
Why ask it
Ask for both halves in one breath so the answer cannot rest on one of them alone. Positions vary widely within most traditions, and a pastor who has never had to say theirs plainly will be visibly working it out as they speak.
What do you say to a parent whose child has died, and what do you make sure not to say?
Why ask it
The second half is the real question. Experienced clergy have a short list of sentences they have stopped using, usually about God's plan or needing another angel, and hearing that list tells you how much time they have spent in hospital rooms.
What would change your mind about a doctrine you currently teach?
Why ask it
A person with no answer to this is not describing conviction so much as a closed system. A good answer names the kind of evidence or argument that would count, which also tells you what they think authority rests on.
If you realized something you had preached for years was wrong, how would you tell the congregation?
Why ask it
Tests institutional courage rather than belief. Some will admit they would soften it into a series of sermons over a year, and that honest answer says more about the pressures on the pulpit than a claim that they would announce it on Sunday.
Where do you quietly disagree with your own denomination?
Why ask it
Most clergy have at least one point of difference they manage rather than advertise. Whether they will name it to you depends on how safe they feel, so treat a refusal as information about their position rather than as evasion.
What does this church teach about LGBTQ members, and what does that mean in practice for membership, baptism and serving?
Why ask it
Ask for the practice, not just the teaching, because the two often differ and the gap is where people get hurt. A pastor who answers only in principle should be asked the concrete version: can this person be a member, be baptized, lead anything.
How would you counsel someone whose spouse is hurting them, given what this church teaches about divorce?
Why ask it
One of the few questions where a wrong answer is genuinely dangerous. Listen for whether safety comes before the marriage, whether they would involve police or a shelter, and whether they would ever counsel the couple together, which most trained advisers would not.
What happens here when someone in the church is harmed by someone else in the church?
Why ask it
Ask for the last time it happened rather than the policy. Whether the answer mentions reporting to authorities, and who was told to leave, distinguishes a church with a process from one with a reflex to protect itself.
Who holds you accountable, and when did someone last tell you no?
Why ask it
Named people and a recent example are the answer you want. A pastor who can only point to God, or to a board made up of relatives and friends, has described the absence of accountability rather than its presence.
Is there something you believe privately that you would not say from the pulpit, and what keeps you from saying it?
Why ask it
The hardest question on the page, and only worth asking once trust exists. What they name as the constraint, a denomination, a donor, a family in the third row, describes the real limits on what this church can discuss.
What has this work cost you, and who do you talk to about it?
Why ask it
Pastors are usually the ones asking after other people. An answer of "my wife" and nobody else is common and worth noticing, because it means the person hearing the congregation's hardest material has almost no one hearing his.
How to ask these well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Where and when to ask
Not in the doorway after the service
Sunday morning is the worst moment for any of this. The pastor is greeting fifty people, watching the clock, and cannot answer carefully. Ask for half an hour in the week instead, and say roughly what you want to talk about.
Say why you are asking
"I am trying to decide whether to join" and "I am struggling to believe any of this" produce completely different conversations, and both are easier for a pastor to answer well than a cold question with no context.
Ask three, not twenty
Pick the questions that bear on your actual situation. Working through a long list makes the meeting feel like a doctrinal exam and pushes the pastor into defending positions rather than thinking with you.
Consider whether you want an answer or a hearing
Some of these questions arrive because of something that has happened: a death, a diagnosis, being pushed out of a role. If that is the case, say so first. The theology will go better once the situation is on the table.
Reading the answers
Signs of a considered answer
- They can state the strongest version of the view they reject.
- They distinguish what their tradition teaches from what they personally hold.
- They say "I don't know" where the honest answer is that nobody does.
- They give a concrete example, a name, a case, a date, rather than a principle.
Signs to press further
- The answer arrives fully formed and identical in wording to a sermon.
- A question about practice is answered only with doctrine, or the reverse.
- Your doubt is treated as a spiritual failing to be corrected rather than a question to be answered.
- Accountability is described without a single named person.
What a pastor cannot tell you
- Anything disclosed in confidence or in confession, including the details of a case you already half know about. A refusal here is the correct answer.
- Personnel matters and legal settlements, which are often bound by agreements they did not choose.
- Certainty about the fate of a particular person who has died. Pressing for it puts them in an impossible position.
- An answer that binds the whole denomination. Ask what they hold and what the body teaches as two separate questions.
After the conversation
- Notice which questions they returned to unprompted a week later. That is usually where they are actually thinking.
- If the answers on safeguarding or on abuse were vague, ask the same question of a lay leader or elder and compare.
- Write down what you were told about practice, particularly on membership and serving, before the wording softens in your memory.
- If you left more troubled than you arrived, that is a legitimate result. It does not mean you asked badly or that they answered badly.