Questions to Ask a Pastor in an Interview
Interview questions for a search committee meeting a pastoral candidate: preaching, pastoral care, conflict, staff, safeguarding, money, and what they would need to stay. Written for the conversation in the room rather than the paperwork around it.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Tell us about the congregation you serve now. Who is there on a normal Sunday?
Why ask it
An opener they can answer easily, and it establishes scale. Someone who describes their current church only in terms of programs rather than people has told you something about their attention.
Why this church, and why now?
Why ask it
Listen for whether the answer is about our congregation or about leaving theirs. Both can be legitimate, but you need to know which one you are dealing with.
Walk us through how you build a sermon, from Monday to Sunday.
Why ask it
Concrete process, hours, and where the text comes from. Preaching is the most visible part of the job and the easiest to assess in the abstract and hardest to assess honestly.
What did you preach on last Sunday, and why that?
Why ask it
Impossible to prepare for and immediately revealing. It shows whether they are working through a lectionary or a series, and whether they respond to what is happening in the congregation.
What does pastoral care look like in your week? How many visits and calls?
Why ask it
Ask for numbers. This is the part of the job congregations most often feel is missing, and vague answers here predict exactly that complaint two years in.
Tell us about a funeral you led that was difficult, and what you did.
Why ask it
Funerals and hospital rooms are where a congregation decides whether it trusts a pastor. Listen for care about the family's needs rather than for the quality of the address.
How would you spend your first year here?
Why ask it
You want listening before changing, with specifics: who they would meet, what they would leave alone. A candidate arriving with a full program in month one is a risk.
What do you expect from a church board, and what should we expect from you?
Why ask it
Ask both halves and note which they answer more fully. Mismatched expectations about governance is the most common source of a call going wrong.
How do you respond when someone tells you the last pastor did it differently?
Why ask it
They will hear this in the first month. Good answers involve curiosity about why it was done that way, not a defense of their own preference.
Describe a conflict in your current congregation and your own part in it.
Why ask it
The key phrase is their own part. A candidate who describes several conflicts with no contribution of their own is describing a pattern that will repeat here.
Where do you land on the questions our denomination is currently arguing about?
Why ask it
Ask this directly rather than hoping to infer it. Candidates deserve a straight question, and a congregation that avoids it now will have the argument later and blame the pastor.
How do you work with staff you did not hire?
Why ask it
Inherited staff, some long tenured, are a standard difficulty. Listen for whether they would start with evaluation or with learning what each person actually does.
What is your practice around confidentiality and reporting?
Why ask it
You need to hear a clear position, including that suspected abuse of a child or vulnerable adult goes to the authorities. Anything hedged here is a serious problem, not a difference of philosophy.
How would you build youth ministry when there are six teenagers?
Why ask it
Tests whether they can work at your scale rather than the scale they would like. Realistic answers involve those six by name and their families, not a program.
What do you do when someone comes to you in a mental health crisis?
Why ask it
You are listening for referral and limits: who they call, what they do not attempt themselves, whether they know local services. Confidence without limits is the concerning answer.
How do you talk about money from the pulpit?
Why ask it
Frequency, tone, and whether they know what people give. Congregations under financial strain need a pastor who can raise this without either apologizing or shaming.
What would you need from us to still be here in ten years?
Why ask it
Invites them to name terms honestly: study leave, an assistant, housing, a boundary about evenings. Better to hear it now than to discover it in year three.
What in this work drains you, and what refills you?
Why ask it
Placed late, once the room has relaxed. A candidate who says nothing drains them is either performing or has not been in the job long enough to know.
What would your current congregation say they will miss, and what would they say they will not?
Why ask it
The second half is the real question, and how they handle it tells you about self awareness. An honest weakness stated plainly is worth more than a flawless interview.
What do you need to know about us before you could say yes?
Why ask it
Their questions are as informative as their answers. A candidate who asks about conflict, finances, and the last pastor's departure is doing their own due diligence, which is a good sign.
Running the interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the candidate arrives
- Agree the same core questions for every candidate and who asks each one. Committees that improvise end up comparing impressions rather than answers.
- Decide in advance what you will disclose about the congregation's finances, conflicts, and the previous pastor's departure. Candidates find out anyway, and holding it back costs you good ones.
- Send the questions about theology and denominational positions in advance. You want their considered view, not their quickest one.
- Check your denomination's process for calling a pastor before you start. Some steps cannot be done retrospectively.
During the conversation
- Let one person lead and keep the committee from talking over the candidate. Six people asking follow ups produces a worse interview than two.
- Take your own notes and do not discuss impressions during breaks. Compare afterwards, in writing, one at a time, or the loudest voice sets the committee's memory.
- Ask for the last specific instance rather than the general approach, especially about conflict and pastoral care.
- Leave real time at the end for their questions. What they ask is often the most useful information in the meeting.
Beyond the interview
- Hear them preach in their own setting if you can, not only a recording. How a congregation responds tells you what a video cannot.
- Call references beyond the list they gave you, including a board member and someone who left the congregation, and ask your denominational office about standing.
- Complete background checks and safeguarding checks for every candidate without exception, whatever their reputation.
- Involve more than the committee before deciding. A candidate the committee loves and the congregation has never met is a common route to a short tenure.
Terms and honesty
- Discuss compensation, housing, vacation, study leave, and moving costs explicitly in the process rather than after the call. Ambiguity here sours first years.
- Say plainly what the hard parts of this job would be: the building, the deficit, the family who runs things, the average age of the congregation.
- Tell candidates your timeline and then keep to it. Search processes that go quiet lose the candidates with other options.
- Put the agreed terms in writing before anyone announces anything.