Questions to Ask a Potential Pastor
Questions for a search committee interviewing a pastoral candidate: preaching and interpretation, how a week is actually spent, authority and decisions, conflict in past congregations, confidentiality and safeguarding, care in a crisis, and what the candidate and their household need to stay well in the work.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Tell us your own story of faith and how you came into ministry.
Why ask it
A gentle opener, but listen for whether the account includes doubt, a change of mind, or a period of difficulty. A story with no shadow in it is usually a story that has been polished for committees.
Why are you considering leaving your current position?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and let the pause do its work. Answers about calling and new seasons are common; what you want underneath is whether there is an unresolved conflict, a board dispute, or exhaustion that would travel with them.
What have you learned about this church so far, and what do you still want to know?
Why ask it
A serious candidate will have read your accounts, noticed your average age or your giving trend, and formed a question about it. If they have nothing to ask you, they are applying to a category rather than to your congregation.
How do you decide what to preach on, and what should we expect week to week?
Why ask it
The answer tells you whether to expect a lectionary, a book studied over months, or topical series chosen quarterly. Congregations often discover only after the call that the pattern is not what they were used to.
How would you explain salvation to someone here who asked you directly?
Why ask it
Phrased this way you hear their pastoral voice rather than their seminary vocabulary. Anyone who cannot say it without technical language will have the same trouble with a visitor or a teenager.
When you come to a passage you find difficult, what do you do with it?
Why ask it
Listen for whether hard texts get preached at all. Candidates who describe skipping them, or resolving every tension quickly, are describing what your congregation will and will not hear taught.
Where do you stand on women in church leadership, and how would that shape your work here?
Why ask it
The point is not only the position but the practice: who preaches, who serves communion, who sits on the board. A candidate whose view differs from your current practice needs to say now whether they would teach against it or work within it.
How do you approach subjects from the pulpit that divide people, such as money, politics or sexuality?
Why ask it
Both extremes cause damage: never touching them leaves the congregation to sort it out on social media, and treating every one as a hill to die on empties pews. Ask for a recent example and how the following week went.
What does a normal week look like for you in hours: study, visiting, meetings, administration?
Why ask it
Ask for the rough split, because it exposes the mismatch that ends pastorates. A candidate who wants twenty hours in the study will struggle in a church expecting daily hospital visits, and neither party usually says this out loud.
Which decisions would you expect to make yourself, and which belong to the elders or the congregation?
Why ask it
Most pastoral conflicts are boundary disputes rather than doctrinal ones. Have them name concrete cases: hiring a part-time worker, changing the service time, spending two thousand from reserves.
How would you work with staff and long-serving volunteers who were here before you?
Why ask it
Someone who has done this well can describe a specific relationship they inherited and how they earned the person's trust. Talk of getting the right people in place early is worth slowing down on.
Tell us about a conflict in a previous congregation. What was your part in it, and how did it end?
Why ask it
The phrase to listen for is your part. A candidate who narrates a conflict in which they were only the reasonable party has either not reflected on it or will describe your church the same way one day.
What is your practice on confidentiality, and where are its limits?
Why ask it
You want a clear account of what stays private, what would be shared with a spouse or a board, and what the law where you are requires them to report. Vagueness here creates real harm later.
If someone disclosed abuse in a family in this church, what would you do first?
Why ask it
The right answer involves reporting to the authorities and following your safeguarding policy, not handling it internally first. Any instinct to protect the church's reputation ahead of the person should end the conversation.
How would you care for a family in the days after a death?
Why ask it
Listen for the practical: who they call, when they arrive, what they say and do not say, how long they stay involved after the funeral. Answers that stay at the level of comfort and hope suggest little time in those rooms.
What role do you want with the church's money, and what would you rather stay out of?
Why ask it
Many pastors deliberately keep away from individual giving records so it cannot affect their care. Someone who wants full access to who gives what should be able to explain why.
What do you and your household need from a congregation to stay well in this work?
Why ask it
Asking invites an honest answer about days off, expectations of a spouse, whether children are expected at everything. Nothing needed is rarely true, and the unspoken version becomes resentment in year three.
Who holds you accountable, and how do you keep your own prayer and rest?
Why ask it
You are asking whether there is anyone outside this church with standing to tell them something hard. A named person, met with regularly, is a different situation from a general sense of accountability to God and the board.
If you came, what would you want to change in your first year, and what would you leave alone?
Why ask it
The second half separates candidates who have led a congregation through change from those who have only imagined it. Naming things worth preserving shows they see the church as it is rather than as a project.
Who else should we speak with, besides the references you listed?
Why ask it
The useful names are the ones not on the sheet: a previous board chair, a colleague who disagreed with them, someone who left the church. Willingness to offer them is itself part of the answer.
Running a pastoral search well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How the committee should work
Agree what you are looking for before you interview anyone
Write down the three things this congregation most needs in the next five years, whether that is preaching, pastoral care, administration or work with young families. Without it, the committee drifts toward whoever interviews most warmly.
Ask every candidate the same core questions
Keep a fixed set and a written record of answers. Comparing recollections weeks later, after several conversations, favours the most recent candidate rather than the best fit.
Hear them preach where they normally preach
A sermon prepared for you is a performance under unusual conditions. If you can, listen to two or three ordinary services from their current congregation, including one on a hard text.
Speak with people they have led, not only their referees
Ask a previous board chair, a staff member who reported to them, and if possible someone who left during their tenure. Frame the calls around specific behaviour rather than general impressions.
Practical matters to settle in the process
Background and safeguarding checks for every candidate
Run criminal record and reference checks according to your denomination's requirements and your insurer's, with no exceptions for candidates known to committee members. Confirm they will work within your safeguarding policy and training.
Put compensation in writing early
Salary, any housing arrangement, pension, insurance, study leave, holiday and moving costs should be on paper before an offer. Unspoken assumptions about housing and vacation are a frequent source of early conflict.
Be honest about your own situation
If giving has fallen, attendance has halved, or the last pastorate ended badly, say so during the interviews. A candidate who accepts on an incomplete picture tends to leave within a few years, and the congregation pays for it twice.
Involve the congregation at a defined point
Decide in advance how and when members meet the candidate, and what weight their feedback carries. Open-ended consultation with no stated purpose invites factions rather than discernment.
Common mistakes
Interviewing for the previous pastor
Committees often look for a repair of the last relationship, either a copy of a much-loved predecessor or the opposite of a difficult one. Both produce a call based on your history rather than the candidate in front of you.
Treating agreement on doctrine as the whole answer
Most pastorates end over temperament, workload and conflict rather than theology. Give as much weight to the conflict and weekly rhythm questions as to the doctrinal ones.
Letting one strong voice decide
Collect written impressions from each committee member before discussion. Once an influential member states a view aloud, the rest of the group tends to converge on it.
Rushing because the pulpit is empty
Interim arrangements are tiring, and the pressure to fill the vacancy is real. A call made a month early can take a decade to undo, so use supply preachers or an interim pastor rather than shortening the process.