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Hi Jack,
I don't know everything about starting a search, but this is the
way our church looks for any of our pastors, from the main pastor
to the associates and to the youth pastor. The first thing
our church does is the leadership prayers about who they should
include in the candidate search and follow through and get those
people together. Then that group along with the staff prayers
about the needs and asks God for guidance in choosing the right
person. Then the contact the national office for our denomination
and let them know of the interest. I believe the word gets out
in some kind of news bulletin. We start getting resumes. They
pray about them and weed out the ones that do not match up with
our churches needs. The ones that do they pray about more and
ask God for guidance. Then they have discussions usually by phone
with the candidates and again they go to go in prayer. When they
feel that God has lead them to a candidate, they send someone
unannounced to the church where he is at to see them in action.
This person reports back and they pray some more. If they decide
then that this is a solid candidate, they ask the congregation to
pray and set up at least a week of events that allow the church as
a whole and in small groups to meet this person and to ask questions.
Then (with some more prayer) we have a business meeting to vote on
whether we believe this to be the man God has chosen for the job or
not. We had about 200 people the last time (over a year ago) who were
voting members and the vote was 199 to 1. I wish it could have been
200, but this person clearly had her own agenda. We vote in private
on little pieces of paper, but I suspecting who the one descenting
vote was based on the meetings. Just a couple of weeks ago a comment
from her confirmed my suspicion.
I like the process. We've had a great deal of success with it because
it is so focused on God and on praying for his guidance. It's not
political at all. I believe this process is why we have the unity
that we do. My church feels so strongly about being united in the
mission we feel Christ has called us to that we even have a class for
new people that tells them what we believe God has given us as the
mission for our church and the pastor says bluntly that if they don't
believe God has given them the same mission, that they need to find
another church.
Hope this helps.
Jill
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