What does your ideal staff member look like: Pt 3

There is no doubt that the right staff team will make or break your church. Which is why Context Staffing exists in the first place. For years, I’ve been asked if I ”know anyone who might be a "good fit” for a hundred different jobs. Finding team members who fit your culture and can do excellent work that pushes your church to the next level is extremely difficult but couldn’t be more important. Most of us have felt the pain of an ill-fitted or underperforming staff member. It drags down morale and productivity and functions like a lid on your ministry capability.

We are in the middle of a multi-week series on finding the right staff members. Some of you may be tempted to skip this series because you aren’t currently looking for staff but I’d encourage you to read this even if you aren’t currently trying to hire. The truth is that you should always be assessing your team and always thinking about who your next hire might be. Having a clear picture of the kinds of staff members that you are looking for is a critical part of the hiring process. If you don’t know who you are looking for precisely, you will end up with whoever is nearby.

Building an Ideal Staff Member profile for each position will ensure you hire the right people and build a team that you’ll love.

Two weeks ago I gave you five categories that you should think through when assessing a potential hire. Obviously a home run hire would be a 10/10 in every category but not only is that extremely rare, you probably can’t afford them. So as you assess a potential staff member, you need to do so over multiple categories, understanding in advance that they are going to be strong in some areas and weaker in others.

To recap, those categories were Theology, Experience, Demographics, Skills, and Fit. We looked at Theology in our last email and today we are going to talk about Experience.

Experience is one of the most misunderstood categories. When you think about the experiences that your next hire needs to have, we need to think more broadly than simply how long they have done a similar job. Think about the totality of experiences that your ideal candidate should have. This will obviously include work experience but you should also consider the kinds of life experiences that would make your ideal candidate.

Before we get to life experience, let’s talk briefly about the specific kind of work experience you are looking for. I would suggest that Lead Pastor is the only role that requires direct pastoral experience. The biggest leap you should take with this hire is someone who has been a long-time associate or executive pastor or possibly an old youth or young adult pastor. All of these leaps come with significant risk so I’d reserve them for mostly internal hires.

But all other roles on your team can and sometimes should be filled by people with extensive experience outside of pastoral ministry.

For instance, if you are hiring an Executive Pastor, it is more than just a bonus if they have real-world business experience. I would argue some real world training or experience is almost necessary for such a role. If you are hiring a Children’s Ministry Director, school teaching experience is something I’d look for. Even a worship leader should have some real band experience so they know how to work with a crowd and lead a moment.

Most of this is fairly straightforward, but it’s important for you to know ahead of time what you are looking for otherwise you can talk yourself into a candidate because you like them, even if they don’t have the experience you’d want.

Back to life experience really quick. If you are hiring someone to oversee all of the family ministries (from Children to College, let’s say) wouldn’t it be ideal if that person had kids? That may seem obvious but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write it down before you start. If you are hiring someone who will oversee evangelism for your church, wouldn’t it be great if they were someone converted later in life and could speak directly to the kinds of experiences that led them to Christ?

My main point in this whole series is that you should build a description for the ideal staff member before you start the search so that you can know what you are looking for ahead of time. This is also a helpful thing to do if you have an underperforming ministry or team member. Take a moment to blue sky a description for the role and then go back to your team member and you may see why they are struggling in the first place.

Building a team is tough, and it’s important not to do it alone. We built Context Staffing to help churches like yours build the team you need. Let us help!