Last week we started a mini-series on how to identify your ideal staff member. 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.
Last week 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.
Part of this process is knowing ahead of time which categories really matter to you and which you can supplement with other team members. If you are in a church that is theologically rigorous and homogeneous, a 9 or 10/10 might mean something different than if you lead a church that is broader theologically and tries to “major on the majors.” Thinking about this in advance will help you to identify good candidates early in the hiring process.
The first category we’ll look at is theology. This may seem fairly straightforward, and for most theological categories it will be. If you (like me) are Reformed, complementarian, and a moderate continuationist, those categories will be some of the first things you should talk to a candidate about. But the answers to these questions are simple yeses or no’s.
If you are Reformed, for instance, do you require your staff pastors to all be Five Point Calvinists? Would someone who isn’t comfortable with the concept of Limited Atonement be able to work with your team? Is your church only Reformed in its soteriology or more broadly Reformed?
Hiring a pastor might be more cut and dry, what if you are hiring a children’s ministry director, worship leader, or operations director? Do they need to be Reformed and if so, how well should they be able to articulate their position?
Complementarianism is another good example. In addition to the detailed questions above, a team should ask itself if it would be comfortable hiring someone who wasn’t convictional complementarian but was happy to submit to the elders and lead in such an environment. Is that enough for you?
Most of the hiring mistakes we make aren’t because you hired an egalitarian but because you hired someone who wasn’t AS complementarian as you are. Most continuationist churches are more comfortable with someone being a cessationist than someone who is more charismatic than the existing team is comfortable with. It’s important to understand what the 10/10 candidate looks like but also what an acceptable 7/10 looks like.
These are the kinds of questions that come out in our exploration process when you work with Context Staffing. We’ll go category by category through all of the major points of theology as well as any that might be of particular interest to you and your church.
Knowing ahead of time what you are looking for and the range of acceptable answers will expedite your process and give you a much better chance of hiring the right team member.
Are you looking to hire someone in the next 6-12 months? Let’s jump on a call to talk through the role and see how Context Staffing might be able to help.