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The Search Process

This process is based off of the Pastor Search Handbook provided by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and experience from previous iterations of the pastor search team.

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1. Develop a profile of our church family and our community, a job description for a senior pastor, and preferred attributes to look for in a candidate. To find the preferred candidate attributes, create a church-wide survey to get input from all members.

  • The raw results of the first survey can be found here, and the key take aways can be found here.

2. Submit the job opening to pastor job boards through the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the National Southern Baptist Convention for 30 days.

  • Using the profiles and survey results from step 1, the search team will identify candidates that do not match what we are looking for in a pastor before thanking them for their application and declining to pursue them further.

  • Search team members will then prayerfully review resumes and sermons from all remaining applicants. In reviewing applicants, each team member will independently and prayerfully determine a list of 5 candidates they think best represents the type of candidate the church would like to see.

3. All team members will reconvene and share their individual top 5 lists, to collate into a single team top 5 list. At that time, several candidates will likely rise to the top after appearing on multiple team members' lists, which makes the creation of a single team top 5 list easier.

4. The top 5 candidates will be asked via email if they are interested in being considered for the position and to fill out a theological questionnaire. The team will also ask permission to run background and credit checks, as well as reach out to provided references.

  • The search team will not contact any reference from the candidate's current church without express written permission to preserve confidentiality.

5. Background checks and credit checks will be run on the top 5 candidates, and references for the top 3 will be contacted.

  • If any of these checks reveal any "red flags", the team will thank the candidate for their consideration, but the team will be pursuing other candidates at this tiem.

6. If all the checks return favorably for the top candidate, the team chairman will reach out to the candidate via text and phone call to schedule an interview with the team.

  • At this time, if the candidate does not already have the previously prepared profiles for the church, our community, and what we're looking for in a pastor, we will send them to him.

  • The team will also reach out to the other four candidates of the Top 5 and let them know we are pursuing one candidate at a time.

7. The team will then meet with the selected candidate via video call.

  • Prior to the meeting, the search team will determine what specific questions they each want to ask the candidate, to avoid asking the same question twice.

  • The candidate can also ask additional questions about our church at this time.

8. After the initial interview, the team will prayerfully determine follow up questions for the second interview.

9. After a second interview, the search team will vote internally as to whether we feel that the candidate is God's man for our church.

  • The team will seek a unanimous consensus on this.

10. The search team will then schedule a time for the candidate to meet with the other pastors (David Spalding, Phillip Cole, and Erin Feldges) and ministerial staff for everyone to get to know each other.

  • The search team will ask the staff if they detected any "red flags" that the team hadn't detected earlier.

11. If all meetings end favorably, the team will invite the candidate to preach one Sunday in accordance with the church bylaws. This would be when the candidate is presented to the whole church in view of a call to be our senior pastor.

  • This would also include a time for a "meet and greet" and a corporate Q&A with the pastor candidate.

12. Prior to the church vote, the team will send out the candidate's bio and resume to the church.

  • His filled out theology questionnaire, as well as links to other sermons from the candidate, will be provided on the CBC Family website.

13. Members will be able to vote for or against the candidate between services the following Sunday.

 

If at any point a candidate withdraws their application or any group decides to not pursue a candidate any longer, the pastor search team will return to step 6.

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