For as long as church search committees have been around, the process of finding a new pastor or minister has started with a little word of mouth, a stack of resumés, a lot of prayer and a good bit of research.
William Vanderbloemen has been around for more than a few of those searches. But his vantage point, he said, is pretty different.
He gets to be a caring outsider looking in.
And he prefers to think of his role like he’s a surgeon — like the local church is an important body, and he’s been entrusted with helping it find a vital organ.
Finding a match
“We approach a search like we’re being entrusted with a heart transplant,” said Vanderbloemen, president and CEO of The Vanderbloemen Search Group based in Houston, Texas. “When a church comes to us, it’s as if they are saying, ‘We want you to go outside our body and find an outsider to come in and run a major internal system.’”
Through hours of carefully interviewing candidates and churches, his firm learns about the personalities, beliefs, culture and needs of both and provides search committees with access to candidates they feel match what they are looking for.
“When you’re looking for a new staff member, there are job boards you can look at. It’s not hard to get resumés,” he said.
But if a church would like a little extra help finding candidates that would be a good match for its congregation, search firms like his can offer personalized help with networking.
And his group takes that very seriously, he said.
“Even if you find a healthy heart, you can put that healthy heart into a healthy body and if they don’t match, everybody dies,” Vanderbloemen said. “Finding a good match is so vital.”
Jack Fiscus said his church understands the value of a good match.
Recently Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Birmingham — where he serves as executive pastor — was searching for an orchestra director. After research, they interviewed a finalist and realized he wasn’t a good fit for their church culture, Fiscus said.
“At that point those who were searching felt like they had exhausted their channels through word of mouth,” he said. “So we said, ‘What if we go beyond our ability and explore using a firm?’”
Church leadership knew that in the coming days they would be in a transition with Pastor Gary Fenton retiring, so they decided that this would be a good trial run.
“We’d be able to see if it was a good or bad process for us,” Fiscus said.
So they tried it. And for them, it was good.
After Dawson Memorial Baptist’s leadership reached out to Vanderbloemen’s firm, representatives of the group came and met with Fiscus and others and learned about the church and what they were looking for in a candidate.
“Then they went, started processing and about eight weeks in they started sending us some resumés to see if they were on the right track,” he said.
Some were “yes,” some were “no,” and after they went back and forth a few times, the group sent them five candidates they felt might be a good fit. The search committee then narrowed it to two for in-person interviews.
And both were a good fit, Fiscus said.
Saving churches time
“The firm had already grilled these guys and asked the hard questions and weeded out some they felt wouldn’t fit our church, so by the time we asked the questions, we got the right answers. It saved a lot of calls,” he said. “When there’s a team working 30 to 40 hours a week networking, our search committee just can’t keep up with that. We can’t get past our small network.”
And today in churches, it’s expensive to hire the wrong person, he said. “It’s much better to get the fit right from the start.”
‘A huge success’
John Woods, Dawson Memorial’s music and worship pastor, said having Vanderbloemen help with the process “cast a wider net” and helped focus needs and expectations, but it also freed him up to continue ministry at full strength.
“The firm managed the process in a way that I could not have done effectively while still leading well in other areas,” he said. “For us, it was a huge success.”
Vanderbloemen said the idea behind the firm came when his church experience converged with a corporate job.
“I started the company after 15 years in pastoral ministry and then a short stint in human resources in the corporate world,” he said. “I realized churches were taking way too long to hire, and for so many those hires weren’t going well. We wanted to find a way to help churches do it well, save money and have hires that match and last longer.”
David Lyons, founder of Minister Search, ended up in the industry in a similar fashion, except in the reverse — he had grown up Southern Baptist, but his primary work experience was as an IT head hunter.
“I served in many lay roles with my church, and at my ‘day job’ I knew a lot about what corporate America did to find the right fit,” Lyons said. “I started learning and hearing about what happened in the church world and there seemed to be a pretty significant disparity, a lot of dissatisfaction and turnover.”
He said in his eyes, the firm guides the church much like a realtor would guide a house search.
“We have a very intensive discovery process to learn about who your church is and who the candidates are,” he said. “And then we get to be the expert eyes and ears, helping with what to look for and helping to weed out the ones that don’t fit.”
If a church is interested in hiring a firm, they should ask the hard questions about the services provided, Lyons said.
“Ask things like how many churches have they successfully led through searches? What is their retention rate? How long does it normally take them to fill positions? And how much of the process do they walk through with you?”
Picking a firm
Also ask about pricing, Lyons said, pointing churches to a longer list of questions available at http://ministersearch.com/churches/pastor-search-firm-essentials.
Vanderbloemen said it’s important for a church to pick the firm that matches it.
“Be careful and pick a firm that’s going to fit you and your personality and need,” he said.
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