HOW MUCH IS THAT PASTOR IN THE WINDOW?

By Rev. Dave R. Garwick

Your current pastor leaves. During the vacancy, your congregation is assigned an Interim" pastor.

After a month or more under a long convoluted process of "visioning" where it thinks it wants to go, the congregation calls a new pastor to help pilot the way into the future.

Sometimes congregations find themselves quite surprised at the road on which they have been set, presumably according to their own words and visions.

Shopping for a Pastor

You may know this pastor's priorities on things like preaching, teaching, youth work, evangelism, etc. But how can you begin to know WHAT she or he will preach or teach or evangelize? How can you get past the cliches and formula-answers to get an idea exactly WHAT she really means when saying she would preach about Jesus, the Gospel, the Bible?

Here are some questions which might help you get a better handle on how and what aparticular pastor might preach and teach. These questions do not constitute a "litmus test" which someone must pass. The effort has been to avoid some of the "hot button" buzz words. However, these questions are written with the conservative evangelical confessional Christian in mind as the seeker.

2. Necessity of Jesus. Is Jesus the ONLY way to heaven, or are there other possibilities? INTERVIEW QUESTION: Why should or shouldn't the Church evangelize Jews and Moslems?

3. Naming Jesus. In sermons and conversation, does the pastor "name the Name" which is a stumbling block to nonbelievers? Or, does the pastor exclusively use terms like "God" or "spirituality," which could mean whatever a Jew, a Moslem, a New Age thinker ora Christian may interpret it to mean? Observe how often the name of Jesus comes into writing or conversation. INTERVIEW QUESTION: Why is it or is it not important to name the name of Jesus Christ in preaching and teaching?

4. The Essence of the Gospel.

Where does the pastor place the emphasis in the Good News – primarily as an improvement to conditions here on earth (political land reform, hunger, ecology, human relations) or on Jesus Himself as the link between – and from – this realm to heaven?

INTERVIEW QUESTION: What did Jesus come to save us for or from?

5. The Nature of Salvation.

Does the pastor think that all or most will be saved? Is hell a physical and horrible place? INTERVIEW QUESTION: Who will be saved, and from what?

6. Absolute Truth. Does the pastor believe in the existence of absolute truth and that it is knowable through Holy Scripture? Or does the pastor lean more toward the idea that all truth is relative, or that it is a function of the believer, or that it is unknowable? INTERVIEW QUESTION: When it comes to issues of morality or to the business of knowing the nature of God, do you believe in a universal absolute right and wrong?

7. The Authority of the Bible. Is the Bible a collection of human ideas influenced by God (and therefore needing to be "taken with a grain of salt") or is the Bible the written Word of God, therefore incapable of error and contradiction, therefore communicated perfectly through human transcribers?

INTERVIEW QUESTION: Would it be more appropriate to say that "Paul wrote..." or that "God has told us through Paul?"

8. The Nature of the Bible. Does the Bible stand in a class by itself, or is the Bible more like other ancient spiritual literature which is to be interpreted in a similar way? INTERVIEW QUESTION: How do you compare the Bible to other ancient spiritual literature such as the Koran?

9. The Approach to interpretation. Does the pastor tend to interpret a scriptural event as something that actually happened or more likely as an illustration of some other truth? INTERVIEW QUESTION: Do you believe that Adam and Eve, the parting of the Red Sea, and the Resurrection of Jesus all actually happened?

10. Obedience. How important is it and why is it important to be obedient to all that Jesus has taught us? Is it primarily in order that things work out better here, or is it simply because our Lord commanded it? What emphasis does obedience play in the pastor's theology? INTERVIEW QUESTION: How does Jesus serve as the link between the matter of Law and the matter of Grace?

11. The Nature of Evil. Is it spelled with a little "e" or a big "E"? In other words, is evil something humans do because of lack of understanding or motivation, or is it the work of Satan who is real and active? INTERVIEW QUESTION: What is at the bottom of what's wrong that Jesus came to fix?

12. Evangelism. What does the pastor see as the primary business of evangelism: the business of increasing church membership, the alleviation of suffering in the world, cross-cultural understanding, or the saving from eternal death of lost souls who have not heard the Gospel? INTERVIEW QUESTION: With limited resources of time and money, how would you like to see the outreach dollar of this congregation spent in terms of social improvement programs, disaster relief and Bible translation ministries?

13. Prayer. How important is uproar in the professional and personal life of the pastor? INTERVIEW QUESTION: Does the pastor have a set-aside time every day specially reserved for prayer and meditation?

14. Professional Literature.

Another way to get a handle on a pastor's orientation is to ask what professional literature and writers she/ he reads. Pastors with a more liberal bent (i.e., more willing to entertain nontraditional alternative theological and politically correct concepts) are more likely to read journals like Christian Century and Sojourners. Pastors with a more conservative orientation (tending toward traditional orthodox theology, and less enamored with politically correct words and thinking) are more likely to read material like Christianity Today, First Things, Forum, Pro Ecclesia.

15. Specific Issues. Of course, you can get a quick sense of how a pastor thinks by asking his or her perspective on abortion, homosexuality, the Jesus Seminar and the Re-Imagining Conference.

Not only do these questions apply to prospective pastors, but the questions can be asked of the "visioning"process itself. For instance, are these questions even addressed at all in the visioning process?

More importantly, does the visioning process regularly pause and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and then pause to listen for His direction? How easily can you imagine this visioning process being written into the earlier chapters of the Book of Acts?

If not, why? Is this visioning process something that could just as easily be conducted in a business, for the purposes of organizational development? Does the process resemble a secular enterprise or something specifically set aside for the Body of Christ? In short, whose vision is the process seeking, toward what ends, toward whose ends?

*Garwick is pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, Maple Plain, MN. Reprinted from Networking Together.