On one hand, Bill rued the days when staff members resigned. As operations director, Bill bore the brunt of the church’s hiring process, from hiring approval, job description, and posting, to candidate review and communications, guiding the interview team, and drafting the retention letter and orienting the new hire. But on the other hand, Bill enjoyed meeting and learning about new candidates, and helping them through the process. He also appreciated orienting new hires to their exciting new ministries and watching them learn, grow, and bring fresh inspiration to the church. Through the church’s staffing, Bill could see that God was in control.
Staff
Retaining highly qualified staff members may be the most important administrative practice in which your church engages. If your church’s staff members do not have the right skills, attitude, and commitment, then your church is unlikely to succeed in its mission. The Spirit gifts individuals in many different ways. We all have gifts for some roles but not others. The key to an effective church staff is to have the right individuals in the right places with the right skills doing the right things. Accomplishing that objective requires skill not just in recruiting and hiring staff members but also in their consistent supervision, recognition, and reward. Help your church meet its personnel needs, and you’ll have done a very good thing for your church.
Hiring
Effective hiring of staff, whether pastors, ministry leaders, or support staff, is critical to a church’s mission because of the sensitive and central role that staff play in pursuing the church’s mission. Scripture warns not to hire fools or scoundrels. To keep a strong church staff in place, draw for mentoring on past or departing staff members, support and hold accountable the current staff members, and constantly recruit and develop the next staff members. Churches, like other organizations, should constantly project staff needs, identifying potential candidates for leadership, ministry, and administrative positions. Recruiting, training, and rewarding volunteers can prepare a pool of qualified candidates. Following sound hiring practices can broaden the pool of qualified candidates, ensure rigorous candidate reviews, and assure the chosen candidates that church leadership is thoughtful in pursuing its mission. Pay attention to hiring.
Process
Your church’s executive team, including its pastors, operations director, and key ministry leaders, should evaluate the need for new personnel or to replace a departing staff member, including not just staffing needs but also budget implications. Include your church’s personnel and finance teams in the review. Present the recommendation to the church board for approval. Then appoint a search team under the operations director’s guidance. Post the job internally and externally, using general, online job-posting forums, job-posting services within the denomination, local church networks, the church website, and word of mouth within the staff and congregation. Also consider local seminaries, colleges, and trade schools with relevant programs. Help the search team review applications, winnowing them for a first round of interviews. Call back the one leading candidate or few leading candidates for a second interview before recommending the final candidate to the church board for approval. Convey a written offer contingent on reference checks. Orient thoroughly on hire. See additional detail in the following paragraphs.
Applications
To properly process applicants for hiring, invite candidates to submit a cover letter and resume, and to complete an application form. Using one of the online job-posting services can streamline the process for collecting, storing, and responding to applications. An employment-application form both gathers information necessary to make a sound hire while also communicating things about your church. Application forms should also be sensitive to legal issues around hiring, especially that they not create implied contracts for terms other than the employer intends and that they not suggest unlawful discrimination. For instance, blanket prohibitions on hiring candidates with convictions could be unlawfully discriminatory, as government employment agencies interpret anti-discrimination laws. Collecting conviction, health, family status, and other sensitive information only after deciding on a candidate, and then making post-offer, pre-hire background checks, can limit liability risks. See the church job-application form in the book Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World.
Interviews
Have a search team conduct candidate interviews. The search team should include the pastor, operations director, any ministry leader under whom the candidate would work, and a personnel team member or other member of the congregation. Prefer in-person interviews over videoconference interviews, especially for the second interview round. When interviewing multiple candidates, use the same questions for all candidates to ensure fair treatment and comparative responses. Develop a list of interview questions and areas in advance, and divide the questions and areas among the search team members so that all members participate. Ask follow-up questions, and end the interview inviting the candidate to share anything further the candidate wishes. Tell the candidate the time within which the candidate should hear your decision.
References
Conduct a post-offer, pre-hire reference check. Have search-team members use a reference-check questionnaire when contacting the chosen candidate’s references by telephone. Telephone interviews enable follow up on ambiguous answers or answers that raise fitness issues or other questions. References may also be willing to say things that they would not necessarily write or to convey nuances that written responses would not convey. You may alternatively use a form for the reference to complete in writing. A well-designed reference-check questionnaire ensures that references answer the questions eliciting valid and reliable information. Be intentional about reference checks. Retain reference-check forms in the hired candidate’s personnel file. See the reference-check form in Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World. Also complete a post-offer, pre-hire criminal-history background check using a reliable service.
Retention
Your church should retain staff members using a written letter of retention like the example in the appendix. When the candidate countersigns and returns the retention letter, it becomes the employment contract. Your church should leave no confusion over the position for which the church has hired the candidate, the compensation for the position, and the church’s employment practices and policies under which the new hire will work. The retention letter accomplishes those objectives. The retention letter, for instance, should expressly state that the church has hired the new employee at will. At-will employment gives the church flexibility in the event of changing staffing needs, a change in the character or performance of the employee, or a declining budget. Retain the letter of retention in the new hire’s personnel file.
Compensation
Your church should compensate staff members fairly within the market value for their services. Underpaying staff members is wrong and may lead to disgruntled employees and high staff turnover. Overpaying staff members is also wrong and may lead to donor concerns. Use national, regional, and local wage information, adjusted to the employee’s education level, position, and experience, to determine an appropriate wage range. Set compensation within the range, according to the candidate’s special qualifications. Avoid compensating based on individual employee needs or relationships. Use finance team and personnel team review and evaluation to ensure broad agreement on a fair wage. Do the same with benefits, matching benefit packages to the standard in the area. Use an independent insurance agent to present price and quality comparisons on health insurance options, to ensure fair coverage for employees at reasonable cost to the church.
Orientation
New staff members can face a daunting task learning a church’s ministries, policies, personnel, and systems, while forming new working relationships and adjusting to staff culture. Even long-time members of a church who take on staff positions may know little of the church’s internal operations or extensive ministries. A well-thought-out and sensitively executed orientation can speed the new staff member’s integration into staff teams. It can also demonstrate the professionalism the church expects of staff members and reassure the new hire of the competence of church leadership. People instantly form first impressions that then become hard to correct or dispel. Sound and thoughtful orientation can be the make-or-break difference in a new staff member’s commitment to the work and acceptance within the team.
Accountability
Each workplace has its own set of expectations, and each role has its own requirements. Your church must translate its gospel mission and biblical commitments into workplace expectations for the staff. Your church can do so in a written policy like the one in the book Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World. Your church plainly wants to hire individuals of sound Christian character. Yet a policy setting out the workplace expectations can be a good reminder of how staff should go about their workdays while clarifying expectations. Church staff members may crave clarity, so give it to them. A policy on staff expectations can be an especially good reminder for struggling staff members, serving as both an appropriate encouragement and corrective in challenging times.
Evaluation
Performance evaluations can help build a strong church staff. Performance evaluation can be a sensitive issue. Overly critical feedback can discourage high-performing staff members. Yet no feedback can be just as discouraging. Staff members who go well beyond expectations may appreciate that their supervisors and others see the quantity, quality, creativity, and effectiveness of their work. People respond to praise more than to criticism. At the same time, some feedback on how a staff member can improve may help the staff member make needed adjustments. Staff members may also appreciate and benefit from having clear goals and knowing when they meet those goals. The church may also need to know why certain staff members are not meeting goals, such as for lack of resources or support. Employee evaluations should be two-way streets, in which the employee can help the supervisor see why things aren’t going as well as they could. Consider the evaluation form in the book Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World. It begins with goal review, then provides detailed expectations while leaving room for comment, and ends with setting new goals.
Recognition
Recognizing effective service is another important personnel action. As just indicated above, employees tend to respond to encouragement more than they do criticism. The scriptures call to love and encourage one another in the Lord. Supervisors should know what a kind word can do, recognizing consistent, committed, creative, and innovative work. Church staff members thrive under encouragement. And while individual recognition from a supervisor is especially effective in motivating staff members, corporate recognition can also serve a church staff well in building confidence and mutual respect. Regularly celebrate your church’s staff members in an annual staff appreciation and with recognition of five-year, ten-year, or other landmark service. Recognize special staff contributions when they occur.
Policies
Personnel policies can help your church guide its staff members to their best work. Federal and state laws also require or strongly recommend certain policies. Your church should maintain two types of personnel policies. The church uses one set of policies administratively, without distributing the policies to employees. Administrative policies address staff hiring, accountability, recognition, and departure or termination. Help your church develop internal employment policies that guide leaders in reaching fair, sound, and consistent decisions on personnel issues and follow best practices to evaluate, encourage, reward, and hold accountable all church staff members.
Manual
Administrative policies guide church leaders in employment practices. But staff members also need reasonable guidance and information on the terms, conditions, and privileges of their employment. Your church should thus develop, maintain, and distribute to employees an employee manual or handbook describing those terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. Employees should be able to review the employee handbook at any time. The handbook should answer any common question an employee might have about employment terms. See the example handbook in the book Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World.
Termination
Your church may come to the point of having to terminate a staff member. Employee terminations always raise legal and management risks. An unlawfully discriminatory or retaliatory termination may lead to civil liability. An unexpected and arguably unfair termination may lead to loss of staff loyalty and morale, and a loss of confidence in church leadership among members. Yet employment termination may be appropriate either in the case of an employee committing misconduct or failing to meet minimum job expectations. Employers properly deal with misconduct through a disciplinary procedure involving notice and opportunity for hearing, before immediate termination for serious wrongs or progressive discipline for correctable wrongs. Employers properly deal with substandard performance through a corrective action or performance improvement plan providing clear measures and a clear timetable for improved performance. Again, see the employee manual in the book Church Policies & Procedures: Common-Sense Guides for Administering Churches in a Complex World for additional details.
Reflection
Does your church have a thorough set of internal personnel policies? Does your church have an employee handbook containing all significant employment terms? Does your church post open positions internally and externally? Does your church use a team to review, interview, and select employment candidates? Is your church board involved in approving the position and candidate? Does your church compensate employees fairly based on market range? Does your church have clear workplace expectations? Does your church evaluate staff members at least annually? Does your church recognize, encourage, and reward staff members for their devoted and effective service?
Key Points
Your church’s staff plays a large role in the success of your church.
Adopt a hiring process that recruits and identifies good candidates.
Use an employment application form to elicit relevant information.
Conduct well-planned interviews by a search team.
Check references after making an offer but before hiring.
Retain church staff members with a clear letter of retention.
Compensate staff members according to fair market value of services.
Orient new staff members respectfully and thoroughly.
Make workplace expectations clear through a written policy.
Evaluate staff members annually using a thorough form.
Recognize staff annually and for landmark and special service.
Have internal personnel policies for consistent and wise decisions.
Distribute an employee handbook with all significant terms.
Terminate staff members according to fair procedures.