The hiring process

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:08

Welcome to the unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stevenson and I serve as the executive director of church planning for Converge.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:14

My name is Danny Parmelee and I oversee church planning for Converge Mid America.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:19

And we're excited just to have some real conversations about the church planning world with you today. Today we're going to focus in on part of the conversation of.

I think it's an important conversation for church planters to think through is when you're ready to hire and you even begin to put on paper, you know, job descriptions and kind of who I'm looking for. The process of hiring can be kind of a challenging and sticky moment for pastors and church planters. On what do we do?

Because I know a lot of church planters, the way they hire is, you know, we go, hey, I'll buy you lunch at Denny's and we'll sit down, we'll talk. Oh, great, you're in. Super. Let's just make it happen and we'll figure out the details later.

But I think you want to move beyond the Denny's conversation into a little bit more of a professional conversation. And so I love to be able to draw a little bit from your experience, share a little bit of our experience when it comes to hiring.

I'm sure when you think through your first hire, Danny, that you made as a church planter to the last hire you've made, your process was probably completely different. You've learned some things, hopefully you learned some things along the way.

Today, if you were sitting down with your old self, you know, that year one, year two, when you were beginning to make those first hires, what would be some advice that you would give them when it comes to the hiring process?

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:44

Yeah, I just think the biggest thing is to be patient and get the right person, not the best person. So if you, if you're getting just the best person, that's the best person that's available at the time, it actually might not be the right person.

So you might need to say no to everybody, which really did happen in our case a number of different times where we had basically worked the work, the system. And actually our. I was thankful that even with our first hire, I was being coached by the executive pastor of the chapel. And so they. My.

My coach, Rick Egbert, really did give us a system in process that I'm thankful for that we really did. You know, we. We used essentially the same process.

Maybe it was a little bit different as we were a different sized church and there was different voices speaking into It.

But we still took the same general principles, which is, man, you just, you have to spend so much time weeding through a lot of different things and space and time as you get down towards the last finalists is just really important.

And I mean everything from, yes, phone calls and zoom calls, but then spending time with someone and not just in the context of an interview room, like you sitting across from them in a boardroom or you're at a desk, they're sitting there and you're just asking these questions. But any extended time. I'll tell you the things where you learn about someone's personality is when you go out to coffee.

Bill Hybels always used to say, like, make them drive. You know what I mean? Or drive around in the car with.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:24

Take them on the golf course or whatever.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:26

Yeah. Just those different interactions where you get to see how does someone actually like operate in real life when they're not thinking their mind.

Okay, I've got to give the right answer. I practice this. I've rehearsed this type of thing. And so I just think that that's kind of an important thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:42

What did you do specifically when it became hiring other pastoral staff?

Did you just give anybody the pastoral title or were there certain requirements that had to be met before somebody could actually get the pastoral title?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:59

Yeah, so we did. We set the title and position what we needed first and then hired for that.

So if we were hiring for a pastor, you are a small groups pastor, then they had to meet what our requirements were instead of saying, hey, we need someone for small groups. Oh, you're a pastor, I guess. No, you're just a director or you're a coordinator or something like that. So we did, we did set that first.

And for us, we didn't. We. Our standards were not necessarily like that they needed to be ordained or that they needed to have a master's degree.

Now in our job description, we would put down what our preferences were, but we didn't have anything, I guess, restrictive that said this is what a pastor is or isn't.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:42

Okay. How did you differentiate between a director level and a pastor?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:46

Yeah, so I mean we, we were complementarian.

And so for that that was probably like if someone was going to be at the pastor level, we really, it really did mean that they would have to have the ability to, you know, well, being complementary and that they, you know, that they were a male, the.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:05

Timothy Titus type of.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:07

Yeah. And that they would be able to and pastor. Exegete scripture. So you could have someone who is a Director of guest services.

And they just needed the ability to coordinate schedules and draw inspiration. But they may not have actually been a pastor that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:25

How did you screen theology during the interview process?

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:29

So we actually did a lot of that up front.

And what we did is we created, basically it was about a 25 question survey that was, I don't want to say litmus test, but almost because it was multiple choice and they could click on scales of, you know, are you an Armenian? Are you, you know, a Calvinist? Are you pre mil. Post mil? Literally.

So that as we're getting hundreds of different requests like, hey, just take this out.

So there's some people that we could just eliminate and not even have to call references, not have to look at resumes, not have to like search out, you know, everything of who they were.

That was one of the very, very helpful steps for us because it allowed us to just, in a really quick way, in a quick way for them to kind of start because we basically broke it up into different stages. That's what we did.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:20

Oh, okay, okay. So walk me through the stages that you had.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:24

So.

And first of all, when we would do a posting, yes, we would use church staffing.com churchstaffing.com and if you ever use App Forum, you get 300, 350.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:34

Resumes, anybody and everybody, 349 that you don't want.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:39

But we still would post it there. We would do social media as well too.

But honestly, the most important thing that we did is that myself and other pastors and staff would individually tap their network and say, we are hiring for this. Do you know of anybody? It could be old friends, it could be people within your church, it could be old staff members, your network.

And the personal kind of recommendation of someone goes so far. So. So we would put that out and then as we got any sort of inquiry, we would then send what we would call our theology and philosophy of ministry.

Because it didn't just have theology on there. It was like, hey, do you want to be part of a big church? Not, you know, yeah, the philosophical pieces.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:27

Are just as important.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:28

You know, we had. And I tried. There's. We were, we had fun with it. So it was, you know, what type of worship style is it? You know, khakis and this is it.

Electric guitars and this. And I mean, just even. Yeah, just kind of. Because that's who we were as well too.

We thought, you know, you have to have a little bit of, kind of a jokey edge. And so we threw a couple other funny questions in there. Like, you know, would you rather go to a.

I think we put, you know, a Packer game, you know, a Bucks game. Summer fest or, you know, stay at home October fest. Yeah, stay at home and pray for all the, you know, heathens out there.

Whatever, you know, just a little funny stuff like that. So.

So after that stage, we would narrow down to five or six that we would do phone conversations, which now obviously to be able to do them with zoom, I would, you know, or any sort of video conferencing adds an extra element to it that way. And then as we narrowed it down to three, then we would bring them in for. And this, of course, is the pastoral.

These are the higher level types of jobs where they would spend the weekend. And that was really important because it also gave them an opportunity to experience us and not just come in on a Wednesday afternoon type of thing.

And we had multiple. We did three different interview groups. So we did the whole character and competency and culture type of thing.

And all of our questions were pre written and each of the groups would be interviewing at different times. And then all of us would get together at the end to be able to discuss that. And on those teams, I would be on one.

There would be elders and you know, that. And then there would be lay people as well too.

And so we were getting kind of this cross section, but with these three different groups of people, you really did see things that just kind of bubbled to the surface. And there, even if there would be robust discussion, there would definitely really be this unanimity, you know, towards this.

This is, this is a qualified person. I think we should hire them or.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:32

It may fit the culture here.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:34

And yeah, yeah, yeah. So I always did one on one coffee with them and their spouse. Yeah, their spouse was brought in, so had that time.

And then I always did an interview, their exit interview of the weekend or whatever. Okay.

And just to kind of get their feedback, things that they noticed, I gave them the opportunity to say, hey, is there anything that you said that then you went home last night. Oh, I never should have said that. Or I wish I would have said this or I wish I would have explained. Just gives them.

And the other big question that I ask every time is, this is your, this is your opportunity. Do you have any skeletons in the closet? And the reason I asked this question is because this gives you the opportunity to share it right now.

It doesn't mean it's going to have you off the list. But then later I can say, yes, I hired this person knowing this part of their past? Yes.

They had a DUI in college, and whatever I knew about it, I felt that there was restoration, there was repentance. This is now over. So now is your opportunity. Tell me what's in your past that if anything down the road would happen. And that was just that.

That proved to be a really helpful time.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:49

That's great. That's great.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:51

And if they said anything, I never hired them. No, I'm just kidding.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:55

No, I think that's some good advice and good pieces there that a lot of our listeners can benefit from.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:01

How about you? Did you have kind of a. Kind of a set process, similar.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:04

Yeah, set process. You know, I didn't always like to go outside when it came to hiring.

I'd like to focus more on the internal side of hiring, if possible, just because they are already immersed into our culture.

But if there's a certain area of the ministry where I felt like, yeah, they need to focus and they need to change the culture in that given area, then I probably look to hire from outside. Yeah, you need to have a real formalized process to screen.

I think all of the things that you just talked about when it came to theology, what questions are important to us. And I don't think you want to keep it black and white.

Like, you want to leave a little area where they have to interpret something and they're trying to come up with what they think you want to hear, and that that gives you insight into how they process stuff. Philosophy of ministry is huge. And this is why I encourage church planners early on. Like, you need to know your philosophy of ministry.

You need to know who you are culturally and write those things down, because then you won't compromise them, specifically when it comes to hiring or placing leaders into positions. And so we actually had a document, we called it our Philosophical Bent. And honestly, what it was was, please, hot buttons.

You know, it's like, don't come in with a separate agenda different than these things, but we would just give them a blank sheet of those things, and they'd be everything from our position on debt to church buildings to homeschooling versus public schooling and basically say, hey, what do you think on this?

And then that gave us great insight to be able to look at how we defined it based on how they defined it, and instantly go, oh, I'm not even going to have another conversation with this person. This is a joke. Or, no, there's some potential here. Let's dive into it a little bit more.

And then, I mean, ultimately, any hiring there's a roll of the dice. There is still a risk involved with any hire that you make. And you can do your due diligence.

You can run them through everything you possibly can, and you'll still get surprised from time to time. And people can lie.

And so you got to be willing to take the risk to grow the team and expand and your staff team, but don't compromise the things that got you to where you were and will continue to move you forward.

And so if you realize very quickly, yeah, that was not a good fit, pull the trigger quicker to just end it and move on and readdress and try to hire again if possible.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:42

And going back to that and the whole patient thing, sometimes you're just so desperate, like, oh, we need that children's ministry director. We're just going to take the best person that's kind of available.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:52

Can't get any better than this.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:54

It's going to take you more time if you get the wrong person. And then you've got to train them, and then you find out, nope, they. They didn't work out.

And then you've got to fire them, and then you're starting all over from scratch, and you probably have some wounds along the way and hesitancy, hesitancies and everything like that.

So one of the things that helped as we reconvene our three groups back together, one of the questions that I would ask, and this was given to me by Rick Egbert, who I mentioned earlier, is to ask the question, if we saw this person failing five years from now, what would be that issue?

Like, if you just had to kind of, like, conjure it up because it allows you, in an authentic way to go, man, I see just a sliver of something here, just a little. And it just opened instead of just blanket. Is there anything wrong? Well, not really. Not that bad to be able to do it.

And then same thing with, hey, in five years from now, if they're going to be really successful, what is going to be that thing? What this helps to get away from is just this. I like the person.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:53

Yes.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:53

Because there are people who are likable, but they don't fit what you actually get done.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:59

Exactly. Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:59

And so asking some of those different questions were really, really helpful.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:03

That's great.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:04

Again, those were all things that were just given to us and we just ran with it.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:07

No, that's. I love those questions. Well, this has been a fun conversation, Danny, and appreciate you sharing some of your insight as well over the years.

And the reality is it's not always an easy process, but it can be a fun process. Make it enjoyable for you and the potential candidates in the until next time, y'all, keep it real.