How Do We Hire?

What happens when we let gifts and relationships define our organizational structures?
John Ortberg from leadership mag

Monday, March 29, 2010


The single most powerful organizational step your church can take—at least on a human level—is to be organized around the gifts of the Spirit. That means that a church is to be led by people with leadership gifts, taught by people with teaching gifts, shepherded by people with shepherding gifts—the whole nine yards. And that vision is about to change my life.

I'll tell you how in a minute.

I serve as a senior pastor. But I'm not one of those multi-mega-gift guys. I can do about one thing right—and that's on a good day. Whatever gifts I have are primarily centered around communication. So I have been looking and praying for a partner who has great leadership gifts to do ministry with. I love the era in which we get to work. I think it is a time of great innovation in the church. There is something God-like and energizing about creating.

Ron Johnson, the guy who started the Apple stores, says his favorite phrase is "In the beginning … " Part of that innovation involves the people leading in a church. When I was growing up, a group of people forming a church would hire the 'minister' who would do the 'ministry.' But no one would ask what his (it was always a 'him') actual gifts were. The pastor's job description was so big that only Jesus could fulfill it. And I'm not sure even he would want it.

Increasingly churches are recognizing that shepherding and teaching and leading and administrating rarely come in the same package. We have to break old models of church leadership—not to go to new models, but to go back to an even older model—organization around gifts.

So for many years I've been praying, and for the last year we've been doing a formal search for a leadership partner—not for a traditional 'executive pastor.' I've thought about it this way: I tend to communicate recreationally. We need someone who leads recreationally.

We got a fabulous search team to help. It was led by a woman named Lisa Carhart, who is such an effective team-builder and vision-caster that she got people of remarkable octane to help. In fact, a few weeks into the process, it became clear that if we could get a candidate who was anywhere near as strong as the search team was, we'd be home free.

But the search turned out to be tremendously difficult. We were looking for someone who had Big Dog leadership skills, but they had to have a calling to use them for a local church. They also had to want to use them at our particular, 137 year old, Presbyterian church. Some great leaders are gravitating toward local church leadership, but generally they want to do start-ups, not turn-arounds. We needed someone who fit us theologically and culturally. Plus it had to be someone with whom there would be great chemistry.

It was like looking for a needle in a hay super-stack. There was simply no pool to fish in. Executive pastors didn't have the right leadership temperament; senior pastors were already leading; marketplace people didn't have the call to a church. It became apparent that we didn't so much have to find someone as convert someone.

And then, a little over a month ago, it just happened. We ran into a guy named "Blues" Baker—actually a (relatively young) retired admiral. (Though he's older than me by many weeks.) He had leadership skills coming out the wazoo, he loved Jesus, he wanted to serve a local church, he's ready for an Ultimate Challenge, and the first phone call we had was energizing enough that I was walking around the parking lot talking on the phone.

And eventually he said yes. We're calling his position Directional Leader—a title we got from Heartland Church in Rockford Illinois. From there we're making it up as we go along.

We're on a partnership adventure. People have been asking—what will the org chart look like? Where are the solid lines and the dotted lines?

I have no idea.

But I do have a conviction that when it comes to getting leadership right, 98 percent of the ballgame is relationship. I believe where there is a relationship of joy and commitment and mutual submission and trust and authentic love—then the division of labor issues can flow freely and effectively. But where the relationship is broken, all the org charts in the world can't save it.

So we're going to be a place where leaders lead and teachers teach and it won't look quite like anything else we know. Which is the most fun part. And Lisa, the woman who led the search team, ended up doing it so well, and liking it so much, that she's coming to work here too.