Two Sets of Search Criteria image

Two Sets of Search Criteria

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Here are two descriptions of the ideal candidate for the office of Pastor. The first is taken from a large and well-known church in the West; the second is taken from Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule. I’ve broken them down into twelve chunks, for the sake of comparison.

Here’s the Western one. “The Senior Pastor will:

1) Be able to wear the dual hats of pastor (able to discern God’s direction for the congregation) ...
2) ... as well as CEO (with organizational leadership skills to lead a complex organization with more than 350 employees).
3) This leader will bring the right balance of preserving what is ...
4) ... but also will fan the flames of the church’s DNA of boldness, innovation, and creativity.
5) The Senior Pastor will lead and serve the Church at all its locations to become a thriving, healthy family of local churches.
6) This man or woman will provide overall leadership and vision for the entire network of regional campuses.
7) They will ensure the Church’s vision and strategy is clear and understood across all locations, that the right leaders are leading and serving the campuses, and that the Church is positioned for strength well into the future.
8) The Senior Pastor will have the ability to dream and cast vision for the next season of congregational life and community impact.
9) The ideal candidate will demonstrate spiritual leadership ...
10) ... an authentic walk with Jesus ...
11) ... and a proven commitment to balancing the rhythms of work and life.
12) He or she will be a proven “leader of leaders” who can motivate and inspire high-capacity men and women to use their gifts to further the vision.”

And here’s Gregory the Great (540-604). “That man, therefore, ought by all means to be drawn with cords to be an example of good living who:

1) already lives spiritually, dying to all passions of the flesh;
2) who disregards worldly prosperity;
3) who is afraid of no adversity;
4) who desires only inward wealth;
5) whose intention the body, in good accord with it, thwarts not at all by its frailness, nor the spirit greatly by its disdain:
6) one who is not led to covet the things of others, but gives freely of his own;
7) who through the bowels of compassion is quickly moved to pardon, yet is never bent down from the fortress of rectitude by pardoning more than is meet;
8) who perpetrates no unlawful deeds, yet deplores those perpetrated by others as though they were his own;
9) who out of affection of heart sympathizes with another’s infirmity, and so rejoices in the good of his neighbour as though it were his own advantage;
10) who so insinuates himself as an example to others in all he does that among them he has nothing, at any rate of his own past deeds, to blush for;
11) who studies so to live that he may be able to water even dry hearts with the streams of doctrine;
12) who has already learned by the use and trial of prayer that he can obtain what he has requested from the Lord, having had already said to him, as it were, through the voice of experience, “While you are yet speaking, I will say, Here am I” (Isaiah 58:9).”

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