About half of your questions address specific doctrinal concerns. Do many search committees give doctrinal issues enough attention or do they often assume if the candidate is a Southern Baptist and has "been to seminary," then that qualification has been satisfied?

I think it's generally true that if a man has been raised and educated in a Southern Baptist context that search committees assume he's orthodox in all matters of doctrine, especially if he has already pastored in an SBC church. A few doctrinal questions may be asked, but they are mostly pro forma.

I remember an incident in my own experience back in the spring of 1981. I was at a church for three days in view of a call. While showing me around the area on Saturday, a member of the committee very sheepishly asked, "I'm kind of embarrassed to ask this, and I hope you aren't offended by it, but I think that I should. Would you mind telling me what you believe about how a person is saved?"

"I'm so glad you asked that question," I replied, "and I'm not offended, rather I'm encouraged that you asked it. Questions like this one are exactly the kinds of questions you ought to be asking me."

Committees should take nothing for granted theologically about a candidate. With more than 45,000 SBC churches and even more ordained ministers, you just can't assume that they are all doctrinally sound. That's especially so in a day such as ours when there's so much change occurring on the theological landscape. The best way to find out a man's theology is to ask him directly about it. Furthermore, I think that the most theologically solid men will actually appreciate the concern for correct doctrine expressed by asking good questions.

Many of your questions call on the candidate to acknowledge weaknesses that have been revealed in previous pastoral experience. Why is this helpful to the committee—helpful enough that committee members should not hesitate to ask such challenging questions?

I would say that "very few" of the questions ask about weaknesses, not "many." Still, such questions are useful because they may reveal that a man doesn't think he has any weaknesses (which in itself is a glaring weakness). Or one of these may be exactly the question that reveals to the committee that the man before them is not the man for their church at this time. This would be the case when a man admits a weakness in an area where the church needs great strength. That doesn't mean that the man couldn't target the area for improvement and do a great job, but it's better for all to know this up front than to find out later. Another possible benefit of such questions is that they remind the committee in the starry-eyed days of courting a candidate that they aren't getting a perfect man and cannot expect him to excel in every area.

If a church took seriously the biblical qualifications as described in your fifth question, would they need to spend time on the other 54 questions.

Clearly the qualifications for a minister listed in Scripture are sufficient for the process of choosing a minister. The primary purpose of these questions (which may also be used for a variety of other purposes as well) is to help committees discover whether a candidate does in fact meet those qualifications. These questions give people specific, practical ways to ask the candidate about his biblical qualifications.

For example, one of the qualifications in Titus 1:9 is that the man be able to "exhort in sound doctrine." If you merely ask, "Do you have 'sound doctrine'?, who is going to say "No, I don't"? This questionnaire provides some ways of inquiring about the soundness of the man's doctrine. First Timothy 3:4 says that "He must be one who manages his own household well." In this list you'll find some questions which ask some specifics about his family life.

I don't know that a committee should ask each of the fifty-five questions on the list, and they certainly would not do so at one sitting. Some of the questions will probably prompt others that are specific concerns to the situation of that particular church. But this tool gives a committee a useful list to work from. They will discover areas they had forgotten to ask about. The questions will help them know how to inquire of a man's doctrine despite some inadequacies they may feel due to the candidate's presumably superior knowledge of theology. And it will put in their hands a means to get the candidate talking about himself, his beliefs and practices, his view of the ministry and the church, etc., so that they can have more information with which to seek the will of God.

Copyright Disclaimer: All the information contained on the Center for Biblical Spirituality website is copyrighted by Donald S. Whitney. Permission granted to copy this material in its complete text only for not-for-profit use (sharing with a friend, church, school, Bible study, etc.) and including all copyright information. No portion of this website may be sold, distributed, published, edited, altered, changed, broadcast, or commercially exploited without the prior written permission from Donald S. Whitney.