Search committees are always looking for pastors and additional staff, but they need to know the difference between mission-driven leadership and maintenance-drive leadership. Here is the first set of distinctions you need to make in your interviews:

I am in a therapeutic process          I am charging ahead with clarity of purpose

Ministry is a stage in life                   Ministry is a total lifestyle

Authorities must give permission      God always opens a door

Being clergy is a strategic process    Being clergy is a conspiracy of events

I am committed to a cause                I absolutely trust in grace

I’m anxious to preserve harmony      I’m serene to endure chaos

I am critically self-aware                    I am ecstatically going beyond myself

Everything on the left will help the candidate you are interviewing maintain the existing level of congregational life. Everything on the right will help the candidate grow God’s mission in the future.