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How To Make Great Appointments - Calling, Competence & chemistry

Reviewed by Julian Reindorp.

This is an excellent and comprehensive guide as to how to appoint a new minister, and also how a minister might also prepare for the process. As Paul Goodliff, Head of Ministry for the Baptist Union, notes, the default language is Anglican, but it is readily transferable to other denominations, and Jeff Lucas also highly recommends it for any local church seeking new leadership. It is the best guide I have come across and every church would learn something from it.

Its sixteen chapters cover four themes – the context, making ready, discernment and selection, managing transition, and arrival. There are figures and tables which cover a range of denominations, as well as giving time lines for the various processes. It is particularly good on the actual process of interviewing, from both the interviewees and interviewers perspective. The sections on prayer are practical and suggest how the whole congregation might be involved, and how a separate person/team might take the lead in this.

A retired bishop described clergy in a church as a team through time, and this book gives the widest perspective on the whole process. I liked the suggestion that, very early on, people can be asked to write down three things they want from their new minister. These are put in a sealed envelope, and not opened again until the whole process of parish/church profile and local audit has been completed – by then people may have different priorities for their new minister!

The authors suggest it will take at least nine months from launching the process to “your new vicar preaching their first sermon”, and “the process cannot start properly until the vicar has moved out of the vicarage”.

At this point I wanted to ask how do the Methodist and the Roman Catholic churches manage to have no interregnum? From my own ecumenical experience, the Methodist system just starts much earlier and seems to many of us more responsible about lay people’s time. The research by Bob Jackson suggests that, in an interregnum of longer than six months, people will leave and not return.

The authors refer to situations where a minister has more than one congregation, but there is no mention of ministerial team situations.

Every church facing a change of leadership should have at least two copies of this book. It is pastoral, practical, and highly professional – very highly recommended.