The Search Before the Search: Choosing a Staffing Consultant

by Ronald “Dee” Vaughan, Pinnacle Associate

My cell phone rings. The call is from my wife, Linda. “Has your meeting begun or do you have a minute to talk?” “Well, that’s complicated,” I reply. “I’m in the meeting we needed before the meeting to plan the meeting.” Church staffers understand.

Just as there are meetings before meetings, with increasing frequency, there is a search before the search for church staff. In many corners of God’s vineyard, qualified candidates for church staff positions are difficult to find. The reasons deserve an article, if not a book, of their own. Finding the search process more challenging than in the past, more churches are enlisting the services of church staffing agencies or consultants to help them find the paid staff they need.

The starting point for many search teams has shifted from, “How do we find the staff we need?” to “How do we choose a staffing consultant to assist us in our search?” The church I serve has recently completed our search for a Minister of Worship. During that two-and-a-half-year process, we worked with two different church staffing agencies. Our experiences with these helpers were vastly different, one ending in a rather acrimonious divorce and the other leading to the candidate we’ve called to join our leadership team. So, what was the difference? Exercising my spiritual gift of 20/20 hindsight, I want to share some key questions our search team should have asked and answered with greater intention before we chose a search consultant. Had we done so, we would’ve saved ourselves months of frustration and tens of thousands of dollars. So, what questions would a search team be wise to ask as they begin the search before the search? (For purposes of this article, I’m going to call the helper or agency you enlist your “consultant,” knowing that you will most likely relate to one primary representative of a larger staff search company or agency.)

Are the consultant and the church a suitable match?

The biblical admonition to “test the spirits,” should be heard and heeded in your search for a staffing consultant. Every staffing agency has a culture, a set of guiding values, a spirit you need to discern and test for its compatibility with the personality of your church. Just as churches have a wide range of identity characteristics, so do staffing consultants. You need to be confident that you’ve found a consultant who “sings in your key.” For example, some consultants offer a search process that resembles and blends well with churches that have a top-down leadership style. They want to work with the pastor and a few key leaders to find a candidate. Other consultants lead a more broadly-based participatory process and are open to working with search teams or even constituent groups within the church. You need a consultant who will mirror your church’s decision-making style. Review the list of churches a prospective consultant has served. Are any of those churches similar to yours in governance and leadership style? Call a few of the churches listed to see if you feel compatible with the spirit of the churches the consultant has served.

On a more relational level, compatibility means enlisting a consultant you like, trust, and respect. Good churches and capable consultants don’t always work well together, just as a collection of star athletes doesn’t always make a winning team. One of the breakthrough moments that led my church’s search team to fire our first consultant came when I confessed to the group, “Honestly, I don’t like the people we’re working with to find a candidate.” My confession broke the ice for everyone on our search team to admit that we didn’t feel a positive connection with our consultant and the process he was leading. We knew the time had come to make a change. I wish we’d been more discerning before enlisting a consultant we came to realize we didn’t like.

Compatibility is a relational, even spiritual connection the church and consultant must make and nurture. Don’t hesitate to speak up if you don’t experience that connection. Test the spirits.

What does the consultant offer the church?

In evaluating what a consultant offers your church to assist your staff search, you must separate the wheat from the chaff, the commitments from the commercials. Staffing consultants, like anyone offering a service for pay, market themselves in the most positive light possible. Their web sites and brochures include glowing testimonials from well-satisfied churches they have served. The first consultant we hired frequently repeated the claim that their firm typically found and placed qualified candidates in churches in eight to ten weeks. The claim was impressive but, as we later realized, it was not a commitment. It was a commercial. The expected timeframe for a successful placement was not spelled out in the agreement, so it was not actually binding on the consultant.

The place where you must separate commitments from commercials is the agreement the church signs to enlist the consultant’s services. Take time to study the agreement carefully. Enlist someone familiar with contractual agreements to review it and offer you candid feedback. Based on my church’s experience, let me offer you a standard for what qualifies as a commitment from your prospective consultant. First, the commitment must be stated clearly in writing in the agreement. Second, the commitment must be connected to the compensation the consultant receives. I strive to give everyone the benefit of the doubt in my dealing with them, but, if a clause of a consultant agreement has no financial consequences, you have no power to assure its fulfillment.

Let me suggest a helpful exercise for evaluating what a consultant offers your church. Make a copy of the agreement. Highlight, in one color, all the sentences in the agreement that protect the interests of the consultant. Then, highlight in another color all the sentences that protect the church’s interests. If the highlighted agreement shows more of the consultant’s color than the church’s, is more about protecting the consultant than serving the church, you may have a problem. Separate the commitments from the commercials and see what the consultant truly offers.

What will the work of the consultant cost the church?

Enlisting a staffing consultant, like any church financial decision, is a stewardship issue. The church seeking a consultant must ask themselves, “Are we spending the tithes and offerings of God’s people wisely and fruitfully?” The firm with whom our church had a bad experience assured us that their services “worked within the church’s budget.” We soon realized the meaning of that promise was that the firm would not charge our church more than the amount we had budgeted to pay for the position we were seeking to fill. In effect, the consultant would be paid like a full-time member of our staff as long as our search lasted.

In evaluating the cost of a consultant’s work, consider two important issues. First, what is the basis for compensation? Some consultants agree to be paid a certain amount when a candidate is hired by the church. This is far preferable to those who base their compensation on billable hours. In our bad consulting experience, the firm charged us for the time they worked on our search each week. We became troubled when the consultant claimed to work exactly the maximum number of hours for which he could bill us each week, with few specific details recorded of what work he did for us in those hours. In evaluating the basis for compensation, look for the financial incentives in the agreement. If the consultant is paid for results, they will be motivated to complete your search promptly. If the consultant is paid by the hour, you have incentivized a protracted search and will probably get one.

One other issue must be faced in evaluating the consultant’s cost to the church. What will the consultant be paid if the search is not successful? An agreement based on billable hours will pay the consultant as long as they work for the church regardless of the outcome. When our church ended our relationship with our bad consultant, they kept all the money we’d paid them. We had no staff member while the consultant had tens of thousands of church dollars. Be sure your agreement with the consultant requires results for full compensation. Give your consultant a financial incentive for completing the task of bringing a qualified staff member to your church.

Who leads the dance?

I believe a church’s chosen way of seeking a new staff member should be respected by any consultant who serves that church. If not, the search will not represent the church’s faith and values authentically. A church enlists a consultant because that person has skills, a network of relationships, and wisdom from a wealth of experience that will help the church seek and find staff successfully. A church is wise to listen to and learn from their consultant. But this does not mean the church surrenders control of its search process to their consultant. The services a consultant offers a church must be flexible and adaptive to the church’s unique values and preferences. If the consultant demands rigid control of the process, I believe they are asking too much.

Control of the search process was the most nightmarish issue our search team faced in dealing with our bad consultant. This issue came to a head when, as part of a prospective candidate’s visit to our church, I scheduled a two-hour meeting for the candidate and myself to get acquainted and explore our ministry visions and values. When we reviewed our proposed schedule for the visit, our consultant told me, in no uncertain terms, that, according to our agreement, I was not allowed to speak with any candidate without the consultant being present. I told the consultant that while I respected and valued his participation in most steps of our search process, I had the right and responsibility to interview a prospective staff member in private. Again, he accused me of violating the church’s agreement to follow his firm’s search process. Sensing our working relationship had elevated to DEFCON 2 (one step away from war), I recounted the many times and ways the church had accommodated his process preferences and asked him to reciprocate by showing some small degree of flexibility. Again, he referenced our agreement and refused. I then assured him I did not consider his agreement to be divinely inspired, that he was behaving like a “control freak,” and I did not need his permission to interview a prospective partner in ministry privately. That spicy Zoom conference essentially ended our working relationship. The moral of this part of the story is to choose a consultant who genuinely respects the church as a partner in the search process, a partner with values to be respected and insights to offer that can enhance the search process and its outcome. A consultant is hired to consult, not control.

I didn’t write this article to frighten you away from seeking a staffing consultant, but I do want to help you avoid the wrong kind of consultant. Test the spirits. Be sure the consultant is a compatible partner in your search. Be realistic about what your consultant offers you. Carefully separate the commitments from the commercials. Count the cost of the consultant’s work. Be sure compensation incentivizes a timely successful outcome. Hire a helper, not a controlling taskmaster. The church remains responsible for how it seeks and who it finds.

Grace to you in the search before the search.