Search Committee

10 Questions from a Search Committee

Looking for a new worship job? Marc Brown’s tips will be a big help:

What are the skills and qualities that a worship pastor should have? The most obvious answer may be musical talent. After all, you can’t lead or teach people to be excellent in something unless you, yourself are excellent, right? But,how is excellence in music defined? Should worship and worship leadership be defined through a lens as narrow as music? One thing that cannot be avoided is the fact that if the quality of music in worship suffers for too long, the worship pastor may be looking for a new job.

I used to be called a Minister of Music but for the last ten years have been the Worship Pastor. What does that mean? I will always remember a particular conversation I had as a teen with an adult from my church. The adult needed the help and attention of one of the pastoral staff from their church. They were frustrated because it was the day of the week when the staff rotation provided them with the help of the Minister of Music. As a Minister of Music (now Worship Pastor) for over 20 years, I’ll never forget these words: “I need a real minister- not the music guy!” It seems that those of us who are called Worship Pastors may be viewed by our congregations as little more than the music director. In some churches, this is conceded, with churches choosing to keep their worship leaders as the hired-gun running the music program while the ministry duties and theological knowledge is left to the real clergy. Still other churches name and treat us as clergy, but do we take up the mantel of pastoring in a way that our congregations need and recognize?

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