Gary Noonan’s recent essay, “When fit fails: Rethinking discernment in pastoral searches,” makes a clear and necessary argument: discernment breaks down when PNCs leave their criteria unnamed. He is right. But the breakdown is never one-sided. Discernment fails just as often when the pastor across the table has not done their own work.
As a pastor who has gone through the hiring process and as a mentor to new pastors, I have this to say to everyone who is searching for a call: You and the hiring church share equal responsibility for clarity, and that work for you begins before you submit a single document.
Twelve years ago, before I accepted my current call, I asked the Pastor Nominating Committee to do something unusual. I asked them to extend their work by 12 months and meet with me at one, three, six, and 12 months after I arrived. I wanted to know: Were they getting what they called? Was I getting what they sold?
We met in their homes, which mattered. It kept things relational and honest. I asked about potential landmines, unhealthy power dynamics, and the things no one had yet spoken aloud.
Most PNCs dissolve after a call is extended. They pour themselves into a process and then quietly disappear. Keeping this PNC engaged honored their investment and protected mine. That covenant of continued conversation changed how I entered the call, and how I have sustained it.
But that practice only works if you arrive knowing yourself. Mutual clarity requires that the pastor bring self-awareness and vision first.
Related reading: “When fit fails: Rethinking discernment in pastoral searches” by Gary Noonan
I have spent many hours with students from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary discerning their calls to ordained ministry. I have read more Personal Discernment Profiles than I can count. The pattern I see most often is not dishonesty. It’s haziness. Pastors in discernment sometimes know their gifts without knowing their calling. They know what they can do without knowing what they are being asked to become.
A good salary matters. It is not a call. The Holy Spirit moves through clarity, not around it. Before a PNC can name what they need, you must be able to name what you are.
Nowhere is that clarity more visible, or more tested, than in your Statement of Faith. It is not a spiritual autobiography. It is a theological argument made under constraint. You cannot include everything. What you emphasize invites deeper inquiry. What you leave out raises its own questions. PNC members will note both.
A candidate once wrote with genuine beauty about grace flowing outward like water finding its level. It was moving to read. But nothing in those paragraphs told a PNC what that pastor believed about baptism, about Scripture, or about what the church owes its community. The beauty was real. The clarity was absent. And a PNC, left without that clarity, may simply move on.
Write your statement so a reader can finish the last sentence and say, “I know what this pastor believes. I can see how those beliefs will shape their preaching, their sacramental leadership, their pastoral care, and their public witness.” Beauty and precision are not opposites. But beauty without precision is not enough.
Which brings me to the one thing I most want to convey. Do not abandon your voice in the pursuit of clarity. Theological specificity does not flatten a voice. It sharpens it. The goal is not a pastor who sounds like every other pastor. It is a pastor who sounds unmistakably like themselves, clearly enough that a congregation can say, “Yes! This person, this calling, this moment.”
Noonan is right. Discernment deserves more than instinct alone. It also deserves more than vagueness dressed up as mystery. Name what you believe. Show up knowing who you are. Then trust the community of faith to confirm what the Spirit has already been saying.
