The Love + Lead Hiring Process: Why We Start With the Church's Story

Most search processes begin with the job description. The Love + Lead process begins with the Senior Pastor.

This is not a small distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different philosophy about what a search is for. A search is not primarily a process of identifying qualified candidates and selecting the best match. It is a process of understanding a church deeply enough to know what kind of leader will genuinely thrive there, and then pursuing that person with intention.

The first step in every Love + Lead engagement is a one-on-one with the Senior Pastor. The questions I ask in that conversation are not administrative. They are pastoral. I want to understand the story of the church: when the pastor felt called to start it, what the different seasons have looked like, what has been hard and what has been life-giving. I want to understand the leadership style of the pastor, in what settings they feel most alive, where they feel most constrained, and what they enjoy most and least about the current structure they lead within.

The second step is a series of conversations with key members of the existing executive team. I want to understand the team culture from multiple perspectives: how they best support the Senior Pastor's leadership style, how they feel a new team member will integrate, and what they believe the greatest leadership need on the team actually is. These conversations often surface important information that the Senior Pastor alone cannot provide. They also build genuine investment in the search process among the people who will work most closely with the new hire.

Only after this foundation is laid do we turn to the job description. At that point, I propose revisions based on everything learned in the intake process, because the job description that existed before the search began is almost never the right one. It reflects what the church thought it needed before it did the clarity work. The revised description reflects what the church actually needs.

This sequence (story first, team second, description third) is what makes the Love + Lead process different from a transactional search. It is slower. It requires more from the Senior Pastor upfront. But it consistently produces placements that last, because the foundation was built correctly from the beginning.