I was always taught by my senior pastor that the right thing to do whenever you wanted to hire someone from another church was to talk to their pastor and ask permission to talk to them. Now, how you apply that principal to senior pastors is another question, but there has got to be a way to apply it. In other words, letting someone else in that church know what is going on so that is doesn’t become back room negotiations. Maybe having the pastor inform his elders, etc. that he is talking to another church. If he won’t do it, it may mean the search committee actually having some standards and deciding that if he won’t do that now, he won’t do it with us when someone else contacts him, therefore not considering him or her. 
It brings up another question - Ministry Ethics. Is this being taught at bible schools or seminary? If so, what is the standard. The church where I grew up had some “unwritten” ministry ethics like the one above and another one was you don’t leave to start a church within an hours drive without the pastor’s blessings.

Does this mean that I need to secure an agent?

Or do I need to investigate every first time visitor?

This is one of the blessings of being a part of a denomination, or at least THIS denomination (Wesleyan).

We cannot even begin a search without the approval of our District Superintendent, and then he has to approve any candidate before we can ask them to meet with us.

This works well for our District, because he is a hands-on guy who is familiar enough with each church to have a feel for who would be a good fit for a particular church.

It also works well, because if a church is just looking to get rid of a pastor, he steps in to find out what the problems are and to see if they can be resolved in a Biblical manner.  If it can’t then they can move on.

On a personal level, I’ve been asked by a few churches (one in my town) to consider pastoring them - and they are all from different denominations than mine.  But I made a commitment to never consider another church unless I first heard from my DS.  He is God’s authority over me, and I can trust him to help me discern God’s will in a situation.

So when someone comes to “check me out” I simply tell them that I’m not looking to leave.  God has not told me I’m done here, and I’ve not been approached by my DS.

“Won’t you at least pray about it?” I already have!  This is what God has told me about leaving, and until I hear differently, then I won’t consider a move.

Brian L

There’s alot that i could say here but won’t.... yet.

One word of advice to pastor search teams: Please don’t sit together as a group.

In the hallway of a 115-year-old church in Southern California hang the photos of all the church’s previous pastors - well over a dozen.  It’s not hard to figure out that the average pastoral tenure at the church is less than 10 years (and few, if any, of the pastors died “in the pulpit"). 

I think the question is not how to appropriately facilitate a pastor’s move from one church to another; but rather, how to keep pastors in place longer. Both pastors and churches need to get in the mindset that the call to pulpit ministry is not typically a short-term call. 

Obviously there will always be a need to replace pastors, and as Roger Olson has written, careful thought needs to be given to the replacement/transition process - especially if it involves bringing in someone from outside the church.  But we also need to think about an alternative: a home-grown replacement who knows and is known by the congregation.  I can only speak theoretically here because there is not, in America, much history of home-grown replacements to long-tenured pastors.  (And some of the examples that come to mind certainly raise some red flags.) But while the transition from one pastor to another is typically more difficult following a long tenure; that tenure should also allow a church to plan a transition over a longer period of time, train a “home-grown” replacement, and allow the incoming pastor and the congregation to adjust to each other.

Nora,
Your comment made me laugh.  Here’s another:

You know a search team’s come when 6-9 unrelated, not married to each other people show up in a van together and don’t seem interested in connecting with the church members.

we never had a problem like this one, i would think a pastor should stay until god told him/her to go. they should be led by the spirit,

To reiterate what bishopdave said, this is a bad system, but we are stuck with it, at least in the SBC.

Because each church is autonomous, and recognizes no outside authority, clergy cannot be assigned, nor can anyone else be given authority to “approve” potential moves.

If there is another way to get new staff members without forming a committee, while maintaining church autonomy, I’m open to it.

Leonard: That works as long as there is an understanding that a person is not going to be fired when it becomes known that they are entertaining the notion of leaving.

Trust me, it’s a real possibility.

I think each church body has different ways of dealing with these types of things. No two church bodies are exactly same..  not exactly anyways…

Our former pastor was at our current church 20 years. He left just a couple of months ago. It’s been fascinating to me the responses to his departure. And I’ve been in churches all my 39 years of life. 20 years is a long time for most any church body to have one pastor. Most stay only 2 to 7 years tops.

My daddy was on pastor search teams while I was growing up.. That’s honestly where I learned so much about them and the process of the whole thing over the years. Now, I am the wife of a pastor on the other side of things.

One would like to think, or believe, that everyone could just be upfront about such things. And yet.... as with every thing else in life.. most of the time that simply is not the case. I must confess… this is one area where I honestly wish we, ie the church, looked and acted differently.

Again.. I really think it depends upon the individuals involved. And honestly, may God help us all.