What to Ask When Trying to Learn From a Pastor

In this post, entitled “One of the Best Ways To Learn Leadership,” I wrote about the principle of taking leaders you admire and want to learn from out to lunch on a regular basis. Today I had a question about what kind of questions I usually ask during those meeting times. Thanks Chris Jones for asking me about this.

Here are some of the top questions I ask:

1. What do you do for evangelism? What’s your evangelism strategy? Some churches go really big on Easter, Christmas, and usually a few other days in the year. I want to know about that. One pastor I spoke to has had great success in doing a big outreach during Mother’s Day.


2. What do you do for assimilation? How do you treat and respond to first time guests? Some churches send out cards, some call the people, some bake bread and deliver it. I try to understand how they contextualize this process for their area and people they’re trying to reach.


3. How do you get people involved in ministry? What process do they have to go through?
In some churches you have a chance to be involved in ministry once a year during a nominating committee process. In other churches they encourage you to be involved the very next week. I want to know what kind of metric they have in place for people to be involved in leading a team or just joining a team. 


4. What is the organizational structure of your church like? How are decisions made in your church? The second question will reveal most of what you need to know. Either decisions are made through some kind of boards or committees or they’re made by the pastor and his staff, or maybe just the pastor. I want to know if they have teams of elders and deacons and how they function and what their purpose is.


5. Do you do small groups? What’s your small group philosophy?
I want to know if they use affinity groups or cell groups? Are the semester-based or do they meet through the whole year? Do they meet in homes or at the church? How effective have they been?


6. Do you have a stewardship system in place?
What do they do to facilitate giving in the church? Do they do online giving? What do they use for that? How many are giving online?


7. Do you have a discipleship system in place? What’s your strategy for helping the people to become spiritually mature?

Those are some of the main questions I ask about. In short, I just try to be really curious and have an open mind that’s ready to learn. To read the post I reference click here.

What about you? What questions would you add to the list to ask a leader if you had one hour with them?


[image by amanki]

Related posts:

1. How Should A Pastor Address Himself?
2. What Your Organization Can Learn From Barack Obama
3. One of The Best Ways To Learn Leadership
4. Learn to Lead a Staff Meeting Like a Pro