Hiring Wisdom for Christian Organizations By Rev. Peter Corney and Dr. Ken Byrne

Christians must learn to understand the hidden obstacles.

As Christians, we seek to extend God’s grace in Word and Deed. This is a value of the Gospel. All Christian organizations should embed this in their culture.

 To spread this message successfully, organizations must overcome numerous obstacles. The most prominent among these is attracting, selecting, and retaining the right people.

This is difficult for every employer. Here, we examine seven characteristics found in Christian organizations that add to the complexity of hiring. Next, we examine seven unique obstacles to recognize.

One | Christian organizations are built on a bedrock of commitment to social justice and a desire to extend grace to others.  

Our “core business” is offering a helping hand. This can lead to a conflict between Christian values and leadership obligations. Leaders’ success often depends on their ability to balance the tension between the two.

We may meet someone who isn’t “quite right” for the job. The need to “help” can override our more pragmatic judgment about organizational needs and protecting existing staff.

One Example

A very large Christian organization has social justice as its bedrock value. Their very existence is devoted to helping those at the bottom of the social ladder.

An employee approached them asking for help. Her husband had been imprisoned for financial dishonesty offenses. While he was serving his sentence, his wife and two children were supported by relatives. Now on parole, he found it impossible to find a job.

To help him, the organization offered him a part-time job as a groundskeeper at one of its satellite locations. The head office decided the best way to support his rehabilitation was to give him a fresh start. Thus, he did not share his history with those he reported to.

After several months of good performance, a job as a bookkeeper became available. He expressed interest, as he did have some financial skills. After being appointed to this role, he committed fraud again, went back to prison, and his wife left him.

At first, this seemed like a winning solution. Help could be offered to a loyal employee while also giving someone in need a leg up. It was “only part-time” and “how much trouble could a groundskeeper create?”?

Two | Christian leaders tend to avoid conflict.

While Jesus speaks directly, that part of his message is lost. We have found that often Christians confuse rigor with being impolite.

Skilled interviewing requires asking legal but sometimes challenging questions. Avoiding conflict can lead to an emphasis on “soft” or even leading questions. This will dramatically increase the risk of a hiring mistake.

Three | For many applicants, the job is much more than a job.

It is an outworking of the applicant’s faith. The hope is that the applicant’s faith will closely match the employer’s. Employing someone whose faith differs significantly from the organization’s creates obvious problems.

Four | Prayer can become a substitute for careful planning.

While it is always wise to ask for God’s inspiration and guidance, it cannot substitute for the other work necessary for wise hiring decisions.

Five | Relationships are important in every workplace, though they play a particular role in Christian organizations. 

Each employee is – knowingly or not – an advertisement for God. Christians, those of other faiths, and those of no faith will quietly judge the employer’s values by the subtle ways in which staff relate to them.

One unspoken performance criterion will be, “Is this person a good advertisement for a gracious and loving God?” The groundskeeper who keeps an immaculate landscape but screams at a child who walks on the grass will fail this test.

Six | Virtually all Christian organizations have buried in their DNA the expectation of being a witness to Christ.

How important this is will vary with the job. A Christian university hiring a language teacher can be more flexible than a church hiring a youth minister. In either case, this hope is unlikely to appear in a job description.

The hiring panel may want to know how this candidate’s daily interactions with others will reflect Christ’s message. Asking direct questions about this will be illegal in many jurisdictions. This can be done,  though uncovering this information requires considerable skill.

Seven | Most Christian organizations lack a skilled Human Resources practitioner.

 Instead, staff is expected to make hiring decisions without formal training. This often leads to an unstructured interview or even a casual chat over coffee. They then decide based on “likeability” rather than hard data.

Closing Thoughts

Every hiring decision is an exercise in risk assessment. Mistakes are expensive. Making the right decision requires specific training and careful preparation. Without understanding these obstacles, our most cherished values can inadvertently lead us astray unless we manage them carefully.

This material is adapted with permission from Hire Right, First Time: A Practical Guide to Staffing Christian Organizations. The book comes with a 200-page User Guide and is available from Amazon.

Rev. Peter Corney is an Anglican minister who has been actively involved in writing, teaching, and leadership development for the past sixty years.

Dr. Ken Byrne has been an independent organizational psychologist for over forty years. He has evaluated more than 3000 job applicants for both Christian and secular employers,

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