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Podcast: A Better Way to Talk about the “Call to Ministry” (Bobby Jamieson)

August 30, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Advice for the Aspiring

In this episode, Bobby Jamieson talks about his own path to church leadership, what role seminary played, and as well as what advice he'd give to those aspiring to be pastors.

The Path to Being a Pastor

The Path to Being a Pastor

Bobby Jamieson

Written from personal experience, The Path to Being a Pastor lays the groundwork for aspiring leaders to walk through various stages of ministry preparation, trusting that the Lord will direct their steps on the path to becoming a pastor.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:46 - The Path to Church Leadership

Matt Tully
Bobby, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Bobby Jamieson
Happy to be here.

Matt Tully
You currently serve as an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. Do you remember when you first realized that you wanted to be a “vocational full-time pastor”?

Bobby Jamieson
Sure, thanks for asking. I don’t know about the first time I seriously thought about it, but certainly there was a serious desire settling in by Christmas time my sophomore year of college. I was studying music full time, I wanted to be a professional musician, I started attending Grace Community Church where John MacArthur is the pastor, and that was the end of my freshman year. By the beginning of my sophomore year, I’m really plugging in, and the way the word was impacting my life, the preaching there, the compelling example of deeper Christian faith that I was experiencing, I remember starting to have some serious thoughts and serious desires during the first half of my sophomore year.

Matt Tully
You talk about how you first had this sense that maybe pastoral ministry, and even making a vocation out of that, was something that you were interested in. It came while you were at Grace Community Church in California. What ultimately led you to pastoring at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) in Washington, DC—the other side of the country?

Bobby Jamieson
The first big thing is that some friends of mine had been to a weekender out at CHBC, which we still host these long weekends for pastors and others. It’s sort of a weekend-long show and tell. It’s a time to observe everything going on at CHBC and participate in teaching and fellowship. I had friends who had been to one of those, I had friends who knew about the internship that we run at our church, and they just recommended it to me. I was already sort of listening to some of Mark’s preaching—Mark Dever, the senior pastor here—I had heard about Mark through his connections to T4G, which was just starting up and which John MacArthur was also at. I started listening to some 9Marks resources, getting interested in what they were doing, just resonating with the kind of biblical vision of church that they were advocating. There was this opportunity to train in person. When I heard about it, it was described as hanging out with Mark all the time, you read a bunch of papers, and you just hop in and see everything that’s going on in the church. I thought, Oh, that sounds like a good way to get some ministry experience and learn what it means to be a pastor. So I applied from California, as a college student, came out to a weekender, wound up getting married—

Matt Tully
You got married that weekend?

Bobby Jamieson
Not that weekend. Sorry, no, that’s a compressed timeline. I applied for the internship, came for a weekender, some time later I got married, and I came out for the internship right after I graduated college. I came out to Washington, DC as an intern in 2008.

Matt Tully
I think those who are somewhat familiar with Dever and Capitol Hill might be familiar with this pastoral internship program. It seems like it’s something that you all are pretty well known for now. Could you unpack that a little bit? What is that program like? What does it entail?

Bobby Jamieson
The goal is to give brothers who aspire to be pastors a biblical vision for the church. How do you see what Scripture teaches about the church? What is church membership? How should a church be structured? What are pastors/elders job descriptions? What are we supposed to focus on, according to Scripture? How do we practice church discipline? Where do we see church membership in the Bible? Who has authority and how should decision making in the church work? We believe there are biblical answers to all those questions; although, there is a lot of room for application. There is a lot of wisdom and discernment that is needed in applying these things to specific situations. So we’re trying to force guys, in a very repetitive catechetical kind of way, to focus on the doctrine of the church in reading and writing. That’s the main thing they’re doing day by day. Then, they’re observing what’s going on in the church—meeting with pastors one to one, observing elders meetings, sitting in on the membership interviews, being trained in biblical counseling by Deepak Reju, one of our associate pastors. So there is some hands-on training, but it’s more of a watch and learn. It’s sort of watching everything that’s happening, asking critical questions, wrestling with what’s going on in the day-to-day life of the church. It’s not as practical and hands on as a lot of things that churches do, which are great. We don’t really have a preaching practicum part of it, although the interns can be involved in some sermon prep workshops. It’s meant to say here’s the biblical DNA of how you do church. Here’s a usable model of people trying to live this stuff out faithfully so you can at least see what you do in this situation when this really difficult marriage is coming to a head. Or, what do you do in this situation when COVID hits and there’s government regulations and we can’t meet as normal in our building and the elders are wrestling with all of these hard things? What biblical principles are informing our decisions and how are we trying to care for the flock and keep everybody unified? So, it’s trying to imprint a biblical ecclesiology. It’s full time, it’s only five months, and people come from a variety of situations and go out into a variety of situations.

Matt Tully
Why do you think it is that the internship is structured that way? It seems like you’re saying a lot of it is watch, learn, read, and study specifically on issues of ecclesiology, rather than some of the things you might think of a pastoral internship including (not that it doesn’t include some of those things). Is there something behind that? Maybe people, in general, aren’t seeing some of these basic ecclesiological dynamics at play in their own churches?

Bobby Jamieson
That’s a good question, and it depends which denominational stream you’re talking about. Presbyterians have their own ways of training and replicating these things. We are Convictional Baptists, and even among Baptists there is some diversity in terms of how these things are to be understood. Historically, Baptists are committed Congregationalists; we are too. There’s not total agreement among Baptists today about these things, so you won't’ hear the same thing from everybody. I think there are biblical conversations worth having and biblical convictions worth advocating for, but also it’s the kind of stuff where it’s harder to get the picture if you’re just getting it from a book. It’s like trying to read a blueprint and imagine the finished building in your head, as opposed to living in the building and then looking at the blueprint to say, Here are the dimensions. You’ve just got a whole different kind of knowledge from living in the building and then comparing the blueprint to reality. So, it’s trying to say, Look, here’s the anatomy text book of a church body, so to speak, and here you are going around with the doctors on their rounds to actually watch the surgery, see the consultation, see the prescription and diagnosis. It’s the kind of thing that even a seminary is not as well set up to teach. When you look not only in the abstract of biblical qualifications for eldership, for example, or Jesus saying tell it to the church when it's a matter of church discipline. What does that mean? What does that look like? How much do you say and who says it? You can get deeper convictions that are more stress tested by focusing intensely on these things and seeing them applied.

08:12 - Setting Aside the Language of Calling

Matt Tully
You mentioned seminaries and I want to come back to that question of how seminaries fit into the whole process of a guy discerning a desire to be in some kind of vocational ministry position and then pursuing that desire. But before we get to that, speaking about the process of becoming a pastor, you write that your goal with your new book is to “persuade you to set aside the language of calling”—which I venture to say is probably the dominant way that we often talk about this issue—“to put aside that language of calling and replace it with aspiration. Instead of saying ‘I am called to ministry,’ say ‘I aspire to be a pastor.’” Help us understand that. Why are you trying to do that? Why are you trying to push for that different language?

Bobby Jamieson
There are a few different reasons. You’re right, this is one of the book’s key theses and it sets the framework for the book. There are a couple of things to say about calling. One is that I think often it leads to unhelpful, counter-productive, sometimes irresponsible ways of looking at what it means to be qualified to be a pastor. If it’s fundamentally a subjective sense of I want to do this. I think God wants me to do this. I enjoy doing this. I feel a sort of driving sense and urgency—that can trump or override all sorts of other considerations to the contrary. For example, what do people actually think about your preaching? If you’re married, what does your wife think about this whole business? How do people respond to your public teaching or personal ministry? How godly are you? Are there any glaring sins in your life that would disqualify you from ministry? Take a look at those qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and you tell me if you meet them. The calling language can sort of short circuit all of that. God called me. I know it. That settles it. Someone better hire me. Frankly, at least in Southern Baptist circles I have come from and have gone to seminary in and the sort of waters I tend to swim in (as well as other church streams), I do think that’s a live problem. When I talk to brothers who are in seminary now or in seminary towns they say, What you’re talking about is widespread and is problematic. There is a more responsible way to use calling language, which is what a lot of folks, especially more Reformed folks do. They talk about an internal call and an external call. I basically know what they mean and I basically agree with it. There is a sort of constraining internal sense of I really want to do this, but it then has to be objectively recognized. I get what people mean by that. I kind of basically agree, except I still don’t love that language of calling because it’s saying, This is from God. I know this is from God. I kind of have to know it’s from God before I even might take some practical steps toward this. Just to do a little detour on that really quick—I don’t know if Kevin would agree with me 100% on getting rid of calling language, but Kevin DeYoung, for instance, wrote this really helpful piece criticizing Spurgeon. Spurgeon has this famous line in Lectures to My Students that says basically, If you can go do anything else besides being a pastor, get out and go do it. You have to be so sold out and so committed without a doubt in your mind. Go be a grocer. Go be a banker. Get out of here! Kevin was arguing, and I pick up this argument in the book, that that’s an unwarranted, unjustifiable standard. What if you could contentedly do other things because God has given you other skills and abilities, but you really want to be a pastor the most and you’re affirmed and qualified in that? So I think an even more responsible internal call/external call still has some unhelpful tendencies. I would also point out that I just don’t see any hard, biblical evidence for it. Yes, God called Jeremiah to be a prophet. But that’s a unique, redemptive, historical office where God spoke to him audibly. It’s just not quite the same way that he deals with us today in regular means of grace and regular church offices. I don’t think there’s any positive biblical support that mandates it. Of course, we can use a non-biblical word to talk about a biblical reality. Okay, but still my preference is just to stick with aspiration, and here are a couple of reasons why. One reason is that it isn’t explicitly biblical. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:1: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.” So it’s right there in 1 Timothy 3, which correlates with 1 Peter 5 where it talks about an elder needing to serve, not under compulsion, but willingly. So that desire is important. That desire is a prerequisite. But the sense of desiring the work, desiring the office, it recognizes that number one you want it; number two, you’re not really sure yet if you’re qualified or cut out for it. At least structurally, it more naturally fits with a sense of Well, I would like to do this, but I don’t know if I measure up yet. That’s what aspiration is. Aspiration is about wanting to become a certain kind of person. I think you used this language specifically. Did you talk about aspiring to the office of elder and the issue of eldership in particular? I can’t remember.

Matt Tully
That’s another thing I wanted to dig into. How much of these issues that you’re seeing with the language and the mindset behind the language that often accompanies guys who are desiring to be in pastoral ministry is tied up in arguably unbiblical or slightly skewed understandings of church leadership? Specifically, the distinction between elders and pastors.

Bobby Jamieson
Obviously, there are different ways this plays out in different denominations and church traditions, but if you just look at Scripture, the three terms that are used for the pastoral office in the New Testament interchangeably refer to the same role. Paul calls the elders of the church in Ephesus to him in Acts 20:17. He says the Holy Spirit has made them overseers—that’s the Greek word we also translate as bishops, which also shows up in the Pastoral Epistles—the Holy Spirit made them overseers and the work they are to do—to care for—is from the Greek word for shepherding, which is where we get the noun form for pastor. They’re elders who are appointed as overseers who do the work of pastors. So it’s all the same thing. But practically speaking, of course, there are functional differences between it being full time or not, it being your job or not. But I think it’s important to recognize that elder is the spiritual office of overseer, of teacher, of example, of working together. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:17, “to direct the affairs of the church.” I think the higher your view of eldership—and I think there should be a high view of eldership. It should be that elders are apt to teach, they’re giving instruction in sound doctrine and refuting those who contradict it (according to Titus 1:9). Elders are setting an example. Hebrews uses the word leaders, but I think it’s referring to the same office. You’re to imitate their example. They watch over you as those who will give an account. The higher your view of eldership, in one sense, the more pressure it takes off of this whole question of calling and aspiration. You can aspire to the office, you can grow in the qualifications and the work of the office, you can just start doing some of the work in an informal sense—discipling, counseling, teaching in informal contexts—and you can aspire to that office. It’s kind of a secondary question whether it becomes your job. It’s a little bit more of a dimmer switch. It’s a little bit more of a spectrum. You can begin aspiring to that, start getting to work, maybe even become an elder, but it’s not an all-or-nothing question. So, I also think the language of aspiration, especially coupled with a high view of eldership, can relieve some of the pressure. Let’s say you’re in the middle of a career—you’re a chemist and you’ve been at your job for ten years and you’ve got a family to support—but you are teaching the Bible more and want to be doing more of it. Maybe a guy like that does become a senior pastor, but it’s not all or nothing. Maybe he should start by aspiring to eldership and seeing where the Lord takes him.

Matt Tully
Yes, because that’s not a lesser form of shepherding.

Bobby Jamieson
No. All of our elders are pastors. We all weigh in on pastoral matters, we all counsel, we all teach, we all help in matters of church discipline. The full-time pastors, like myself, lose votes all the time to other brothers. It’s the elders as a whole who are shepherding. We try to make sure to hold up all the elders of the church in the eyes of the congregation: These are all your pastors.

Matt Tully
It seems a little ironic to me that as I think about the way that often lay elders are installed and identified, it seems to fit this model of aspiring. There’s a mindset of, Hey, you want to serve the church, you want to teach, you want to lead—that’s great. We want to go through a process of making sure that’s a good fit and making sure that you meet the qualifications. They seem less likely to be assuming, This is what I’m called to do and I’m just going to do it no matter what. Ironically, it seems like it’s more of the vocational, full-time senior pastor types who are the ones who maybe need this reminder that it’s not necessarily this divine call that they can ascertain and then sort of declare as they go forward.

Bobby Jamieson
I don’t want to totally get rid of the importance of a serious and well-considered desire. Particularly, if it’s your job, you are now vocationally dependent on faithfully shepherding people and remaining faithful to those biblical qualifications and dealing day by day with all those challenges of pastoring in a way that is practically different from someone whose job doesn’t depend on it. So I don’t want to get rid of all practical distinctions or totally downplay the subjective side of it. I think one way that a lot of pastors could serve aspiring ministers more would be to hold up the office of elder and use it as a kind of mirror. Okay, you seem like you’re interested in serving and helping out in church. Have you ever thought about being an elder? Why wouldn’t you be an elder five, ten years from now? Let’s put the burden of proof on you. I think it is part of a mindset of wanting to raise up leaders, not viewing it as a sort of zero sum game where you need to keep control or have the biggest share of the pie. I want to be careful not to downplay the subjective side totally, but I think I hear what you’re saying. I think we can have an overly mystical view of what it means to be a pastor. Let’s put it like that.

19:00 - What about Seminary?

Matt Tully
Where do seminaries fit into this whole conversation? It seems to me that, in my experience talking with guys who are in seminary, they often enter school for the express purpose of becoming a vocational pastor. That’s maybe the dominant goal in that, even if they don’t have a church that has affirmed that desire or called them to a role like that. They sort of go in assuming, I’m not going to be pastoring in my home church, the church I grew up in, or the church I attend right now. It’s going to be some other church I don’t even know about yet. How does that fit into the way you’re viewing the path to being a pastor?

Bobby Jamieson
Practically, it probably means I’m giving a much smaller role to seminaries than a lot of guys might expect. I think when the seminaries are at their best, they recognize the limited role they’re playing and they’re saying, Look, churches fundamentally form pastors. We equip them with a certain toolkit and help form them in a more intensive way. When seminaries are at their best, they’re saying, Churches form pastors; we’re really an assist. I think I’m agreeing with seminaries about that, but I think a lot of men going to seminaries might have an expectation of If I do this credential, if I accomplish this degree, poof! I’m qualified to be a pastor. That’s just not necessarily the case. Seminary can be greatly helpful, you can learn a ton, and I’m glad I have a couple of seminary degrees. I’m thankful for those. But fundamentally, you’re shaped to be a pastor in the context of the church. You grow through ministering to the church. Ultimately, you’re fundamentally vetted by the church. I think some churches are very responsible. We try to be very responsible, willing to have hard conversations, willing to say no—whether to affirming someone to go to seminary, or even if we would permit and not getting fully behind them because we’re hesitant. We could say, We can see how you might want to go do that and we’re not going to stand in your way, but we’re not necessarily going to throw the full weight of our support behind you. I think the more churches take an active oversight role in those aspiring brothers lives, the better served they’ll be and the better sense they’ll have of what seminary can and can’t do.

Matt Tully
That gets to another challenge that I’ve heard from seminary grads is that they’ve just spent all this time and money getting a great theological and even pastoral education, but that locks them into finding a full time, pastoral, paid job no matter what, since they don’t have any other “marketable skills.” What would you say to guys who are considering seminary and maybe feel a desire to do that but want to make sure that they are starting that with a biblical view of what actually qualifies them for ministry and how to think about even their long-term financial life and their family’s life by going to seminary?

Bobby Jamieson
That’s a great question. It’s a tough question because everybody’s situation varies. There are just so many individual variables in everybody’s life. I wasn’t going to make much money as a jazz musician anyways, and I would have had a very strange lifestyle. And I knew, for me, a big practical decision point was that I need to be fully committed to this. If I’m really going to pursue a career in performing and composing and teaching and all the stuff that musicians do, I better be fully committed 100%. So it was kind of a crossroads for me. It seemed like there was enough confirmation, enough fruit, enough people telling me that they benefit from my preaching, enough church oversight saying, Yeah, we support this, that I started putting all my eggs into the ministry basket—even though it was several years of training and preparation and working in different areas before becoming a full-time pastor. So, I kind of threw all my eggs into that basket even at a very young age. I know brothers who have done that and have been very faithful. It just varies so much. I have a tough time even distilling principles because I’m just thinking of individual brothers I know who are at different places in that and have maybe had some desire but have stayed in their job, or have left the job, or have gone back to the job. A lot depends on opportunity cost. Are you single? Are you married with five kids? Are you talking about moving? Who pays for tuition? Do you have a reasonable prospect of studying full time or close to full time? Especially with online seminaries these days, there are a million and one settings—from zero to one hundred. Every case is different.

Matt Tully
How important would you say it would be for a guy who is considering seminary to have a church behind him, telling him Yes, we think you should do that. We think you have potential to be an elder, to be a pastor someday. Does a guy need to make sure he has that before he would go pursue seminary?

Bobby Jamieson
As a general rule, I would say it is very important. As a general rule, I would say let your church set your pace. As a general rule, I would want to say whatever is the fullest extent your church will get behind anybody, labor to serve in the church in such a way that they’re willing to look at you and say, Yeah, we’ll get behind you as much as we get behind anybody. There are lots of exceptions and qualifications to that. What if it’s a church that isn’t really actively invested in raising up pastors? What if it’s a pastor who has a more territorial attitude? Sadly, this happens sometimes where he can feel threatened by a really hungry, aspiring guy, as opposed to just rejoicing in that and wanting to equip him and send him out. So, a general rule is that it is very important. I would normally counsel that. There are qualifications, and no pastor is infallible. No pastor could perfectly evaluate this man’s gifts and character. We pastors also just need to be aware of the limits of our own judgement.

25:05 - Practical Advice for Churches

Matt Tully
What would be some advice for a pastor who is shepherding a church and wants to help raise up guys to be elders and wants to give them good direction on that and lead them well? What does it look like to help guys discern what path they should take?

Bobby Jamieson
I’ll put one practical thing out there and then sort of view it from a few steps. One practical thing is multiply teaching opportunities that are available in your church. If you don’t have adult Sunday school, a great reason to have it is because it requires you to have more teachers. You now have teaching slots you have to fill. Who is qualified to teach? Who wants to do that? Or, if you only have one service, what about starting a prayer service on Sunday night, maybe with a short devotional? If it’s a short devotional thought every week, somebody has to do it. We constantly have first-time teachers in our adult Sunday school classes, in our Sunday evening devotional. It creates a need and a conveyor belt. You want to equip them on the front end and you want to help them as they do it. Frequently, I’ll have a first-time Sunday evening preacher right here in my office go through their devotional ahead of time, and maybe myself and another staff member will listen to it, give them feedback ahead of time. Hopefully that helps their confidence and offers encouragement. Hopefully it prepares them a little bit better. Then they go off and do it and we have a service review where they get feedback from all the pastoral staff and interns. Even just one little thing like multiplying teaching opportunities, and then working to equip and advance, help in the process, give feedback after—that starts to create a kind of ecosystem. It starts to create a flywheel spinning of opportunities for guys to grow and to take on more and more pastoral type work. There are other areas you can do that, but that’s a pretty obvious one, especially because the one really distinctive elder qualification, apart from just exemplary character, is ability to teach. And especially because in addition to it being the most distinctive competence qualification, it also seems to be tied (that is, the ability to teach) in the New Testament to the main reason, or the most prominent reason, why someone would be set aside full time to serve the church. It’s not the only legitimate reason to pay somebody for full-time Christian work, but Galatians 6:6 says, “the one who is taught the word should share all good things with the one who teaches.” Or again, special honor—including remuneration in 1 Timothy 5:17–18—is tied to those who rule well as elders, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

Matt Tully
Does that emphasis on teaching—apt to teach being that language—does that only refer to preaching? I could imagine there are some guys who would say, I do not think I am cut out for that. I don’t find joy in preaching formally to a big group of people, but I love sitting down one on one or with a small group and teaching through the Bible or teaching doctrine. Would that also be covered in that qualification?

Bobby Jamieson
Excellent question. I think absolutely. I think there are a lot of different formats that can take place in. Like you mentioned, sitting down one to one with somebody, through small group teaching, maybe a Sunday school class that might have a little less preparation involved. It’s not just a forty minute sermon on a Sunday morning and everybody is there and this is the main meal for the week and the pressure feels like it’s a Thanksgiving dinner. I can well understand how a brother who is qualified in a 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:9 type of sense doesn’t necessarily feel cut out at that level—for that type of pressure, for that type of context. So I think it’s a great point to say that “apt to teach” is much broader than preaching.

29:05 - Practical Advice for Those Aspiring to Be an Elder

Matt Tully
Speak to the guy who does indeed aspire to be an elder. One of the things that you encourage him to do is to “aim to be mistaken for an elder before you are appointed as an elder.” Unpack that for us.

Bobby Jamieson
I think the main thing I would say to unpack that statement is to cultivate the kind of character where you have an evident spiritual maturity, an evident likeness to Jesus, and a consistency of character where that’s across the board and you’re trying to work on besetting sins and humbly get feedback about ways you need to grow as a Christian. Then secondly, taking spiritual initiative in people’s lives. One brother who I work with very closely (about whom I will positively gossip)—his name is Jonathan Keisling. He came through our internship and he serves as a pastoral assistant, which is a kind of administrative and training role for a guy who aspires to be a pastor. We recently appointed him as an elder within the last few weeks. One of our interns who has just finished up said from the first moments of interacting with Jonathan, Jonathan was caring for him, asking how he was doing spiritually, shepherding him by the way he related to him. This intern said, I thought maybe he was an elder. He seems like an elder—is he? He literally mistook Jonathan for an elder. He was sharing this with the staff and he said, It just made perfect sense. It was so sweet to get to see the elders nominate him and the congregation approve him. So, I think it’s a mixture of character and then basically spiritual initiative. How can you try to help people grow as a Christian just by the kind of conversations you have with them, the way you try to support them. Do you share Scripture with them? Can they bring you a problem and you genuinely help them, and one of the ways you’re helping them is by pointing them to God’s word?

Matt Tully
That fits in with something you say in your book. You talk about how the church calls men to be elders and shepherds in that congregation, but you make a little aside that, in some sense, the church identifies those who are called to that or are qualified to be elders. Can you unpack that? Do you know what I’m referring to?

Bobby Jamieson
Do you mean is it kind of the interplay between the elders and the congregation?

Matt Tully
I think you were making the point more that the church is not necessarily instrumental in qualifying someone to be an elder, that they are more recognizing qualifications that already exist and that are maybe already evidenced in how that person is acting.

Bobby Jamieson
That’s right. Theoretically, of course, a church can (is able) to appoint a man to the office who is not qualified. But the nature of the office is such that you have these character and competence prerequisites that are built into what it is, and so a man really has to be that before being recognized by the church. That’s why I like that word "recognizing." It should be a matter of discernment. It’s a really good sign for us when we have members of the congregation volunteering. Oh, have you thought about having this guy as an elder who is really helpful about this? He taught me that; I’ve really benefited from his work in the church. It’s not something you can just flip a switch or manufacture or just decide. I think sometimes in churches, there is a sincere desire to try to serve the church well, but maybe uninformed by Scripture like it should be. There might be other qualifications that substitute—prominence in the community, business experience, life experience, age and station of life. Some of those things could contribute or be secondary factors that help you start looking at somebody, but there has to be that Christlike character and ability to teach and lead the church. That’s just a non-negotiable.

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