Search, And Ye Shall Find

By Richard N. Ostling

Eleven ministers are nervously keeping their December datebooks as open as they can this year. Reason: they are on the hush-hush list of semifinalists who hope to become the next minister of Riverside Church, the ritzy Manhattan citadel of Protestant liberalism. This week a lucky three or four among them will be notified by phone that they have been picked to come to Riverside for a last round of interviews. The preachers who did not make the cut will find polite rejection letters in their Christmas mail.

Riverside's elaborate hunt for William Sloane Coffin's successor typifies the method by which most of America's 300,000 Protestant congregations, large and small, find spiritual leaders. Lay members serving on a search committee may spend a year in unpaid toil, scanning l00 dossiers, listening to sermon tapes and making covert scouting expeditions to hear preachers. At Riverside, 5,000 people were asked to submit names and 250 prospects were contacted.

The process of "calling" -- half prayer, half politics -- is conducted in utmost secrecy. After Riverside's search committee makes its choice, it will not give the names of also-rans to the deacons who govern the church and it will shred all the papers in its double-locked filing cabinet. "If it is known you are a candidate and don't get the call, it is very rough," explains search-committee chairman J. Richard Butler. One church that publicly named several finalists years ago lived to regret it: one of the rejected ministers was so crushed that he suffered a nervous breakdown.

By coincidence, another superchurch is calling at the moment: First Baptist of Dallas, the 28,000-member flagship of Southern Baptist Fundamentalism. In an unusual arrangement, the church is hiring an assistant to work under the legendary W.A. Criswell, 79 next week, as his designated successor. To the chagrin of the search committee, word has leaked out that Criswell favored O.S. Hawkins, 41, of Fort Lauderdale, but the independent-minded search committee, after winnowing 50 names, has settled on James Merritt of Snellville, Ga., Criswell's junior by 43 years. Merritt, naturally, is mum.

For the professional clergyman, the procedure of finding a job varies from church to church. In Roman Catholicism, bishops have total control of appointments. The United Methodist Church operates in much the same way, though local lay leaders are now consulted. But for most Protestant ministers, careers advance through subtle maneuvers to get calls from bigger churches offering higher salaries. Within denominations that are losing members, mobility is limited. The Presbyterian Church, which has suffered a 25% membership drop since 1965, has 1,500 to 2,000 ministers looking for new positions but only 600 to 700 churches with slots to fill. In the Episcopal Church, which has lost 28% of its membership in the same period, full-time openings have become so scarce that some 1,800 potential candidates are earning a living in secular occupations.

With the job market tight, search committees can afford to be extraordinarily picky. One Congregational church in Massachusetts has spent two years searching and has spurned five top candidates. At Dallas' big Prestonwood Baptist Church (whose pastor resigned after confessing to adultery), Deacon Newt Hamlin says the new man must be "a good speaker, a ) dynamic leader and a real strong evangelist. But we also want a pastor who can provide a lot of Bible study and who can reach people who are unchurched." Equally high expectations are held by black churches, which seek not only good preachers but also strong community leaders. "The black church is not simply a religious organization but a civic and social organization for its people," says W. Franklyn Richardson, general secretary of the National Baptist Convention, Inc. "Sunday morning is not enough."

The course of finding someone to suit exalted expectations can take unusual turns. At Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, searchers traveled 84,600 miles to hear 44 prospects preach and finally went outside the denomination last January, calling R. Maurice Boyd from the United Church of Canada. Presbyterians bury their search committees in a mountain of forms, letters and lists. Most denominations publish nationwide bulletins on openings, but it is bad form for interested clergy to contact search committees directly. Better to file dossiers with headquarters and, far more important, tap into the all-powerful old-boy network, though this avenue tends to work against women candidates.

At both First Baptist and Riverside, the search committees will present a single nominee early next year. If typical Protestant procedure holds, the candidate will preach a sample sermon -- perhaps the most important of his career -- and afterward church members will convene for a vote on whether to hire him. It is rare for a congregation to reject a nominee, but ministers consider it unwise to accept a call with less than an 80% or 90% vote.

Once in a great while a candidate rejects a call at the very end of the arduous process. For the beleaguered search committee, this is a disaster. "If our leading contender had turned us down, we would have been unwilling to go with our second or third choices," confides a search-committee member at a prominent church. "We would have had to begin the search again."

With reporting by Michael P. Harris/New York and Diane Winston/Dallas