TL;DR:
Churches often hire aspirational candidates—pastors chosen not for the skills the congregation actually needs, but because they project who the church wishes it could be. As Michelle Huneven’s Search shows, that kind of hire can tank a church: pledges drop, people leave, and both pastor and congregation end up wounded. The church doesn’t need saviors who check boxes or look the part. It needs shepherds who tell the truth, walk with people as they are, and guide them toward who God is calling them to be.
Author’s Note:
This is the first of few “book review” posts I'll send out this week:
Good Marketing as Good Storytelling
I appreciate good marketing. Why? Because good marketing is essentially good storytelling. These days, marketers are always trying to tell me why their product will make the story of my life better.
In my mind, StoryBrand has done this best. Founded by Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz fame, Miller has built a multimillion-dollar business and marketing agency by turning the basic framework of stories into a marketing plan:
A Character
Has a Problem
Meets a Guide
Who Gives Them a Plan
And Calls Them to Action
That Helps Them Avoid Failure
And Ends in a Success
But even beyond this, StoryBrand—and other marketers like them—don’t want to simply solve your problem. They want you to believe their product will help you become a better person, maybe even your best self.
In Building a StoryBrand, Miller admits he was once compelled to buy a $40 pocketknife not because he needed it, but because the ad convinced him the knife would make him more adventurous and manly. Think also of car commercials in Colorado: bouncing along mountain trails, zipping down alpine highways, hauling skis or bikes. The message is clear: buy our car and you’ll become the person you dream of being.
This is aspirational marketing—it works because people don’t just buy products, they buy a future version of themselves.
As a communicator, I appreciate the power of that framework and often use it. But in the church, it can be problematic. Because at some point, we have to ask: is Jesus the hero of the story, or are we trying to sell ourselves as the hero?
From Aspirational Marketing to Aspirational Pastors
I see the same pattern creeping into pastoral hiring. For the last few years, I’ve watched churches in both Evangelical and Mainline contexts make head-scratching hires. Not bad people, not unqualified on paper—but often mismatched, aspirational choices. The search committees seem to be asking not, “Who can best shepherd us in this season?” but, “Who do we wish we were?”
For months—maybe even years—a friend and clergy colleague had been telling me about Michelle Huneven’s novel Search. She said it captured the absurdities and heartbreak of church search committees better than anything else she’d read. When I finally picked it up, I realized she was right. The book put words and story to a hunch I’d been carrying for some time: that churches often hire pastors not because they are the best fit for their actual context, but because they represent who the church wishes it could be.
The novel, based on Huneven’s real experience serving on a Unitarian Universalist search committee, follows an under-qualified but charismatic candidate who, thanks to an overzealous committee member, ends up getting the job.
As one character reflects:
“When professionals decide, it’s cleaner. Search committees are amateurs, and apt to be dazzled by personality and lose track of what their church needs.”
Committees fall in love with a candidate who looks the part—telegenic, young, different from the bulk of the congregation. They ignore red flags, sometimes even their own surveys:
“The survey told us that we want a wonderful preacher—not a beginning preacher with promise, but a skilled, gifted, mid-career preacher in their prime… The survey also said we want an experienced manager. Alanna has no experience running a church. How do we know she’ll be any good? Because she took a class?”
Yet the aspirational glow wins. As the narrator laments:
“The search was veering off course… Alanna was in because she looked like a movie star?”
Why It Matters
I’ve seen versions of this pattern repeatedly. Churches under pressure for growth often convince themselves that leadership is easily transferable—that someone shaped in a different context or with a exuberant personality can quickly become what the congregation hopes to be. In moments of anxiety, the appeal of a bold outsider can overshadow the slower, more demanding work of pastoral formation and ecclesial leadership.
But that’s unfair. It’s unfair to the candidate, who may be set up for failure. As Search shows, the risk is real:
“This is why consensus is problematic… Jennie maneuvered Alanna into a pre-candidacy she didn’t deserve by casting aspersions on someone with far superior credentials. Jennie can and will outwait us all to get what she wants.”
And it’s unfair to the church, which doesn’t need a savior figure but a shepherd: someone steady, grounded, and faithful enough to help them become who God is calling them to be.
The fallout in Search was predictable:
“Pledges are way down… as is attendance, and membership is dropping. Alanna, in her newsletter column, attributes this decline to a national trend of dwindling church attendance.”
That’s exactly what happens when image gets prioritized over substance.
Closing Thought
Aspirational marketing works because it sells us a vision of who we want to become. But churches don’t need aspirational pastors.
An aspirational candidate is someone chosen not because they fit the congregation’s real needs, but because they project the image of who the church wishes it could be. They’re young, charismatic, demographically different, or have a flashy résumé—and the committee convinces itself this person will save them.
The problem, as Search makes painfully clear, is that aspirational hires rarely deliver. Alanna wasn’t chosen because she had the experience or skills the church needed. She was chosen because she checked boxes, looked the part, and had the backing of one determined advocate. The church suffered for it.
That’s the risk when churches hire aspirational candidates today. It’s unfair to the pastor, who is set up for failure. It’s unfair to the congregation, which avoids the harder work of facing its reality. And it’s spiritually dangerous, because it tempts us to look for a savior in a person rather than in Christ.
Churches don’t need aspirational pastors who make us feel more exciting, more youthful, or more relevant than we really are. They need shepherds who can walk with us as we are, tell us the truth about who we are, and guide us toward who God is shaping us to be.
I know I'm going to sound like a StoryBrand nerd... but Jesus is always the GUIDE in the story. The hero is in need of change, and Jesus is certainly not in need of change.
In every story, the guide is the most "powerful" and important character in the story.
Your point is well taken about wanting the "aspirational glow" of a new pastor too. My take, from a StoryBrand lens is this: Churches take their eyes of the plan provided by the guide and end up failing miserably.
I ordered this book. A story about pastor selection and church drama? Maybe this is a whole untapped market for literature! Good stuff to think about all around!