The CPAC Church Planters Assessment Post #1

Wow!

The Background
So a few weeks ago, our friend from the Northwest who is in charge of finding a pastor to start a church plant in the Seattle area which already has quite a bit of funding from the sale of an older church facility called us. He let us know that after the interviews and the time that we spent together that he wanted us to be those planters. We were pumped! But first, one thing. We would have to pass an assessment.

Let me tell you why this was actually a scary prospect. I had a job lined up in Seattle, not a ton of money, but there it was solid and it was a sure thing. I had a date that I had planned to start and everything. If I wanted to say yes to the Planting Possibility, I would have to say No to the sure thing. The awesome guy who was going to employ me, needed someone in place by a certain date, and if I committed to the assessment, I would have to force him to hire someone else.

If I failed the assessment,I would have to move the next week, with no job. That thought was absolutely haunting me. But when it came down to it, the church planting opportunity would be the fulfillment of a dream that we have had for a long time now. It would allow us to do what we feel like we are here to do. When Kim and I really talked about it, there was no real choice, we had to pursue this.

So coming into this assessment, I knew that my life was going to change one way or there other, and I knew that I wanted it to change toward the planting direction and not away from it.

The Assessment

Pre-Assessment
It was a mad rush to get ready. Because the friend who recruited us understood our situation, he set us up with an assessment date that was only 2 weeks away. During those two weeks, we had to both take several psychological tests, personality tests, and a huge essay written test. For the essay, I wrote close to 30 pages of essays over the course of 3 days. It was quite a cram to get it all in within a week, but we got it all taken care of.

In all of the information we got, there was no one who told us how to prepare or what was actually going to happen. I could tell that this was on purpose and that pressing people for more info was not going to get me anywhere. I looked at the CPAC website and found almost nothing there.

All that I learned ahead of time was that there was going to be an interview with a psychologist; and from context clues, I could tell that the days would be long and potentially stressful and since they were asking us to bring laptops and a guitar (if we played one for ministry) that we were probably going to be putting together a service.

The Actual Assessment

Disclaimer: Though it would be somewhat gratifying for me to post details on the whole process here, I really don't want other people to read this and have an unfair advantage going into the assessment, or have any clues as to how to prepare for the assessment and skew their results as a consequence.

I feel OK to post that you should not be stressing over the psychologist interview. Every single person who I talked to at CPAC made it clear that they were pretty nervous going in to meet with the psychologist. Don't be. The guy was nothing but kind and encouraging. Most of his questions are very standard. There are a few questions that relate to the tests that you already took, but there is nothing to fear.

Having said all of that, here is my take on what the assessment is and what value it can be:

As I'm sure you are already aware, job interviews can be pretty worthless. If you are interviewing someone for a ministry position, all you can do is: call the references that they have chosen for you to talk to. You ask them questions and they can say whatever they want to. You might get to see them preach or teach at some point and be able to evaluate this, but they can pick their best sermon and rehearse it for weeks in advance. In other words, you will get the picture of them that THEY want you to have, unless they can unearth something that speaks contrary to what you let them know.

When a church planting or funding organization is looking to financially risk lots and lots of money. They need to have more assurance that you aren't just taking them for a ride.

CPAC will tell them who you really are.

Of course that can be scary as well. Until you realize that there is no such thing as a perfect pastor; there are only pastors that are good a fooling you into thinking that they are.

We all have family stuff, we all have marriage stuff, we all have weaknesses in leadership, we all have weaknesses in administration, communication and weaknesses in our personality as well. CPAC gets this. The assessors even revealed some of their own weaknesses to us during the weak.

What CPAC is trying to do is to tell you and any sponsoring organization or denomination that might be working with you to fund you; if you are someone who shows the same traits as successful planters or whether you might need some time to work some things out before taking on a planting role.

In order to accomplish this, they put you through several types of interviews, interactions and situations, some that you will have some time to prepare for and some that you will have little time to prep for. I will tell you that the time they give you to prepare isn't enough to be perfect, but the point seems to be that they don't want you to be perfect, they want to see what doesn't get done and what doesn't get thought through when you are under stress. They don't expect perfection, and you shouldn't feel like you have to give them perfection, you should be willing to give them the best that you can in the situation that you are in. It requires you to balance your free time, meal time, social time and sleep time while you are under the gun to get proects completed.

In almost every task, you are working with other people and need to find your role in that group. You'll have to balance how well you help the group and how well you help yourself during that time as well.

Personally, I slept for 3 hours on the first night and 3.5 hours the second night. I am guessing that the sleep deprevation helps the assessors see you interact and work when you are pretty raw. I am assuming that this is helpful for the assessors, because whether it is because of lack of sleep or times of high stress, there are lots of challenges in planting that are going to knock us out of balance. I am also assuming that our performance and interaction when we are raw says a lot about us. I think that the assessors are experienced enough to be able to read our reaction to stress and fatigue.

I am trusting that the situations that they put us in give them a good picture of what they need to know about us.

What I am trying to say in all of this is that in a regular job interview, you can hide a lot, you can mask a lot of emotion, you can prepare to say what they want you to hear and if you do it well, you can probably fake them into hiring you. But at CPAC, they are going to do what they can to see you. They are experienced enough to get past the masks. They are experienced enough to know if you match the criteria of a successful planter.

I won't give you specifics (in case people have googled this to figure out how to prepare well.) But I will say that it was tiring, stressful at times, very fun at other times, and very much worth your time. It provides a lot of great feedback as to your strengths and weaknesses, and a lot of helpful information for everyone involved.

I will post later on what I learned about myself through the assessment.

If you are looking for any tips from me, all I can say is that it would be better if you were rested coming into this event. You will be miserable if you view this as a competition with other pastors. View it as a challenge, that you can actually have fun doing.