How to Translate Your Ministry Experience for Corporate Jobs: Step-by-Step Guide for Former Pastors

♟️ STRATEGY SHIFT: Turn your ministry experience into marketable, resume-ready language.

This strategy has three parts.

1. Get clarity on the job type you will move into next.

2. Use P.A.R.T.S. to identify your relevant job experience, then find the right words to describe it.

3. Structure the relevant actions of your job, rather than the functions of your job - using the "Impact Bullet Formula."

Let's walk through numbers 2 and 3.

So what are the P.A.R.T.S of a job description?

• P = Problems. What are the problems that the person doing this job will solve? Who will they solve it for? Where do those problems come from?

• A = Actions. What actions will the person doing this job be expected to perform in order to solve those problems?

• R = Results. What results will be considered successful if the person completes the actions?

• T = Technical Knowledge/Expertise. What technical knowledge or expertise is required to perform the actions that will yield successful results?

• S = Soft Skills. What soft skills will make the person in this role successful when it comes to engaging with the team and customers?

If you understand these, you understand the nuance, the context, and the culture of what you would be translating.

This may require some additional research (I recorded this video for the Interview Accelerator on how to do deep research on a company before applying for a job).

How do you use P.A.R.T.S. to translate your experience?

1. Find 3 job descriptions for your Top Job Type. The title and level of the job matter. You can find these on Google Jobs or LinkedIn Jobs pretty easily. 

2. Copy and paste these into a document so you don’t lose them if the job posting closes.

3. Use an AI tool like our P.A.R.T.S. Breakdown Tool (Access the FREE AI tool here) to upload those job descriptions and find common themes and language.

4. Now that you have the P.A.R.T.S. of a typical role, look at each point and answer the question, “Have I done that or not?”

5. Write out what you did in your job history that matches each point in your own words. Continue through the entire list.

Now you have all of your job experience that is relevant to your Top Job Type.

Let’s look at an example:

Community Pastor targeting Customer Success Manager

• "Managing and growing relationships with key customers, acting as their primary point of contact."
  Have you done that? ✅
  Now you’d write: “I’ve been the primary point of contact for every volunteer leading community groups with the responsibility of growing those relationships so that they have everything they need to do their role well.

• "Gathering customer feedback and communicating product improvement suggestions to the development team."
  Have you done that? ✅
  Now you’d write: “I’ve used surveys and called attendees of our group meetings to hear their feedback and then communicated that to the team that executes the events and gatherings.”

Voila! You've just translated your experience. Now let's make sure you're using the right words, and structure it correctly.

How do you know which words to use?

The purpose of using the correct wording is twofold:

First, you'll likely apply to some jobs that use an ATS (applicant tracking system). Those systems automatically filter resumes looking for keywords that show up in the resumes of people with desired experience.

Second, the words you use will either set off alarm bells that yell "do not hire, they don't know what they're doing!" or they will create the feeling of confidence that they should get to know you better, regardless of your pastor experience.

Here are two sets of words that you should change in your experience.

1. Words you should always change. We've created a list of 41 of these that you can download for FREE here. This is pretty black and white, and that will be your quick win for today.

2. Words specific to the job title you want next. Transitioning out of ministry requires explaining your words in ways that make sense for your new career - using new wording to describe the same concept you identified above, but for a new, secular job context.

Next, use a word cloud generator to take the 3 job descriptions you chose and find the most common words in those job descriptions.

Then, transform your explanation of what you have done into words and phrases that would mean the same thing… but if you were in their context.

Now… Don't lie. Obviously. Don't put stuff on your resume that you haven't done.

There will be some technical experience you may not have. It is what it is. You can choose to either upskill in that area, which takes time, find a similar job without as many technical requirements, or apply and hope for the best.

Structure the resume bullets in "Impact Bullet" formatting.

Once the wording is finished, we have to structure the bullet correctly. We call this an Impact Bullet.

Similar to the plumber, we want to show not just what we have done, but the impact of what we have done.

Here's what the Impact Bullet formula looks like:

For each bullet, align an action with a corresponding result.

Then add metrics. Metrics can be an increase or decrease in a number, percentage, dollar amount, or time. Also, you can talk about a change over time.

Bullets structured in this way catch the eye of the resume reader and prove that you're not just talking, but you've actually done what you say you can do.