Who Will Hire Me As A Former Pastor? A Step By Step Guide To Finding Ministry Friendly Companies
May 9, 2025
Read Time: 4.5 minutes
Todd Linder
Founder & Head Coach
Overview
Welcome to the Ministry To Marketplace Minute! In today’s issue, we’re going to cover an often overlooked element of leaving vocational ministry and the career transition into “secular” work: finding companies that will hire you. It isn’t just about the job, or even translating your experience - the organization matters too. So let’s dive in.
Today's Ministry To Marketplace Minute:
Mindset Shift: Who will hire me with a ministry background?
Strategy Shift: How to find companies to work for if I don’t want to be a pastor anymore.
Do This Right Now: Planning your pastor career change.
Who Will Hire Me?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
🧠 MINDSET SHIFT: Who will hire me with a ministry background?
Ministry feels like a black stain on my resume.
They see “pastor” and automatically disregard me.
I heard both of these on coaching calls in the Interview Accelerator today.
But is that true?
Do companies see your ministry background as a liability?
Short answer: Yes.
But the opposite is also true. There are many companies out there that see it as an asset. Because they get it.
And that is the shortcut.
When on the job search, you want to target these types of organizations - because you’re already one step ahead.
>> So how do you find those?
There are a few different types of organizations that will see your ministry experience as helpful. Ministry serving (or ministry adjacent), redemptive vision, non-profit…
But we’re going to focus on finding what we call “Ministry Friendly” companies.
What is a Ministry Friendly Company?
A Ministry Friendly company is a company that has hired someone with a ministry background before. That could be one person in that department or multiple people across the organization.
This tells you either,
They are open to hiring people with a ministry background because they have hired others before, and it now makes sense to them what someone with a ministry background can bring to the table.
They have someone with influence in the organization who values some of the intangibles that someone with a ministry background brings to the work environment.
There is someone with a ministry background in a place of influence who wants more people with similar values.
Now, this doesn’t mean you are a shoo-in, but it does decrease the likelihood of someone counting you out because of your job experience.
♟️ STRATEGY SHIFT: How to find companies to work for if I don’t want to be a pastor anymore.
How do you find Ministry Friendly companies?
In the Interview Accelerator, we've done the work for you and have vetted over 1,000 ministry friendly companies for you. If you're doing your own search, here's the step-by-step process. (watch me do this on LinkedIn here)
Go to LinkedIn. You’ll need an account, which you can create for free. If you’re just beginning your job search or don’t have a game plan to start reaching out to people yet, don’t get the free trial of LinkedIn Premium. That can happen later.
Click the search bar at the top left next to the LinkedIn logo.
Type in the following exactly: pastor OR ministry OR church. Hit enter.
Then click the button in the top left that says “People.” This will populate a list of everyone on LinkedIn with “pastor,” “ministry,” or “church” somewhere in their profile.
If you want to work locally, click “Locations” and type in your metro area. Click “Show results.”
Many of the people who come from this search will currently be in ministry. Many will formerly be in ministry.
You can’t filter by past title… that would be awesome. But you can filter by current title.
To do this, in the top right of the screen, click “All filters.” Scroll down to the bottom and look for the space that says, “Title.”
Pick generic words that go in titles like “Sales,” “human,” or “project,” or “manager." Type in the first word and click “Show results.”
This now populates a list of everyone on LinkedIn with the current title of “sales” and somewhere in their profile, “pastor,” “ministry,” or “church.”
* You’ll see that LinkedIn will show you current vs past vs volunteer experience. You want to focus on the profiles that say “past.”
Here’s how to find the organizations.
Before you dive deeper, bookmark this page. That will allow you to come back to this filter later without having to do it all over again!
Now all you have to do is start clicking on profiles and scroll down to their experience section. There, you can see which companies they worked for after their ministry job.
Create a Google sheet or use a tool like Teal to keep track of these companies and the people who transitioned from their ministry job into that company.
Once you’re ready to start reaching out, you’ll have a solid list of people at Ministry Friendly companies ready to go!
Here’s a bonus search filter:
If you work in a larger ministry, like a mega church or Cru, for example, you can filter for your former co-workers.
Before step 7, filter for Past Company. To do that:
Click “All Filters”
Scroll down to “Past Company”
Add one or more organizations that you have worked for in the past.
That will give you a list of all of your former coworkers.
✅ DO THIS RIGHT NOW: Planning your pastor career change.
Create your spreadsheet or sign up for a free Teal account. (I don’t make money from Teal; it is what we currently use in the Interview Accelerator)
Fill out the filters on LinkedIn.
Bookmark it to save for later, so it is easy to search.
Set 15 minutes on your calendar every day to do this search and add companies to your spreadsheet or Teal.
🚀 FROM THE COACHING GROUP
She could tell how much work I had put into my resume and cover letter and was really impressed by that.
🤝 WHO WILL HIRE ME?: 5 ministry friendly organizations with jobs for ex-pastors.
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How we can help you:
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