Pastor search committees (PSCs) have never called me to ask my opinion about the kind of requirements they should establish for pastoral candidates, but believe it or not I do have an opinion about that issue.

Choosing the right pastor for any church is critically important and requires the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Divine guidance is provided when committees pray, fast, and devote themselves to living in the will of God.

Obviously, these committees should be governed by the requirements set forth in the Word of God. Sometimes committees establish additional requirements to guide their search, but there are times when these extra-biblical guidelines eliminate some of the very best candidates.

For example, having a seminary education is ideal, but there are competent, qualified, and extraordinarily gifted pastors who do not have a seminary degree. Furthermore, some committees expect their pastor to be married, but I have known some extremely effective pastors who have never been to the altar of matrimony.

Some committees want to establish guidelines with age parameters. Sometimes those parameters exclude young pastors who are actually wise beyond their years and exemplary servants of God.

However, I think there are far too many PSCs that refuse to consider any pastor who has already celebrated his 50th birthday. I was 53 years old when I was called to be the pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Marietta and I shall never forget a call I got from Fred Wolfe, who was pastor of Cottage Hills Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala. He said, “You have given hope to all of us over fifty – hope that we can even yet be called to another church.”

I am sure that a younger pastor could have served the church well; and the church did call a much younger pastor after I resigned, but I do believe there are many servants of God over the half-century mark who should be prime prospects for churches in search of good and godly pastors.

First, older pastors have been seated for years at the feet of the very best teacher – experience. The lessons derived from both successes and failures in the school of experience are invaluable and generally serve the older pastor well. The church is fortunate to have a pastor who has a wealth of experience to guide him.

Second, older pastors are often wiser. Author Sylvia Booth Hubbard has written an article entitled “Older Brains May Be Wiser.” In the article she explains, “Taking longer to dredge up a phone number from your memory bank or put a name to a face may be frustrating, but it usually doesn’t mean your mental abilities are slipping. In fact, it may mean just the opposite – you have so much data in “storage’ that it takes longer to search through bulging memory banks to come up with a specific piece of information.”

Lynn Hasher, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, stated, “Older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, are now suddenly the better problem solvers.”

Third, older pastors generally have an excellent work ethic. Many older pastors have or had parents who lived during the Great Depression. During that era people had to work hard just to survive; and most had to work by the sweat of their brow. The farther we get away from that era the more we are characterized by ease, comfort, and luxury.

Fourth, older servants of God have been groomed to excel in the area of pastoral care. A mentor once told me, “If you are invisible all during the week, you will be incomprehensible on Sunday.” I find that older pastors really work hard at caring for the sheep of their flock. They are also products of an era when neighbors visited each other and people sat on their front porches and expected the pastor to call on them occasionally.

Fifth, older pastors are more likely to bring a needed stability to the church. They also tend to like tradition. Formalism and tradition can easily kill a church, but many churches want someone who can incorporate the best of tradition into the fabric of the church while breathing new life into those cherished customs.

In order to be fair and balanced, we may soon follow up this commentary with a justification for considering young servants of God in the pastoral search process. In a young pastoral prospect you may find a diamond in the rough that will pay vast dividends, but in an older pastoral prospect you may find a diamond that has been cut and polished into a perfect gem.