Thabiti,
Great points, brother. My sense is that a lot of churches use the "want ad" route. But my fear is that this only affirms the professionalization of the pastorate, in the same way that "personals" in the newspaper only affirm the consumerization of love and marriage. Are either of these routes necessarily "wrong"? No. Can you find a good pastor or a good spouse this way? Sure. But are these the wisest fields to go hunting on? I don't think so.

Now, insofar as a church looks to its pastor to be something of a service provider, you can understand why it would use the want ads. But if you're looking for a man to be more like a father-figure, a shepherd, a teacher, a disciple-maker, you're not just looking for someone to "do a job" (though that's part of it), you're looking for him to enter into the covenant relationship (whether implicit or explicit) of your local church's life--and to lead in that covenant relationship!

How do we tell a single brother or sister to find a spouse? Well, there are certain basic boxes that need to be checked. And then there is a host of less quantifiable, more subjective, time-testing-required issues of trust, character, and even personality that need to be considered. So it is with finding a pastor, which is why the advice you offered, Thabiti, is excellent.

In short, there's a difference between looking for an employee and looking for a spouse. What's tricky about finding a pastor is, it combines elements of each. The first big step is to be mindful of that fact, and then structure a search process accordingly.