Adding ministry and mentor experience to your resume may seem like a challenging task to do. How do you translate ministry and mentor experience in a way that will make you attractive to potential employers?
Why You Need to Add Your Ministry and Mentor Experience to Your Resume
The goal of your resume is to ultimately land an interview with a potential employer, regardless of the position or company. This is why it’s important to create a resume that is general enough to appeal to any industry and field while also highlighting your valuable experience. Make your resume appeal to employers in ways that will also increase your chances of getting an interview.
Here are 5 ways you can add your ministry and mentor experience to your resume.
Translate Ministry Terminology To Business Terminology
Ministry terms may be common within the four walls of a church building, but they may be foreign to anyone outside of the church. Do not assume that people understand what terms like “discipleship”, “preaching”, or “theology” mean.
When putting your resume together, think about business terms that are universally accepted:
- Mentoring and discipleship become “leadership development”
- Theology becomes “education”
- Preaching becomes “teaching” and “communication”
- Missionary or missions work becomes “humanitarian work”
- Church becomes “an organization”
- Starting a ministry becomes “entrepreneurship”
- Leading volunteers become “supervising” or “managing teams”
You can use sentences like “Prepared, taught, and communicated lessons publicly every week” or “Responsible for developing leaders across the entire organization”. In doing so, you are still demonstrating the responsibilities and tasks you completed but in a way that any hiring team can understand.
Some terms translate in both worlds like “recruitment,” “project management,” or “team building.” These terms can remain the same as long as the descriptors or sentences remain general and not specific to a church.
Quantify Your Ministry and Mentor Experience
Another way to translate your church experience on a resume so that it sticks out to potential employers is by quantifying your tasks and responsibilities with numbers and percentages. Adding numbers and percentages allows people to see the kind of results you were able to accomplish. Potential employers need to see the scope of your work with real data.
Regardless of what industry you’re coming from, including church, when employers see that you were able to boost numbers, they will be interested in you as a possible fit for their organization. Employers want to see that you can get results, and providing cold numbers is an objective way to demonstrate that you can get things done.
Some examples of this could include:
- “Grew volunteer team from 15 volunteers to over 50 volunteers”
- “Increased weekly Sunday attendance by 30%”
Use real numbers to allow employers to see your competence.
Talk About Your Results
If you’re coming from a Church background, this next point may make you feel uncomfortable, but it’s incredibly important if you are looking to move from a church position to a corporate position. You need to make yourself look good and brag about yourself. The best way to do this is to talk about your results.
Using numbers and data is an objective way to demonstrate your competence, but you will also need to talk about how great you are in the context of your resume. Use adjectives and verbs that showcase how you’ve been successful in your current or previous roles. You can do this both in the “Skills” section of your resume and the “Experience” section.
Adding Your Skills
In your skills section, use \general terminology:
- “Strategic thinker with over 4 years of experience making vital organizational decisions”
- “People-oriented and proficient at building relationships, both internal and external to an organization, based on trust”
You want to highlight your overall proficiency and abilities under this section.
Developing Your Experience Section
In the experience section, be more specific. Since you are talking about the distinct roles and accomplishments of your previous role and position, you want to sound confident and clear:
- “Developed new effective process to recruit and develop new Volunteers”
- “Communicated inspirational vision to teams of staff and volunteers”
Even if you’re coming from a ministry background, you need to word things in a way to make yourself look good to stand out from other resumes.
Focus on Leadership Principles
It may seem challenging to translate discipleship, missionary, and ministry work onto a resume in a way that is understandable to the corporate world but also showcases your skills and abilities as an employer. This is why you should focus on leadership and leadership development principles.
Discipleship and missionary work are leadership and leadership development. No matter what industry or job you’re applying for, any employer will value leadership experience and the ability to work with others and build teams. You can say things like
- “Developed new strategies to recruit and retain large teams of volunteers”
- “Managed team of 40 volunteers to ensure organizational goals are being met”
Employers want to see and know that you have experience leading people.
Highlight Your Interpersonal Skills
Being in ministry, on the mission field, or in a mentoring relationship requires strong interpersonal skills which can be very appealing for any organization that wants to hire the best candidates. Having good interpersonal skills means that you are a strong communicator, good at conflict resolution, and have excellent emotional intelligence. All of these qualities are highly sought after and desired in the business world.
You can use some of these skills in the skills section or under the experience section of your resume. You can say something like *
- “Experience with successful conflict resolution between team members”
- “Knowledge in navigating difficult conversations”
- “10 years of public teaching and communication to both small and large crowds”
- “Skilled oral communicator, writing and delivering teachings, messages, and vision to both teams and large crowds.”
A good way to mention your experience with emotional intelligence is to focus on your experience with counseling people:
- “5 years of advising people on how to grow and develop”
- “Consulting individuals on how to create a personal growth plan”
These qualities are worth noting in a resume because they are specific abilities that can only be developed with experience. Knowing that you have a lot of experience dealing with interpersonal relationships will cause your resume to stick out from the others.
Add Your Mentor Experience to Your Resume to Increase Your Interview Chances
There are a lot of valuable experiences, skills, and abilities that you’ve learned in a ministry and missions context and by mentoring people who are considered valuable in the business and corporate context. Knowing how to properly feature these competencies on your resume will give you a great chance at landing an interview and ultimately receiving a job offer.
Pivoting from a ministry and missionary position to a corporate and business position can be scary. But adding your ministry and mentor experience to your resume means that you can apply with confidence. You do have the qualifications and skills necessary to be successful outside of the context of church and the mission field.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some common questions Christian job seekers might ask:
1. How can I effectively format my resume to highlight ministry and mentor experience?
To present your ministry and mentor experience professionally, consider the following formatting tips:
- Organize Your Resume: Use clear headers such as “Work & Volunteer Experience,” “Education,” “Awards/Certifications,” and “Skills” to structure your resume.
- Be Specific: Detail your roles and accomplishments in each position, focusing on responsibilities and achievements relevant to the job you’re applying for.
- Use Action-Oriented Language: To convey your contributions effectively, start bullet points with strong action verbs like “managed,” “led,” or “organized.”
2. What common words or phrases should I avoid on my resume to ensure it stands out?
Certain overused terms can dilute the impact of your resume. It’s advisable to avoid clichés and buzzwords such as:
- Hard worker
- Team player
- Results-driven
- Detail-oriented
Instead, focus on quantifiable achievements and specific examples that demonstrate your skills and contributions. For instance, rather than stating you’re a “team player,” describe a situation where you collaborated effectively to achieve a goal.
3. How can I ensure my resume reflects Christian values without alienating secular employers?
To balance showcasing your faith-based experience while appealing to a broad range of employers:
- Translate Terminology: Use universally understood terms. For example, describe “discipleship” as “leadership development” and “preaching” as “public speaking” or “teaching.”
- Highlight Transferable Skills: Emphasize skills gained through ministry, such as event planning, community outreach, or team leadership, which are valuable in various sectors.
- Focus on Achievements: Present measurable outcomes from your ministry roles, like “increased volunteer participation by 30%” or “organized community events attended by over 200 people.”
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