Laura, how does your church find a new minister? I've been through various ways in different denominations.
We fill out a congregational profile. Each person gets a questionnaire to fill out, and we all fill out something pretty inaccurate as to how we see our congregation. We name a search committee, and someone compiles all the individual questionnaires. This gets sent to the Big Cheese in Los Angeles. These are distributed to all the other Big Cheeses in the country.
Each minister who is looking for a new church fills out his profile, which he gives to his Big Cheese in whatever district he's in.
The ministers' Cheeses sends prospective profiles to other Cheeses in other districts, wherever he thinks the minister would be a match for a church. Then our guy looks through them and sends us any profiles he thinks would be a match for us.
Only then is our search committee allowed to speak with the prospective minister, usually to find out he has accepted an offer from another church. If he's still available, they have a few phone conversations, and then we invite the minister and family (on our dime) to fly out and visit for a weekend. At this point, we are not allowed to talk to any other prospective ministers.
If we are still interested, our search committee makes an offer to our Big Cheese, who relays the offer to the minister's Big Cheese. Negotiations continue through them. We make our offer on the phone with both Cheeses in attendance. Both Cheeses negotiate on behalf of the minister. The church is on its own and generally has to agree to whatever the others request.
If an agreement is made, the minister gives three-months' notice to his church that he's leaving. We pay his moving costs. And we pay his housing and utilities while he lives here, in addition to his salary.
The whole thing is ridiculous and can take over a year to complete.