To comfort, educate, enlighten, and even entertain are some words used to describe the role of a minister, but how to determine a minister's effectiveness is a complicated task. The literature on what constitutes an effective minister can be described by four broad categories: the minister's personality, motivations and personal preferences, leadership, and interpersonal characteristics and perceptions. Input from psychologists in helping to determine the profile of who is suitable for the ministry increasingly is becoming more important. A summary of the pastors' motivations and personal preferences concludes that assessment should consider attitudes and behaviors related to conduct of the minister, rather than personality. In considering leadership style, several cited studies concurred that leadership skills predict ministerial effectiveness across the various functions. In the summary on interpersonal characteristics and perceptions, there were few correlations between ministers' self-ratings and parishioners' ratings. The paper concludes that effective ministry does not appear to be reducible to personality traits, or to patterns of motivation, leadership ability, or interpersonal relations. It notes that the evolving nature of the minister's job makes the task of understanding and promoting ministerial effectiveness a challenging task. (Contains 29 references.) (JDM)