You Can Know God: It takes a staff

Mark Batterson says, "the quality of ministry is influenced by the people you serve with" (or something like that) at least once a month on his blog. He's right. Over this first year as a church, we have developed a great team of people. It's one of the reasons our church has grown so fast - this whole thing dosn't depend on me! Take a look...

1. Tim Samples was the first person I hired. He had lived in Cartersville for 7 years, so that brought some credibility to this church plant. He was a youth pastor, but moved into the area of small groups. He's been over several things in this first year, but does a great job leading small groups, following up with guests, and heading up community outreach. Tim is a people person. He likes to talk on the phone and talk to people in the lobby. That's a great balance for someone like me!

2. Anthony Gratto is our executive pastor. He moved to Paulding County to plant a church and realized that a bunch of other people had the same idea. Jim Akins hooked him up with us for our first preview service, and he stuck around. He served as a key volunteer for a year, and then quit his job as a high school teacher to join our staff full time. Anthony handles all the business and admin things of the church, leads the staff, and basically runs the church.

3. Will Goodwin started out as a hired gun worship leader. Since we didn't have one, we brought in bands during those early months. Then, on some weeks that Will wasn't even leading, he and his family would come to church. Over time, Will led more and more. He did way more than a hired worship leader and took on some leadership responsibilities. Now, he's our creative arts pastor and leads a bunch of great volunteers. Will is also our staff theologian and sends the longest e-mails is the history of earth.

4. Rhetta Watts is our Director of Volunteers. How do you get that job? You start out as a volunteer! In Rhetta's case, she was the lead greeter. Now, she's assumed the huge mission of making sure everyone at Oak Leaf Church has a place to serve. She quit her job and came on with us, without the promise of a paycheck. Plus, we needed some cool people in the office with tattoo's on their legs, so Rhetta fit that description.

5. Helen Camp is our admin assistant/office manager. She had been coming to our church for a few months when the job opened up and she was a natural fit. She helps out in so many areas in the office - from the church database, to the money stuff, to communications. The cool thing about Helen (and all of our staff) is that she was committed to the church before she was committed to the job.

6. Tanya Avara (pronounced Avery by the way...somebody in the family tree can't spell or something) is our KidVenture preschool director. Again, she was coming to church before she came to the job. Tanya had worked with preschoolers before and does a great job leading this whole ministry. It's one of the most important things we do. She leads amazing volunteers and gets parents involved as well.

7. Kelly Nagel is our KidVenture elementary director. You might notice a trend, but Kelly and Rich were coming to church faithfully and were involved in ministry (they also hosted our Journey Group at their house) before stepping into a ministry position. Kelly leads the city, which is an elementary production. She's got lots of great ideas and brings a lot to the table.

8. Rebecca Johnston is helping out with students. Right now, that means planning a once a month student service. Rebecca (and her husband Todd), came to our church a while ago needing some "ministry healing" because of a bad situation they were put in at their previous church. After a while, they got lured back into ministry. :) Under Rebecca's leadership, Limelight had 90 students last week. I wonder what will happen when we actually promote the thing with a little more than an announcement in church?

9. It's hard for me to even keep up, but yesterday, Anthony hired another person to come in and help with some bookkeeping. Mache has been at our church since the beginning. We met them at an outreach event last year, invited them to come to church and they jumped in. One reason that I signed off on Mache is because I saw how faithful they were to our church. She's going to help with some Quickbooks and data entry stuff.