You Can Know God

Get a Job @ Oak Leaf Church

As we move towards the close of this year and get ready to start 2008, we're going to be hiring for several different positions. Anthony told me that when we have 1,000 people coming to Oak Leaf Church then I can get a personal assistant. There's about three other areas where we want to put some people as well.

But we're not going to advertise these positions on various church staff websites. Here's the deal. A seminiary degree isn't top of the list for these positions. Education isn't the silver bullet. I did about 40 hours towards a seminary degree, but it really didn't prepare me for what I'm doing now. One day, I may finish that up, but education isn't the silver bullet. Neither is experience in the job. Very few of us on this staff have done what we're doing before. Our executive pastor was a teacher last year. Our director of volunteers worked in a doctors office. (Luckily, our worship leader did play guitar before). Too many times, I've seen churches hired experienced guys, but then have to take two years to beat out the experience so they can fit on the team.

What do we look for? Commitment, dedication, buy-in, the ability to work hard, and the ability to learn. We look for leaders.

And here's where we're looking...inside our church. If you want one of these jobs in the future, then I recommend that you jump in somewhere in our church and start serving. There are a few people that we have in mind (you may not even know it), but your name is being mentioned because we see how hard you volunteer, and we know that you financially support this church (yes, I look that stuff up, because you can say you believe in our church all you want, but as Jesus says...your treasure follows your heart). The best advice I can give for working here is not to work on your resume, but to work on the ministry. If you want to work with children, become an amazing volunteer in KidVenture. Then when a job opens up, we'll come to you first.

If you aren't a hard working volunteer, then chances are, you won't be a hard working staff member. A paycheck doesn't change someones work ethic.  So anyway, I'm pumped about hiring an assistant. I'm even more pumped about some of these other opportunities that we have to get Oak Leafers in here on a more permanent basis. We're watching.

Looking for a Job

We're in the process of looking for one or two people to round out the staff team, so we ventured out and put a job posting out there.  So far, we've hired everyone from within, but we're looking all over for this next person.

I asked people in the job posting to read our website, read our blogs, and listen to some messages before sending anything, but apparently, a lot of people looking for ministry jobs can't read.  Furthermore, you don't need to use super-spiritual language or King James when sending an e-mail inquiring about the job.

I'm also baffled why someone would send a resume that at the very top of the page says, "Ministry Aim: To fulfill my calling of being a senior pastor," when we're clearly not advertising for a senior pastor.  If you don't have the time to cut and paste and slightly modify your resume, then trust me, you're not going to make it here.

By the way, the person we are looking for is a hard working, super-passionate, Jesus-loving, highly skilled leader capable of leading other staff and lots of volunteers in the area of family ministry.

Growing Up

Just in time for our one year birthday celebration, we're growing up a little bit.  We now have real offices.  We spent the day packing and moving (or watching some movers that we hired) load and unload a bunch of office stuff into the new place.  Our new offices are in Guyton Park, between a Fudruckers and a coffee shop.

I spent a few hours at home depot buying blinds and deciding on the official office color schemes.  I'm brainstorming about our creative war room, which I am determined to make the coolest room ever.  My wife is going to paint my office tomorrow (she's cool like that)  Next week, we'll make trips to The Container Store and Ikea.  My inner Ty is taking over.

I figure if we're going to start acting like a real church, we needed some real offices.  We've been working out of some free space for about a year.  It was awesome, and it was a huge blessing...we've just outgrown it.  People are still sharing space in the new setup, but it's just much more professional and much bigger.  And if the wi-fi goes down, I can walk down to the coffee shop, so that's always good.

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.