IBCB’s leaders are proposing that we change Jürgen’s job description* and hire him as “Connections Pastor.” Why are we making this recommendation? How did we get to this point?
*Currently Jürgen is hired (450€ job) as pastoral support for our 15:00 h service)
a) Last year’s strategic analysis – conducted by the Leaders Council and aided by a congregational survey – yielded four strategic areas of priority and four key-areas of need.
- Improve Worship Services
- Events Planning (Connecting with the Community and Congregation to One Another)
- Assimilation (Connecting Newcomers and Congregation to Our Church)
- Improve Small Group Ministry
b) Assigning the task of “Connections” to Jürgen addresses two of these strategic areas:
- Reaching new members – connecting with community and bringing into our “crowd” (i.e. marketing, evangelism, events, etc.)
- Onboarding new members – assimilating “crowd” into “congregation” (i.e. welcome process, commitment to Christ, membership in church, belonging to small group, etc.)
c) A second staff pastor is necessary to take us to the next level as a church:
- Church health experts (Charles Arn) suggests that a “Growing Church” will have at least 1 full-time pastor and 2 part-time support staff for every 150 church participants.
- We have reached the thresh-hold of “150” and need to re-tool our support staff* by expanding and restructuring Jürgen’s job description to meet our needs.
*The Staff Relations Committee has taken up the recommendation from the floor in our last business meeting to consider the issue of hiring a “worship leader.”