Church Update

Well, the last half of 2008 was an exciting time for Journey. The highlight revolved around our realization that building on the property that we had so looked forward to for so long was not going to happen in this economy. At the same time we sensed that waiting indefinitely for the economy to improve wasn’t part of God’s plan for us. Within a span of weeks we found a church that had the means to build right now and we also found an affordable building that we could renovate and occupy during 2009. Wow. There was a lot of wheelin-and-dealin going on during that time. We sold the one and purchased the other.

Now we’re re-grouping and looking at what sort of impact these changes will present. You see, the initial plan was to build in an area that would best be described as a suburban area located between Vancouver and Camas. There really isn’t a distinct community there with which to identify, but we did feel God would unravel that mystery as we progressed.

Now we will be located right in downtown Camas, Washington. Number 63 of the top 100 places to live in America. Our ministry will be more identified with the needs of an identifiable community. We’re excited about the potential and how God has put all these pieces together and orchestrated this chapter in Journey’s history.

Becuase of all the changes Journey’s leadership decided to postpone the search for its new Lead Pastor. Leadership needed time to let the dust settle so it could better articulate Journey’s direction and its needs in its new setting.

We still have a need for a permanent Lead Pastor. Once we’ve sorted out some things we’ll repost the position in appropriate locations and, with renewed enthusiasm and God’s intimate involvement, we’ll continue our search.

Stay tuned. There are more exciting chapters to come.

August 5th Meeting Highlights

Hello church and hello to visitors,

I greet visitors to our site, as I am sure we have not only congregants checking in, but candidates as well.  I invite you to comment or question us if anything comes to your mind. Michael mentioned fairness and sensitivity in his last BLOG.  Our recent meeting had this as a goal. 

To catch you up…we met again this past Tuesday evening to initially review 25 new applicants and look more carefully at the candidates we screened a few weeks ago.  With each phase of our process we deepen our criteria, as we look to find the person God has faithfully set apart to be our Senior Pastor. 

Of our 25 new candidates we moved 14 of them to level 2 all of whom met 4 of 5 initial necessary criteria.  The 14 new candidates joined the 50+ from our last meeting who did the same.  Then, search committee members working in teams, carefully reviewed each of the candidates skills and qualifications as outlined on their resumes.  At this writing, we have close to 40 candidates we will take to our ‘next step’ with an on-line interview.

As a team, we look forward to our upcoming resume acceptance deadline. We continue to receive resumes with each passing day. It is our hope to catch up with our process, so that we are not concurrently working through our first three phases of sorting. Which as you can imagine, is a bit overwhelming, not to mention, confusing.  Thanks to the gracious help of Janis Rink, our AGP–Administratively Gifted Person—we have been able to keep all of the candidate information intact.  I do not exaggerate when I say, as a team we have studied close to one thousand pieces of paper!

The work continues to be exciting…as we faithfully press on to find our church’s next leader. Please continue to pray for us as a team, and as a church, that God’s path for us will be made straight.

In Him! 

Sorting through the resumes

Wow, we received well over 100 resumes. It is quite a challenge to sort through them and to make sure we are being fair and sensitive to the applicants. We feel that God has blessed us in bringing some great people to our attention.

Of course as with any search like this there are some applicants who are more obviously suitable than others. A couple of weeks ago we spent a Sunday afternoon to sort the resumes into five different groups of suitability. The top three groups we will look at in closer detail. It meant that we were able to narrow the list down to a bit over 50 people.

We meet again this coming Sunday to go to the next step. Ideally we will get it down to a managable number so we can begin some interviews.

Please pray for us to be sensitive to God’s prompting to make sure we include His already selected candidate! It would be a terrible thing if we were too busy with our own priorities that we missed what He wants.

It is a humbling and huge responsibility.

Summer Update — Search is in High Gear!

Greetings, again, church!

The team was excited about the interest many of you in the community shared at the Family Meeting  on June 29, 2008.  I, for one, thought I best get on the blog and give an update about our recent activity!

We do in fact have the position of Senior Pastor for JCC posted in four locations on-line.  As of this writing, we have received interest from approximately 60 applicants from as far as Rhode Island on our continent, to Africa on a distant continent.  The Search Committee will meet later in July to do an initial paper screen and begin to gather more information from a smaller set of potential candidates.

Please feel free to use this forum to ask questions about our process.  We learned last week you obviously have questions, and we want to be sure you get the answers you desire.  In the meantime, please pray that God will point us directly to the person He has divined for our church, and also that this person’s path will be made swift.

Be blessed!

Mary Hazel

Off We Go!

         Welcome to our Pastoral Search Committee BLOG, Journey Community Church members.  The members of your Search Committee are glad to know that you have dropped in, but also that you are curious about what you might find here.  It is our intention to keep you updated with our process. Please stay in touch, through comments, questions and most importantly, your prayer. Our goal is to listen to God as He guides us to the person He has already chosen to lead our church.  We are comforted by the fact that the Lord knew our leader and set them apart for us when they were being formed in their mother’s womb.  How GREAT is that?

As a team we are following a process outlined in The Local Church Search Committee Workbook, published by the Ministry Placement Network [MPN]. This workbook is intended to lay alongside the vital information we are currently gathering about our church and guide us through a multi step process.  There are 35 steps all together and as a team we are currently studying steps 11-14. The Ministry Placement Network is set up to assist churches just like us. In addition to the book, we will consult resource people who work with MPN to help as well.  We will be meeting with one such resource person, Steve Welling, the early part of April.  Steve will help us put together information from a survey we are getting ready to complete as a team, as well as help us formulate the survey you as church members will complete.

  We are excited to continue in this meaningful work, encouraged by the Spirit whose hand we continually pray will bless the process.  We hope you will ask us questions, and seek to be involved in the process to the extent you can through this BLOG.

In Him

Mary Hazel 

Welcome to the Journey Search Committee Blog

Wow, we have had our second meeting as a formal search committee. It is a big responsibility and we pray that we will honor God and our church through our work.

Even though we are going to meet weekly for a while it looks like this might be a fairly lengthy process. It might surprise many people that a search for a new pastor can take up to a year. We’ll get into why that is the case as we go along. We hope we can move things along speedily but we want to find the right person.

Actually it is an interesting point that what we are really doing is looking for the person that God has already picked for our church. Hopefully they will be listening to his prompting so that when we come knocking on the door they will know why!

We appreciate your prayers and encouragement as we begin this journey.