Updates from Executive Leaders

November 23, 2008 - Lead Pastor Candidate Selected
This past Tuesday night, the Search Team and Executive Leaders unanimously and wholeheartedly agreed upon a Lead Pastor candidate to present as our first choice to the church. God's leading of each of our team members was confirmed by recommendations from local pastors, Nebraska District and National AG Headquarters staff members familiar with Christ's Place, as well as some supernatural confirmations through several members of the church body. The DNA, pastoral heart and passions of the candidate and his wife fit very well with our past history, our current vision and purposes, and our future as a church of influence in our city and state, particularly in the areas of missions, worship, outreach, youth and children's ministry.

They have agreed and are excited to come and candidate with the church body the weekend of December 6 & 7. He will preach Sunday morning and there will be a town hall type session for the whole church, probably that evening. By our constitution, the vote for an 80% approval by Participating Members will be on Sunday, December 14 at 10:30 am.

I believe the church body will strongly approve of them. We will be able to reveal their identities as soon as he has talked with everyone else he needs to at his current situation, which will be no later than Sunday, November 30.

October 5, 2008 - Search Team Survey
The Executive Leaders asked everyone to take a short survey regarding the lead pastor search during the service. If you missed it, you can fill out and turn in the survey this Sunday or take it online now.

Read the Christ's Place Profile used to describe our church to candidates for the Lead Pastor positiion.

August 24, 08 - Search Update
Dana Baker for Executive Leaders and Search Team

The Search Team has been unified and functioning well together, which has been another sign that God is directing us each step of the way during this time of transition. Each member is there for a God directed reason and purpose and is representing our body very well.

We are thankful for your prayers. And we are thankful for the prophetic words that have come through the body---that the Lord has already prepared someone to lead us, a man specifically trained and prepared for our body in our city, uniquely prepared to lead at this hour. We pray that God continues to lead all of us in unity to the lead pastor He has prepared

Here’s what’s been happening in the search:

1. The Search Team has worked through some early resumes and sermons and have reached consensus on whom to pursue further.

2. We have a promising potential candidate that we are scheduling for further interviews. Some of us have had an informal session with him and his wife and were favorably impressed. This could be a good fit. We are all, the candidate and his wife included, looking for God’s leading as we meet together.

3. We have been in touch with several key resource people for recommendations of potential candidates we should contact. As a result, those resources have identified 10 quality potential candidates that we are contacting to see if they are open to interviewing with us.

4. We have also been contacted by a search consultant with extensive nationwide Assembly of God contacts and who comes highly recommended by several people that we know and trust. He has offered his services to us and could be great help for us, particularly if we need to widen our search process. The Search Team’s consensus was that we do not need to do so at this time, but we remain open to reconsidering as an option in the future.

5. We have continued to develop behavioral based questions for our interview process that will help us, as we seek God’s leading, to determine whether, based upon passion and past and present behaviors, a candidate is a good fit for our church body and our vision and purposes. We’ll be using those questions in the interviews.

July 17 - A Plan for Prayer

Please be a part of praying for the Search Team and Christ's Place as we move forward in transition. A plan for prayer has been posted here from Executive Leaders.

Sign up to commit to pray one day a week for the Search Team.

July 16 - Search Team Update

In response to invitations from the Executive Leaders, Helen Fagan, Sue Hill, Laura Kinnan, Lyle Neal and Tadd Wegner have agreed to serve on the Search Team with the Executive Leaders, Dana Baker, Karen Bowling, Jerry Christensen, Joel Cornwell and Gary Hassebrook, and Personnel Committee members, Ron Hampton and Cindy West.

Their agreement to serve adds to the strength of the team by giving us a better representation of gender, younger ages, diversity and human resource experience. The Search Team will be announced and presented to the church body this Sunday, July 20, during both services. Thanks for your prayers! God is giving us wisdom and direction as we move ahead with the search for a new lead pastor.

July 13, 2008 - Dana Baker on Behalf of Executive Leaders

We've been busy moving forward and are making good progress. I have personally been more and more encouraged over the past few weeks that God is giving us wisdom and leading us toward His choice for a new lead pastor for our congregation.

Jeff Tyson's Position
We decided for the interim that Jeff Tyson's responsibilities can be covered in-house with existing support staff and the help of some Executive Leaders. Janalynn Menter has agreed to increase her part-time hours to 20 hours weekly with office administration now included as part of her responsibilities.

Chairperson of the Search Team
I returned from being gone on vacation the last week of June and was informed that, in my absence, I had been chosen as chairperson for the Search Team. Go figure. I'm now planning on not missing any future Executive Leader meetings! I've agreed to serve as the chairperson as long as it is as a coordinator for the team with all of the team sharing in the search responsibilities.

Additions to the Search Team
At the July 1 Executive Leader meeting, we identified five individuals to invite to serve on the Search Team together with the Executive Leaders and Ron Hampton and Cindy West, who are on the Personnel Committee. We did so with a view of adding a better representation of gender, younger ages, diversity and human resource experience to the Search Team. This brings the team to a total of 12 members, which is a large number to work with effectively, but we want the Team to reflect our whole congregation as much as possible. There are so many of you who could serve on the Team and it was not an easy process to select five persons from a whole bulletin board of possible names. This was not a popularity contest nor was it a merit determination, but we did so prayerfully and came to a conclusion of what seemed right to us and the Holy Spirit. Four have agreed and one of the five expressed willingness to serve but we won't have a final answer until the next day or so. We plan to introduce the Team to you next Sunday. In the meantime, we will post the names on the website as soon as all twelve have committed to serve.

Next Steps in the Seach Process
This last week the Search Team members who could meet spent an evening with Dwight Sandoz, our Nebraska District Superintendent, who led us very ably in developing a framework for asking questions of candidates and their references which will help us determine whether, based upon passion and past and present behaviors, the candidates we interview are a good fit for our church body and our vision and purposes. We also identified sixteen resource persons, such as other states' district superintendents, national AG staff, and pastors to contact for input on who they feel might be great candidates for us to contact. Besides receiving resumes from candidates who know of the opening and are looking, we will actively contact possible candidates recommended as a good fit. Search Team members are now making those contacts.

A Prayer Strategy
This coming Tuesday night, we will finalize a prayer strategy for the Search Team and for all in the church body. We will present the prayer strategy to you next Sunday in hopes of helping us to pray more effectively for our church and for the transition. We want to listen for and hear God, to move forward in unity, and be led to His choice for a new lead pastor at Christ's Place. Having said that, I want to thank you for praying already. I've been incredibly busy the last several weeks, but I know from the wisdom, strength and encouragement God has been giving us, a strong foundation of prayer is being laid. It is appreciated! Thanks for moving forward with us!

June 15, 2008 - Interim Pastor Named

We are Moving Forward! We are pleased to tell you that Pastor Jim Wilkins has accepted our invitation to come and serve as Interim Pastor during this time of transition. Pastor Jim & Verna will be on site beginning August 1, 2008 and will serve for at least 3 months. They know and love this body and have felt the Lord's direction to come and provide care for us all. They are thankful for the opportunity to serve Christ's Place again and are looking forward to their time with us.

Pastor Jim's Interim Pastor Portfolio Responsibilities are to:
- Lead Staff Meetings
- Lead Executive Leader Meetings
- Provide primary pastoral care
- Oversee Sundays and teach at least 2 Sundays per month
- Work with the Management Team to finalize Sunday details

Pastor Jim is not tasked with leading the search process for a Lead Pastor, but Executive Leaders will ask him for wisdom and advice during the transition. Verna has asked to work with visitors and assimilation, and we have wholeheartedly agreed. We are thankful that they are willing to come and believe they will provide us with reassurance, stability, and continuity as we move ahead.

We also want you to know that the Executive Leaders and Personnel Commitee met this last Tuesday evening. During that meeting, we finalized the details with Pastor Jim. We also decided we want help moving forward and are identifying who we might consult with from outside the church during the transition process. As a first step we have asked the Nebraska Assemblies of God District Officials to meet with us on June 24 for input and insight.

With only five Executive Leaders serving right now, we also identified five or six church members to invite to serve with us and Ron Hamption and Cindy West (who serve on the Personnel Committee) to give a broader representation of who we are as a congregation to the search process. Finally, we are working on other ways for all of you to have a voice in this process (multiple chances to be heard). One of those is this section on our website.

Please be in prayer for the church during this time of transition - for the church leadership, Pastor Brad & Judy, Pastor Jeff and Renee, Pastor Jim and Verna, our remaining pastoral staff, support staff, ministry directors and coordinators and also for each other. One of my prayers for us as a congregation comes from Romans 15:5, "May God who gives endurance and encouragement give us a spirit of unity among ourselves as we follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth we might glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. " Amen.

June 8, 2008 - Dana Baker

The Executive Leaders want you to know this is not anything we wanted to see happen. We have been totally supportive of Pastor Brad’s leadership and are very appreciative of Pastor Jeff’s many years of quality service to the church. We just found out this past Tuesday night at our June leadership meeting and we were stunned and saddened by these resignations. Actually saddened is probably an inadequate word to describe our feelings. We have spent this week personally coming to grips with all of this. For me it has been a grief process, Pastor Brad is one of my closest friends. As the week went on I have gathered myself and said “OK Lord, how do we move ahead?” Life happens, it keeps happening, and we need to keep walking in faith. I do know that we have a great Shepherd who says to us “Follow me.” And I was reminded by Isaiah just yesterday that “Our God Reigns.” He reigns!

You may be feeling differently than we have. There are a variety of emotions and reactions that can happen. We do want you to know that it is okay to grieve, it’s okay to have questions, it’s okay to make suggestions and it is important to love and support one another and to be supported by one another.

At this point, the Executive Leaders want you to know these three things:

1. Our commitment to you is to walk with integrity and to communicate with you clearly every step of the way, to tell you what’s going on, even while it’s happening, and to listen to any suggestions or input that you have for us. We met again on June 10 to pray and begin to discuss and plan the search process for a successor lead pastor and how to fill Jeff’s position. The only thing that the Executive Leaders have done so far is to contact and be in dialogue with someone about serving as an interim pastor to help us during the transition process.
   
   
2. This does not alter our vision, purposes or values and we will be staffing accordingly.
   
   
3. The business meeting scheduled for tonight has been postponed to the night of June 22, to be part of the Deeper service that evening. It will be a time to pray together and for us to update you on how we plan to walk through the search process, and to give an opportunity for your input.

For the church as an organization, we need to move forward with a staff search process. For the church as a community of faith, we need to care for another. Please join us in doing both.