An Enduring Gift at the Heart of Ministry: How One Church Honored Their Longtime Pastor
Dec 4, 2024
WORK LOCATION
On-SiteJOB TYPE
Full TimeSALARY
Determined Upon HireLANGUAGE
EnglishMINISTRY AREA
PreachingDENOMINATION
Baptist (SBC)Redeeming Grace Church, founded in 1979, is a multi-generational and multi-ethnic church of around 400 members located in Fairfax, VA in the suburbs of Washington DC. We are a reformed, Baptist, complementarian, continuationist, congregational, plurality of elders-led church. Our affiliation is with the Pillar Network (a subgroup within the Southern Baptist Convention). You can find more details about our vision, mission, values, and statement of faith at our website: https://rgcfairfax.org/about-rgc.
Our leadership consists of three staff (i.e., paid full-time) elders/pastors (we use the terms interchangeably) and seven non-staff (i.e., volunteer) elders/pastors. Our three current staff elders primarily lead in preaching/teaching, community life, and executive leadership. Our non-staff elders lead in various areas of ministry such as our youth ministry, children’s ministry, career-aged ministry, facilities, church planting, etc. We are a plurality of elders congregational church, meaning that we believe Christ expresses his authority in our church through the elders with the church members. In general, important decisions at our church are made by all staff and non-staff elders together, with the input and affirmation vote of our members.
THE ROLE: As part of our long-term succession plan for the future of our church, we are seeking to hire our next teaching pastor. The teaching pastor will lead the preaching and teaching ministries of our church, including a teaching team for Sunday mornings, and will work in close collaboration with the other staff pastors in leadership of our church. The role will likely involve preaching one or two Sundays per month for a period of time, while being mentored by our current teaching pastor and building a strong relationship with our church family, before eventually moving into preaching full-time after our current teaching pastor retires. During this initial period, the new hire will likely be asked to oversee other areas of ministry that are suitable for his gifting and calling (e.g., pastoral care, evangelism, community life ministries) to fill a full-time role. We expect the transition from preaching 1-2 Sundays per month to preaching full-time to take around one to two years. At RGC, preaching full time means preaching about 65-75% of the Sundays in a given year. This is because we have a team of teaching pastors/elders, including non-staff elders, plus guest preachers, who would fill in the remaining 25-35%. We believe in expository preaching, and we normally go through whole books (or large portions of a book) of the Bible in a series. In addition to Sunday mornings, the teaching pastor teaches in seminars, men’s Bible studies, Sunday morning “classes” before service, and other contexts. The teaching pastor also designs and proposes sermon series and leads discussions on theological topics with elders and other church members. To get a sense of our prior sermons, please visit here: https://rgcfairfax.org/join-us/sermons A strong candidate will meet all the Biblical qualifications for eldership (1 Tim. 3:2-7; Titus 1:5-9), have discerned a call to vocational ministry, have substantial experience in preaching/teaching ministry, and have a seminary degree (e.g., M.Div.). The candidate must also be fully aligned with our vision, mission, values, and statement of faith, and be comfortable or have experience in working on a shared leadership team (i.e., joining the team of staff and non-staff elders to work collaboratively in all areas of ministry). HOW TO
APPLY: To apply, please complete the application form here: https://rgcfairfax.org/careers or reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions. In addition to your application online, please email [email protected] with a link to a video of you preaching a sermon. Thank you for your interest!