A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Searching for a Campus Pastor

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A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Searching for a Campus Pastor

Sunday, November 10, 2013

I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, the church I have the honor of serving at, is beginning a national search for a Campus Pastor to serve on our Tempe Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix metro area. Currently there are three campuses located in Gilbert, Tempe and Casa Grande with a total weekend attendance of over 5,000 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Tempe Campus is the result of a merger in October of 2011 with Bethany Community Church. In the merger Sun Valley acquired a 16-acre, 8 building campus with over 100,000 sq. ft. under roof. Since the merger the campus has doubled in attendance and at present attendance is over 1,000. When fully utilized the campus capacity will accommodate more than 6,000 people. Sun Valley was recently featured in a new book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2. Interested in learning more about what it means to be a Campus Pastor? Follow this link!

Sun Valley is excited about working with The Vanderbloemen Search Group who is managing this search. Interested parties should follow this link for more information.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

A Large Multisite Church in Phoenix is Hiring a Worship Pastor

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

I’m pleased to announce a new Staff Search. Sun Valley Community Church, the church I have the honor of serving at, is beginning a national search for a Worship Pastor to serve on our Gilbert Campus. Sun Valley began as a church plant in 1990 in Chandler, Arizona. Over the years Sun Valley has grown into a large mult-site church in the Phoenix metro area. Currently there are three campuses located in Gilbert, Tempe and Casa Grande with a total weekend attendance of over 5,000 people. Sun Valley was recently named by Outreach Magazine as one of the top 10 fastest growing churches in America. The Gilbert Campus is the original and largest campus with well over 3,500 in weekly average attendance. Sun Valley was recently featured in a new book by Leadership Network about church mergers: Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. To learn more about that story click here Part-1 and Part-2.

Sun Valley is excited about working with The Vanderbloemen Search Group who is managing this search. Interested parties should follow this link for more information.

Posted in Staffing

6 Reasons Your Church Should Use a Search Firm to Make Your Next Hire

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Hiring a new team member can be exciting because it means there is going to be fresh eyes on old problems and status quo ministry, new ideas, and a new well of experiences to go to. If you’ve read much of my blog you know that I enjoy the hiring process and helping churches recruit and hire great teams. In fact you can check out this series of posts on “Recruiting and Hiring Teams that Make Vision Real” or take a look at how I help churches build a staffing and hiring strategy. But sometimes the best move that you can make is to enlist the help of an Executive Search Firm. Here are 6 reasons you should consider using an Executive Search Firm when you make your next hire.

1. Broaden the Candidate Pool

What do you do after you run through your network of relationships and post the job online? An Executive Search Firm can bring a broader, deeper, and more talented candidate pool than you can usually gain access to on your own. Simply put, they have a “greater reach.”

2. Make the Right Hire

At the end of the day you just don’t want to make any hire…or even a good hire for that matter. You want to make the right hire. A hire gone wrong can cost you and your church not only a significant amount of time and money; but a ministry can literally be set back years by making the wrong hire.

3. Save Time

Depending on the unique aspects of the role and the church it can take anywhere from 3 months to a year for many churches to fill a staffing vacancy. That’s a lot of time in which the ministry is treading water or worse moving backwards. A Search Firm can speed the process up considerably. Not to mention who on your Staff has the time to run a search right now?

4. Expertise

Most Pastors aren’t experienced professional recruiters. In fact most people in ministry have never had any professional Human Resources training at all. An Executive Search Firm brings years of experience and training to the table.

5. Process

Most Churches don’t have a proven and successful process to make a hire. The old standby “Personnel Committee” isn’t getting it done. No other industry successfully operates by letting its “customers” who have no industry or hiring expertise run a hiring process. A Search Firm will bring a tested and proven hiring process to the table.

6. New Challenges

In a growing church it’s not uncommon to go through multiple staff restructures. When those moments come it often exposes a need that can’t be filled with the talent that’s already in the room. Likewise it’s not uncommon in a growing church to have need for a more specialized and highly trained skillset for some roles. These are perfect opportunities to enlist a Search Firm to help in these unique situations.

There are a growing number of Christian Search Firms out there that you can look into, but here are a couple to help get you going in the right direction.

Minister Search is a full service search firm that helps churches and candidates find the right fit. They’ve been going at this for more than 10 years now.

Shepherd’s Staff helps churches find the right candidates and is willing to customize their level of involvement in each search.

Slingshot Group has a created special niche for itself in helping churches staff the Creative Arts.

Vanderbloemen Search Group is quickly becoming recognized as the nations foremost Christian Executive Search Firm working with many of the leading churches in America.

Posted in Staffing

How much should we Pay our Pastor?

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

How much should we pay our Pastor? It’s a question that gets sent my way quite frequently. Unfortunately the question beneath the question is usually, “How little can we pay our staff to get them and keep them?” You’ve probably heard the old adage “Let the church keep the Pastor poor and God keep him humble.” There seems to be some general fear that if a pastor makes a good or comfortable livelihood that they will somehow be worse at their job. In taking a quick look at national numbers though you’ll see that few pastors are actually paid an unreasonably high salary. But what is reasonable?

When coming up with a salary for your pastoral staff, make sure you consider the size and location of the Church as well as the education and experience of the Staff Member. Other factors that come into play are longevity in the role and overall value to the Church. An overlooked concept that should factor into the salary is the “replacement cost.” If that staff member left, what would it cost to replace them? Another way to think about this is by considering the mean income of the congregants in your church or the mean income level of the board of the church. It would also be worth considering what the income level is like at a similar organization (size, operating budget, number of staff, assets, impact, non-profit) that offers similar services or is under similar circumstances.

Here are three resources that may help along the way:

1. Leadership Network: Large Church Salary Report

2. National Association of Church Business Administration: Ministry Pay Church Salary Survey

3. LifeWay: Southern Baptist Convention Compensation Study

Interested in a customized report for your church? The Vanderbloemen Search Group and Leadership Network would be happy to help you with that project.

Posted in Staffing