Young Adult Pastor Wanted

Santa Rosa Adventist church---Young Adult Pastor Wanted

     A while back, I read this article about church growth and how a church that wants to grow needs to staff for growth. The article talked about how a pastor can only minister to so many people, the rule of thumb is one pastor for every 150 in average worship attendance, and how churches stop growing once they reach that threshold. The article went on to say that unfortunately most churches staff for maintenance, not for growth…and how a church that wants to grow needs to add a staff member before growth can occur, in order for growth to occur.

     Most of you know that our strategy for growth here at the Santa Rosa Adventist church, what I like to call our growth engines, is children and youth. This is not a new innovation, this is just logical. The reality is that the median age of the Adventist church in North America is 60 years of age. I read a study recently that 60 percent of Adventist churches in North America have little or no children (or youth). We are blessed to have children and youth in our church…and our desire is to do all we can to protect them and grow them up in Jesus. The leaders of this church take seriously what Jesus said, “Better to be cast into the sea with a millstone around our neck than to damage our children.”

     So, we are committed to continuing to grow our children AND youth under the leadership of Pastor Garrison. As a church engine, we want to continue to fuel it with the best volunteers, with financial resources, bathing it in prayer and encouragement, so that engine will run at maximum capacity and efficiency.

     But, there is one generation that is even less present in most churches regardless of denomination…researchers call it the “Lost Generation,” the 20-30 year olds.

We are again are blessed to have a good number young adults in this church. Many who worship and serve with us. And, as I mentioned we put a lot of time and energy into our children and youth, but often they get out of high school, they fall through the cracks, sometimes disappear.

     These days, we have some volunteers who sometimes help in this area, and we have tried to encourage some leadership from within, but we have not been as successful as I would like us to be. So, we, the church board, have decided to change that. We have decided to invest in this age group, to make it a growth engine, which like any engine, if you fuel it right, will run…will help this church grow. How? This last month, the Church Board voted unanimously to locally hire an extra pastor to focus on our twenty-something’s. We have voted to raise 30K a year for at least the next two years to hire a stipend pastor to focus on our young adults…the young adults that have graduated from RAA, and the young adults in our community. These funds need to be above and beyond our church budget. I have already raised 15K from some of our members.

     Because it is not a full time position, our hope is that we will be able to find someone who is looking to transition into pastoral ministry. There are not a lot of pastor jobs available these days, so they might be willing to come join our staff here on a stipend/part time basis. This might not be easy to find, so I invite you to join us in praying that God will brings us the person we need to minister to our young adults.

     I would also ask you to consider investing in this, helping us fund this, over and beyond church budget giving. Think of it as an investment of eternal ramifications.

So far, Pastor Garrison and I have come up with a list of 70+ young adults, twenty-something’s, who are part of this church and need someone to marshal them together, someone to provide weekly opportunities for spiritual growth, to organize social gatherings, to communicate regularly through social media, and develop relationships that will strengthen their walk with Jesus.

     This is our dream. This is our plan. I hope you will join us in doing all we can make this happen.