The Search Process

1. Develop a profile of our church family and our community, a job description for a senior pastor, and preferred attributes to look for in a candidate. To find the preferred candidate attributes, create a church-wide survey to get input from all members.

• The raw results of that survey can be found here, and the key take aways can be found here.

2. Submit the job opening to pastor job boards through the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the National Southern Baptist Convention.

• Search team members will periodically review resumes and sermons from all incoming applicants. In reviewing applicants, each team member will independently and prayerfully determine a list of 5 candidates they think best represents the type of candidate the church would like to see.

3. All team members will reconvene and share their individual top 5 lists, to collate into a single team top 5 list. At that time, several candidates will likely rise to the top after appearing on multiple team members' lists, which makes the creation of a single team top 5 list easier.

4. Select one candidate to pursue at a time.

5. Request the candidate fill out a theology questionnaire.

6. If the questions in the questionnaire are to the liking of the entire search team, a phone call will be scheduled with the candidate.

• The search team leader will speak to the candidate over the phone and ask other specific questions and report back to the search team.

7. Based on the team leader's recommendation, a meeting will be scheduled for the whole search team to talk to the candidate.

• Prior to the meeting, the search team will determine what specific questions they each want to ask the candidate, to avoid asking the same question twice.

• The candidate can also ask additional questions about our church at this time.

8. Schedule additional meetings between the search team and the candidate as needed.

9. Schedule a time for the candidate to meet with the other pastors (David Spalding, Phillip Cole, Derek Brown, and Erin Feldges).

10. Schedule a time for the candidate to meet with other leaders if needed.

11. If all meetings end favorably, invite the candidate to preach one Sunday in accordance with the church bylaws. This would be when the candidate is presented to the whole church in view of a call to be our senior pastor. This would also include a time for a "meet and greet" and an extended Q&A with the pastor candidate at each site.

12. Prior to the church vote, send out the information the search team has collected over this time on the candidate to the church for review. This would include the theology questionnaire the candidate filled out as well as links to other sermons the candidate has given.

13. Hold a vote on the candidate the following Sunday.

If at any point a candidate withdraws their application or any group decides to not pursue a candidate any longer, the pastor search team will return to step 4. If all candidates in the top 5 have been contacted, a new top 5 list will be created with any new candidates that have applied in the meantime.