It is with great excitement that the pastoral Search Committee is recommending a candidate for the position of Pastor of Missional Discipleship! Please join us on Zoom following worship on Feb 28 to consider this recommendation. While only members can vote, all who are part of Spring Garden are welcome to join.

If you would like to join the Zoom meeting but did not receive an email with the link, please email office@springgardenchurch.ca.

SGC Search Committee (SC) for the Pastor of Missional Discipleship—Summary of Timelines and procedures

Conversations by the Deacons around starting a search committee to prepare for an eventual hire began in the Spring of 2020 with a few potential members approached.

In early September the SC was officially formed by Deacons to prepare a job description, interview candidates and recommend one candidate for the position. The SC is Greg Kay and Sam Lee (Co-Lead Pastors), Monica Kim and Joanne Laing (Deacons), Clem Lee (Elder), and Lesley Daniels and Brad Sider (members).

The SC researched job descriptions of comparable roles from other churches and met a few times via Zoom to discuss and finalize the job description.

After approval by the Deacons, the job description was finalized and posted Nov 5th, 2020 with closing date of January 4th in order to give time to those who did not hear about it immediately to apply. The job description was posted on CBOQ’s Ministry Opportunities page, Christian Careers Canada (affiliated with Tyndale University and Seminary), and SGC’s social media.

Many applications came in during the first few weeks and the SC began the process of identifying which applications to pursue while also creating questions for the first interview.

Because we had some very strong applications and incoming applications had slowed down, we began first interviews with our top candidates in the first week of December. Each interview was followed by an immediate discussion amongst the SC of how the interview went. In the week following the final interview, each member of the SC then spent devoted time in prayer seeking God’s will on which of the candidates to offer a second interview. The committee met again and, following the discernment process, discussed and prayed through next steps; this led to offering two candidates a 2nd interview at the beginning of January following the official application cut off date. During this discernment process some members of the committee felt they heard God saying our current candidate was where we were being led, though all members confirmed keeping an unbiased openness.

Between then and January 4th the SC reviewed additional applications that came in and were led to move forward with the original 2nd interviews the week of January 4th. We extended the invitation and interviewed our current candidate on January 5th.

After the interview, again, we took the time to prayerfully go through our discernment process of seeking God’s will. Following another meeting to discuss and pray, two members of the SC spoke with our candidates references who were all very affirmative.

The committee met a final time to receive a report of the references and, after a time of listening prayer, overwhelmingly agreed to present the candidate for the role. The SC then brought the recommendation to the Deacons who voted to bring the SC recommendation to the Congregation, at which point the congregational meeting was called for February 28th, 2021.

The Pastoral team was then able to meet the candidate during a team meeting. The Pastoral team joins the Search Committee in feeling very excited that this candidate is being recommended for the role and looks forward to working alongside of them.