The Rundown, or, Beginning the Trek

So, I graduated from school, I have this handy Biblical Studies degree, and I want to be a Youth Pastor. This is how it’s gone so far. In the last three months, I have sent out a total of 52 e-mails to churches that I’ve found with Youth Pastor job listings on several websites. Of these 52, somewhere around 28 have responded and not yet been filled. So that’s 28 resumes in the hands of people who make decisions. Chronicled here: The positive responses.

Fellowship Community Christian Church, Tacoma, WA: These folks were actually the first to call around two weeks ago. In our first phone discussion, I had a small interview, and they immediately wanted to fly the fiance and I out to Tacoma for face to face interviews. They were going to call the next day to cement a date. H (the fiance) and I were VERY excited, to say the least. When the next day came, the date issue was skirted, and I was given a bit of an assignment/questionnaire to do for them as they checked my references and so on. Five days went by without hearing from them again, but they called me again late this week and stated that another candidate had appeared and would be visiting with them this month. They’ll call me in April and tell me if he worked out or not. Now, this job is not actually gone, per se, but it went from being in the palm of my hand to something entirely ethereal in the course of one 3-minute phone conversation. I haven’t completely given up on it, but I’m not holding my breath. I wasted a lot of excitement on this one.

Griffith Christian Church, Griffith, IN: These folks were second, they reviewed my resume last Sunday and sent me a questionnaire to be filled out and supposedly looked at today. I haven’t heard anything back from them quite yet. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad sign. I’m hoping I’m not in the tall stack of “e-mail these losers tomorrow” but in the tiny stack of “e-mail this exciting dude right now and get him over here!”

Eastwood PCA, Montgomery, AL: How humorous would it be if I ended up back in the south? Anyway, these folks sent me an e-mail saying that they were reviewing multiple resumes and would make a decision by April 1. This is a little late for me, but still possible within my time frame (i.e. knowing where I’m going by the time I’m married on April 5). Considering the succinctness of the e-mail though, I’m not holding my breath on it.

Gateway Community EPC, Slippery Rock, PA: Now, this one excites me for many reason. 1. It’s EPC, it fits right in with how I’ve been raised and what I’m comfy with, me and the higher ups would have very few issues. 2. Visit the churches website. Is there anything about their goals, about the way they’re set up, about the way they seem to do things that doesn’t seem amazing? 3. The pastor knows my former mentors The Wilkinsons, his son was in Josh’s wedding, and he knows Dr. Kenyon. So well, in fact, that he dated DK’s sister for a while. How amazing is that? We’ve had some communication, enough for me to learn those things and for him to say that we’ll talk some more later about possibilities. The down sides? It’s a new program, I’d be building programs from the ground up. But God bless Suz and her transparency in the way she ran things, I honestly think I’ve seen how things go enough to have cut my teeth on that. I’m inexperienced, but there’s nothing that’s going to make me work harder than a killer challenge. Also, the main focus would be college, and I’d say I’m pretty in tune with those folks at the moment. This one is definitely on my frontal lobe. You know, where I keep things.

Redeemer PCA, Evans, GA: Got an e-mail from them the other day saying they’d received my resume and they would get back to me by the middle of the week. It’s not a lot of news, but it’s not bad news.

And that’s it. A couple other churches said they would review my resume and get back to me, but that was weeks ago, so I don’t hold out hope for them anymore. So I’m left with five. Out of 28. For those of you not doing the math at home, those aren’t great percentages. And this isn’t even 5 “really interested” ones. I’ve got 1 mildly interested, one “if this other dude doesn’t work out,” one I’d kill for but have no real grasp on how they feel about me, and 2 “we got your junk, you might hear from us later, thanks for letting us practice our ambiguous answers on you.” I think that’s enough wall of text for now. Tomorrow, I’ll probably relate to you the emotional ramifications of this whole crazy ordeal.

***WARNING*** Tomorrow’s post may be slightly emo, but a sort of spiritual emo. I guess you’ll see if you’re brave.

~ by Drillpress on March 10, 2008.