Hello, I’m Brian and I spoke at the annual meeting about the Pastoral Search Team (PST) process. Since that was a fairly comprehensive update, I am adapting my talk as a blog post for any in the church to speak directly to those that weren’t able to attend. As a Pastoral Search Team (PST) we want to commit to a high level of transparency and communication with the church body. The search team may more accurately be a Pastor Identification Team, God knows our next Lead Pastor. We just need to do the work to identify him. 😊

These are the people that are dedicating their next several months and unknown personal time to ensure the best outcome possible of applying candidates to present our Governing Team with a final decision. I am humbled by the talents of each of these teammates as everyone brings a valuable perspective and individual talents to the process. We are humbled by the hope that we carry of our Alliance Family for the future of our community.

● The PST does have a couple dedicated roles within our group:

● Pastor Gregg - Coach (obviously), he has led this process dozens of times

● Ansley - Group Secretary, off the chart meeting notes, seriously an amateur stenographer 😊

● Myself - The Facilitator (movie voice), while this sounds like a spy movie title it is actually being OCD about admin and organization. AKA Gregg’s underpaid assistant. I am also a center point on the team to interface with our PNW District Superintendent, Monty Wright.

Worth mentioning, both Sam and myself are in a comeback role from serving on the Transition Team. We bring lessons learned along with that perspective to the search process. We do ask for encouragement, engagement and feedback from our church body and can be contacted at PST@hralliance.org or in person if you have any questions along the way. Our decision making will strive to be in total unity with each other and we have signed a covenant to dedicate ourselves to each other, our goals, and candidate confidentiality. A question submitted to the email will allow us to thoughtfully respond as a group. Please understand that we may not be able to answer every question directly and know that Monty, along with our Governing Team, will have the final say on candidates before they are presented to the congregation.

The PST has gotten right to work, I will use this post to give a deeper explanation of our path and we will commit to regular updates to the church. This Rough Outline of the order of events was presented to us by Pastor Gregg.

Currently we are working on the Profiles and application processes. We will strive to have a high standard that is visually and functionally impactful. This sets a similar anchor expectation in our candidate’s qualifications and submissions. This will take some time.

The next milestone will be soliciting applications where we will go through a winnowing process of more doctrinal questions, interviews, and candidate evaluations. At this time, we are not planning to use a professional search organization, those are options with good success rates but come at a price. (We have a proposal from the SlingShot Group with a cap of $30,000 if you’d be interested in contributing.) We will update the church if that becomes more viable.

Pastor Gregg has warned us that 6-9 months was typical pre-Covid and Monty said that applications have reduced significantly over the last couple years in each search process. A “seller’s market” so to speak. The PST will continue to update the congregation on timelines but, for now, the long-range milestones of Lead Pastor placement remain guesses. We are confident that we can put forth a top-notch effort and that our beautiful community, facility and lifestyle will be very attractive for the same reasons we live here. To anticipate a common question: “What is the compensation package?” This is a major factor and a legitimate concern to transplant an individual or likely, a family to Hood River. We have just gone through the annual meeting and touched on that a bit in budgets, etc. The Governing Team is responsible for the compensation package and dialog with candidates. We are also in the process of putting together a Financial Advisory Team (FAB) to provide ongoing counsel to the Lead Pastor regarding the wisest use of our recourses. We expect that the FAB will have input into the compensation package as well. The PST will take their lead to help shape our expectations against cost of living and other fiscal concerns.

A major factor in this process is Prayer. Prayer is not optional! It is an essential part of this process. Here’s a starter list of ideas, the PST would absolutely love assistance here. We will brainstorm and commit to regularly engaging the whole church in praying for the search process.

Make prayer a primary and normal part of the search process and a regular part of the morning service.
List specific issues of prayer for the search process and announce them in the Sunday AM service.
Invite small group leaders and Sunday group leaders to pray with those they lead.
Several times during the process, invite the church to pray and fast uncommon wisdom and discernment.

Commit to the practice of praying for guidance, wisdom, and discernment; individually, as a team, and as a church. A close reading of our HRAC Bylaws would reveal 1 Timothy 3:1-7 as one of the guiding scripture references defining Pastoral responsibilities and expectations of all church Elders. (It’s on Page Nine)

As we have learned in Ephesians, Paul loves to borrow terms from his contemporary secular culture and leverage their meanings and implications to make a point in his letters. Paul references an Overseer in his description of church leadership. This was a secular Greek Term for anyone who had oversight over a project or person. Paul borrowed the term to refer to pastoral leadership in the church. Paul probably did not intend this list to be exhaustive. But he wanted to ensure that church leaders would indeed be able to lead with the heart of a servant. He also wanted to show the culture at large that the church was a respectable institution. He listed qualities that the Greeks admired and used in their own list of qualifications for leadership positions.

Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full[a] respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap. | 1 Timothy 3:1-7

Thank you for your prayerful participation in this process!

-Brian Prange & PST Team