Staffing Changes

In our congregational meeting this past Sunday (April 26), Tim Wellert announced that Ron Giese, our Executive Pastor, will be retiring in May. Although not complete retirement! Ron has requested to move to one day a week, and the elders have approved this. And Ron will stay on the elder board.

We will not be replacing Ron with a new, full-time pastor. Rather we will use Ron once a week, hire Pete Lhamon as our new Discipleship Pastor two days a week, and use existing staff for a couple of Ron’s other current roles.

Here’s how that will look:

Ron

  •     Budget: Ron will continue his role of tracking spending, approving spending, reporting to elders, and proposing (with Aaron Bagley, our staff Finance Administrator) a new budget.

  •      Supervisor: Ron will transition into being a supervisor just for our office manager (Cindy Wright) and our Finance and HR administrator (Aaron Bagley). AJ and Pete will take on new roles of supervising some staff (see below).

  •      Sunday Announcements: Ron will continue to gather, approve, and plan out Sunday morning announcements.

  •     Pastoral responses to “info” emails. Ron will continue to respond to email inquiries that need a pastoral response.

  •      Ron will continue to do some counseling, and some preaching. 

Pete

  •      Disciple Making: Pete will head this up church-wide, which includes things like curriculum, casting the vision, and training us in disciple making.

  •      Groups: Pete will take over groups at West side, including communicating with group leaders, training group leaders, and starting new groups.

  •      Kid Side: Pete will function as the elder and staff pastor oversight for Kid Side. Part of this is that he will be the supervisor for Jess Bolin, our Kid Side director.

  •      Facilities: Pete will be the elder/pastor oversight for facilities, and therefore a direct supervisor for George.

  •      Membership: Pete will work on tracking membership, and reaching out to members that we’ve not seen in a while.

  •      Baptisms: Pete will coordinate meeting with people wanting to be baptized, preparing them for baptism, and with AJ and Cindy prepare for the actual baptisms.

  •      Pete will also preach 5-6 times a year, and do some counseling.

AJ

  •     Communications: AJ will be over communications, which includes print graphics, web page edits, slides for Sunday services, and social media.

  •     New Ministries: If anyone desires to start a new ministry out of, or in partnership with, West Side, they should approach Cindy Wright (office manager) first, with AJ as the elder/staff pastor over this area.

  •    Event Planning: AJ will work with Cindy Wright (office manager) on event planning, but AJ will now be the elder/staff pastor over this area.

  •    AJ will be the direct supervisor for John and Nic, our younger ministers.

Please keep in mind these are not all pastor AJ’s roles and tasks, just those that will be new. He’ll have some help with some of these as well. As an example, our Student Ministries Director, Nic, will do a lot of work with graphics for our church and staff.

AJ will continue to do things like plan out sermon series (with the teaching team), have oversight of Sunday morning services, lead staff meetings (once a week), be the lead pastor for weddings and funerals, and do counseling.