In November 2003, I shared with you a three-part message series called “Raising Our Children to Become Spiritual Champions.” In my last message of the series, I talked about how New Life has come to a point where we need to look for and hire a children’s ministry pastor who will minister to our children and parents completely in English because of the vision and the make up of our congregation.
At that time, I didn’t know where or how to go about searching for this person who will share the vision of New Life and serve the church well together with the existing team leaders. As you probably know already, I am not a kind of person who goes out a lot to network with other pastors. Hence, the best thing that I could do and ask you to do with me is to pray so that somehow God would bring the right person to us. So, in the past three months, we have prayed a lot, especially during our weekly shepherds’ meeting, monthly house of prayer and leadership team meeting. And I am certain that many of you have remembered this and have faithfully lifted it up to God in your prayers.
Well, we have a candidate for the position whom we will interview in March. His name is Jaemo Park and he is currently serving as a pastor in a church in Maryland. We have come to know him through a New Life member who used to live in the area.
Pastor Jaemo and his family will be coming to New Life for an interview in the first week of March. He will most likely come on Wednesday, 3/3 to attend our March House of Prayer. He will then visit one of our house churches on Friday and be interviewed by our team leaders on Saturday morning during March Leadership Team Meeting. On Sunday, he will give a message to New Life, and then after worship, there will be a Q & A session in the Lounge with everyone, especially the parents who would be interested in getting to know him a little better.
Since this will be the first time that we as a congregation will be interviewing an outside person for a pastoral ministry position, I would like to ask you to saturate yourselves with prayer, asking God for his wisdom and discernment. After the weekend of interviews is over, I will ask you to send me your thoughts and comments about Pastor Jaemo through e-mail (eric@newlifehouston.com) so I will know what all of you will have sensed, felt and experienced. This doesn’t mean that I will base my decision strictly on your e-mail comments. But they would help me and the team leaders in sensing what God will have spoken to the whole congregation.
Please remember the following when you interact with Pastor Jaemo and his family:
1. We are looking for a children’s ministry pastor who has these three C’s:
a. Character: Does he exhibit godly character traits?
b. Competency: Will he be competent as a children’s ministry pastor? Is he a learner, and does he have a teachable and submissive spirit?
c. Chemistry: Will he be a good team player? Will he fit well with the existing team leaders, i.e., Pastor Eric, Harold Yi, Daniel Lim, Peter Lee, Phil Shin, Sean Kim, Min Kim (Stephen Park) and Elise Park?
2. We will apply a “one-year no question asked” policy with all our staff from now on. This means that within one year of hiring, the new staff member has the right to resign and New Life the right to release him/her, both without any questions being asked. Although there is no doubt in my mind that both parties will do their best to seek God’s will and guidance in filling a position, I don’t want to overestimate our ability to read and sense God’s will. There is always room for mistake and error in human decision. New Life may not be the right place for the person who is recently hired, or he/she may not be the right person for New Life. Instead of forcing things to work out unnecessarily, wasting God’s valuable time and resources, I think it is a wiser approach for us to try each other out for one year and then make a longer commitment based on that experience. This will be sort of like one-year courtship process!
Please pray hard with me for this the next several weeks!
Your pastor,
Eric
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