Outline of Topics

• Position Profile

• About Trinity Alliance Church

• Vision & Direction

• Current Conditions

• Community of Redding

• Hiring Process

 

Position Profile

• We are in search of an experienced associate pastor who, first and foremost, has a deep passion for Jesus and for creating and maintaining a system of discipleship that helps develop the faith of believers of all ages. The right candidate will have strong leadership and communication skills with which they are able to recruit, train and empower a team of volunteers to be on the frontlines of ministry. They will be highly relational with a natural inclination to build authentic relationships and inspire others to make personal connections as well. A good candidate for this position will have a heart for multi-generational ministries and have the skill and vision to create opportunities for all the ages to come together in life and ministry.

 

About Trinity Alliance Church

• Trinity Alliance is a church plant out of Pathway church in 1991. Over the last 30 years the Lord has continued to bless TAC with strong leaders who have a vision for developing an intimacy with Jesus and with each other. We are a community who loves Jesus and loves people. Our Sunday services are a truly multigenerational experience as an average of 150 worshipers gather to praise our Lord and Savior together. We continue to seek to offer quality age-based teaching for kids and teens in our Sunday school program, while being intentional about giving opportunities for these younger generations to participate in and contribute to the worship service. A visitor’s first Sunday is always filled with a warm welcome, not just from the “greeters” but from a variety of people who call TAC home. We enjoy getting to know new people, discovering their stories, and sharing our stories with them. We believe every person who walks through the door of our church has a unique relationship with God, and by getting to know them, our perspective of God grows.

• TAC is also a community that has learned to trust Jesus in the midst of the pain, sorrow and hard times of life. In 2016 our Lead Pastor, after preaching Sunday morning, suddenly passed away later that afternoon. The shock and trauma of this event was significant. Staff, volunteers, members, and his family were, of course, devastated. But the Lord was so powerfully faithful in it all. Comforting us, mourning alongside us, and providing the leadership we needed to process through it all. Our faith was deepened as we experienced the faithfulness of God, and we are now better equipped to help others through their own traumas. We have become comfortable living in the tension of this life and are not afraid to journey closely with those enduring especially hard times. We are a church that accepts tragedy as part of our earthly existence, but also sees it as an opportunity for deepening our trust and dependence on Jesus.

• Along with being a church who is friendly and able to mourn, we are a church that loves to have fun. Laughter is a weekly experience in our worship services, small groups and ministry meetings. We have a couple annual events that every year seem to stretch our sense of humor and unite us all in joy. But more than that we have an optimism about the life God has given us. We trust that he is perfect and good, even though we are not. But even our sin and failures do not hamper Him from using us and blessing us with His presence, peace, and tremendous joy. We are filled with gratitude for His willingness to journey with us through all of life’s triumphs, struggles, failures and celebrations.

 

Vision & Direction

• We are a church family who is seeking to “Fully Enjoy our Relationship with Jesus Christ”. While many churches use their vision statement to focus on outreach and community impact, we’ve felt led to ensure that what most assume as obvious is not overlooked. We believe each of us has been created for one purpose: to enjoy intimate relationship with Jesus. As a result, we claim it as our church vision. The goal of each person is to know God and enjoy Him forever.

• We’ve identified three areas where our enjoyment in relationship with Jesus is realized. First, in relying on the Holy Spirit, God’s Word and prayer, we deepen our understanding and awareness of who Jesus is and who God has created us to be. This leads to us enjoying more fully His love, goodness and empowerment to live righteously. Second, in journeying in life with our church family in honesty and humility, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with others and others to be vulnerable with us. This helps us to enjoy more fully God’s encouragement, support and call to live in grace and peace with one another. Third, in engaging our neighbors with the love of God in authentic and caring relationship, we are intentional about forging real relationship with the lost, not just for their conversion but to care for their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. In this we enjoy the great privilege of joining Jesus in His pursuit of the lost and the building of His kingdom.

• We also believe each person has a unique relationship with Jesus and therefore has a unique path of discipleship. As a result, we do not have a one-size-fits-all approach to discipleship but emphasize the need and responsibility of each Believer to seek Jesus, listen to His voice and calling, and follow Him wherever He leads. At the end of each year, we encourage our people to ask Jesus what spiritual practices and ministries He wants them to do in the coming year. We urge them to not just do the same old things, but to be open to trying new practices as the Lord leads them. We firmly believe that spiritual practices are most effective when God has called us to them and then empowers us to do them.

• We have a similar approach to ministry and mission engagement. We avoid zeroing in on one type of evangelism instead believing God has uniquely placed each of us in a mission field, and we each have responsibilities in that field. We work hard to promote the individual testimonies of God using our people in their everyday lives to share the love of Jesus with those who don’t know Him. We seek to support, encourage and inspire them to greater awareness and passion for the lost. We also are working on putting together tools and training to assist them in sharing their faith.

• Since we launched this new vision just a few months before the pandemic outbreak, we had to put several different ministry strategies on hold. However, now that Covid-19 is becoming less of a threat we are looking forward to jumping more fully into our new vision statement and implementing these new ministries over the next year or two. There is a tangible sense of God’s presence with us and a building anticipation of the Holy Spirit manifesting in more obvious ways. Jesus has been increasing our motivation for prayer and we are beginning to enjoy greater opportunities for evangelism. We have great expectation that not only is there a harvest of souls about to be reaped, but that our community is going to get the joy of participating in the harvest. We are preparing for an outpouring of the Spirit in our community, for the glory of God!!

 

 

Season of Change

• Change is a gift from God, and although it is often difficult, we know that our Father instigates change for our benefit and for His glory. As a result, we strive to embrace change when it comes and trust He will prepare us for it and reveal what needs to be changed. While change is fairly constant, we as a church are in the midst of a significant season of change that started about 5 years ago. In 2017 with the hiring of our current Lead Pastor, Pastor Shawn, the Lord began to make some demographic shifts in our congregation. As a church, we had been growing increasingly older over the previous 10-15 years. But in 2019 we noticed the median age in our church had dropped by nearly 10 years. With the arrival of new families with kids, the number of young people in our church doubled in size, from 20-30 kids & teens, to 60-70. Both our kids ministry and youth ministry doubled in size in only 2 years.

• As a result of these demographic changes, we recognized a need to invest more in our youth. While we had a fairly strong group of teachers for our kids, we only had one main volunteer to lead our teens and she needed a break. So, in 2020, we felt the Lord led us to shuffle our current staff and expenses in order to hire a half-time Next Gen Pastor. In July of that year Pastor Xavier joined our staff and began to pour his life into our teens. However, this was just the first step as we felt that within 3 years we would be hiring a full-time Next Gen Pastor. At the time, we expected the Lord would build our congregation and our budget so as to be able to hire a 3rd full-time Pastor to join our Lead Pastor and Associate Pastor in shepherding our church.

• At the beginning of 2022 we once again felt the Lord affirm His direction that we would be ready to hire a full-time pastor in 2023. But it had become clear, unless God did a miracle in 2022, we would not be able to just add a full-time salary to our budget. This prompted us to spend the year re-evaluating our ministry needs, our level of volunteer ministry and the overall gifting of our paid staff. The sense was that we needed to understand more fully what God was leading us into by having a clearer picture of who we are as a church, what gifts our congregation has, and how the skills of our staff meet our current ministry needs.

• Throughout the year, God blessed our review and opened our eyes to the strengths and weaknesses of our congregation and clarified our staffing needs. One of the big changes that came, was God calling our Associate Pastor of 30 years to another church. This had a significant impact on our staffing needs and helped shift our thinking away from a full-time Next Gen Pastor to a full-time Associate Pastor with an emphasis on Next Gen. As we stepped into 2023, we were excited for this season of transition that God has been guiding us through and expected to hire this highbred position by the end of the summer.

• However, this summer, God adjusted our plans and affirmed that He was opening an opportunity for us to split the position and hire a Next Gen Pastor and an Associate Pastor of Discipleship. In the beginning of August, we were excited to announce the hire of Becky Erickson to care for the spiritual needs of our Youth. Becky had been volunteering in our church for a number of years and it was an obvious decision that was strongly affirmed by God. We are now excited to begin the process of hiring the Associate Pastor position and trust the Lord will clearly lead us to the person He’s called to join us in this role!

 

 

Church Facilities

• We are blessed with 30 acres of land just outside of the Redding city limits, yet still within 2 miles of Simpson University and Shasta College. Our unique location puts us in a position to be a blessing to our rural neighbors and the young adults that congregate so close to our campus. We already have a close relationship with an elementary/middle school in Bella Vista that continues to grow each year. But we have yet to get fully engaged in Simpson University or Shasta College. While we have some access and some initial connections, there is much room for growth in our ministry to these schools of higher education and the young adults they serve.

• We have a beautiful campus with 4 separate buildings and a parsonage. The most recent additions were completed in 2019 and included remodeling our fellowship hall and auditorium, building a new youth center, office, café, outdoor patio and amphitheater. We also carved out a prayer trail that meanders throughout our 30 acres and has become a favorite place for many in our community to enjoy a peaceful time with Jesus. Our amphitheater was put to use right away and became a huge blessing as we were able to easily conduct outdoor services during 2020 and 2021 as we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. We praise the Lord for his abundant provision!!

• We believe a church building should be filled with life and activity throughout the week and not just on Sundays. As a result, we have 3 different home-school co-ops who use our facility on 3 different days each week. They do a great job of helping us to create an atmosphere of love, joy and peace throughout the week. People who visit our campus during the week often comment about how great it is to see and hear all the buzz from kids having fun learning and parents being engaged in discipling. God has blessed us with this holy place, and we have set it aside for His glory and worship, praying that every person who sets foot on this campus would feel His presence and enjoy His peace.

 

Church Financial History

• Fiscal Year 2018 – Budget = 326,092.00; Income = 279,110.62; Expenses = 309,373.42

• Fiscal Year 2019 – Budget = 327,752.00; Income = 312,164.94; Expenses = 302,418.20

• Fiscal Year 2020 – Budget = 336,890.00; Income = 345,763,60; Expenses = 339,838.34

• Fiscal Year 2021 – Budget = 354,858.00; Income = 342,024,07; Expenses = 345,202.98

• Fiscal year 2022 – Budget = 368,274.00; Income = 345,453.91; Expenses = 337,965.50

 

Community of Redding

• Redding California sits in the heart of Shasta County as its most populous city and is surrounded by mountains to the north, west and east, with two large lakes (Shasta & Whiskeytown) making it a haven for outdoor enthusiasts. Hiking, biking, skiing, fishing, and boating are just some of the many activities easily available for residents of Redding to enjoy. The city itself has a population of about 90,000 and offers plenty of retail and restaurant variety in order to meet the needs of the average family. Redding has a strong politically conservative and Christian demographic, with many churches and social services to care for those facing hardships of all kinds. It is known for its excellent schools with high graduation rates, low traffic, and low housing prices (Zillow average $393,000 vs. California state average of $770,000). Redding is a place of great physical beauty, hot summers, and wet winters as well as being a family friendly, and faith filled community with great education and outdoor recreation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiring Process

• We want to help our applicants be as informed as possible about the process and as things develop, where they are in the process. Below is an outline of the steps we will be taking in discerning, and allowing the applicant to discern, whether or not God is leading us to join together in ministry. We will give clear communication in a timely manner as to their current status and whether they are moving on to the next phase. We expect, depending on scheduling, to take 1-2 months for an applicant to work through all these phases. Once a resume is submitted the applicant will receive notice of receipt within 1 week. That email will include a date of when we’ll contact them to either schedule an interview or inform them that they were not selected to move on to the next phase.

  • Phase #1 – Resume Review – Here we screen each of the resumes received and determine the applicants who fit our profile and who will be interviewed by our search committee.

  • Phase #2 – Initial Interview – This is a ‘get to know you’ interview. It will be focused on getting to know your personality, giftings, passions and ministry experience.

  • Phase #3 – Applicant Questionnaire – This will be sent to those still deemed a good fit after the initial interview. The questionnaire will zero in on specific experiences, philosophy of ministry, and the theological stances of the applicant.

  • Phase #4 – In-Person Interview – After reviewing the submitted questionnaire a select few will be invited to come for an in-person interview with our search committee. This time will be focused on the applicant’s answers to the questionnaire, as well as discussing their philosophy of ministry and strategy for leading in our church.

  • Phase #5 – Elder Board Interview – If all goes well with the in-person interview, the Elder Board will conduct a brief interview with the applicant to get to know a little about them and hear a bit of their story. They also will inquire as to the applicant’s system for maintaining personal and spiritual accountability.

  • Phase #6 – Reference Review – The applicant(s) that seems to have the right gifting, philosophy, theology and personality to best meet the needs and direction of our church will be asked for a list of references.

  • Phase #7 – Candidate Weekend – Here the applicant will come for a weekend to meet the church. There will be times of Q&A with smaller groups and with the larger TAC community. The applicant will be asked to give the Sunday morning sermon and will end the weekend having dinner with the Elders and spouses.

  • Phase #8 – Job Offer & Acceptance – After the Candidate Weekend, if all goes well an offer will be made to the applicant outlining the expectations and financial compensation. If the applicant accepts the offer, we will discuss the possible start dates.