Searching, Searching

There were a lot of questions that stemmed off of my last post about how the Church of Christ hires preachers. Before I post about this weekends activities (so fun!), I'm going to take this time to explain what happens during a preaching position search (at least for us).

Russ graduated from a two year preaching school in June of 2007. At that time we started looking for a preaching job, but I had a job and we were also saving to start infertility treatments. By February of 2008 we still hadn't found a congregation to work with so we decided to put that on hold while we pursued having a baby. We began searching again the summer of 2009 after Chloe Jo was born.

One of the things to keep in mind about the Church of Christ is that we don't have an earthly headquarters so we aren't "assigned" a congregation to work with. We have to create a resume and send it to congregations that are seeking a preacher. There are websites that have listings and also we find out about congregations by word of mouth. If a congregation is interested, one of the men will call or e-mail Russ to get more information. If they are still interested they might ask for a cd of a sermon or ask for Russ to come and "try-out". After the try-out, they may ask us to come back for a second try-out if they are still interested. We've made it to the second try-out stage at a couple of congregations and that is as far as we have gotten in this process. I have to keep reminding myself that this country is in a recession and that means that church contributions are going to be down because of job loss and the tightening of belts which means many churches looking for a preacher may not be able to afford one right now. There just aren't that many places looking and the majority of the ones that are don't seem to be interested in us.

This has been a stressful time, but I am thankful that Russ has two jobs and he gets to preach on the weekends (though they have cancelled services two weeks in a row due to weather). I knew this would be a long process, but I didn't think we would still be looking after all this time. I am hoping that once we get moved into a cheaper apartment that we can start paying a little more on the car and credit card. Credit is great, but with car trouble last summer and medical bills, our balance has kind of gotten away from us. Hopefully we will find a full-time preaching position soon!

Also, I did tell Russ about your comments so he is checking on some of those. Thanks!