Facilitated Session Executive Report

On January 14th the elders of Epikos Church, along with the Lead Pastor Search committee and representatives from P3, our consulting firm, met to review and summarize the results of the church-wide survey that was administered in December. It was a very productive meeting and allowed the entire team to reflect on what the congregation desires to see in a new lead pastor as well as how they view the church as a whole. Below is the summation of the meeting.

From the survey, it was clear who Epikos Church primarily exists to serve.

1. 1. 1. People who desire to worship God together
      2. People who desire to fellowship and to be loved like a family
      3. People who need to be introduced to Jesus
      4. People who have a desire for deep spiritual growth

The survey indicated that we would like a candidate who is inspiring, persuasive, and motivating but also stable, friendly, sympathetic, loyal, and patient. The search team agrees with this wholeheartedly. 

We also saw that while many people don’t have a preference if there is much change affected by a new pastor, there was a significant number of people that would like to see some changes made. That would indicate the need for a pastor who is not afraid to carefully make some modifications to how we currently operate.

68% of the church feels we are sensitive to the unchurched. This does not mean we are a “seeker-sensitive” church. However, leadership does recognize we may always have unchurched or unsaved people in our congregation and therefore tailor our messages accordingly.

One area that we discussed extensively was the area of “what type of heart” the new pastor should possess. The search team and elders agreed with the congregation that the top four qualities the pastor should possess are that he should have a:

1. 1. 1. Mentor’s heart—he should come alongside both the staff and congregation in his leading.
      2. Heart for the lost—have a burning desire to see others follow Jesus.
      3. Courageous heart—he should be willing to carefully make changes but not be over-domineering.
      4. Worshipful heart—he should exhibit his love for God in all areas of his life.

Each of our campuses has a life of its own, and given the survey separately, may have garnered different results for each campus. It was very encouraging that as the elders and search team looked at the results of the church survey we had similar insights and results.

One thing that became clear in the meeting is the desire to make better disciples, not just more disciples. The elders and leadership will be carefully looking at this to discern what that really looks like. Some of this may have to take place once the new pastor is in place, but we believe we can start to have those conversations now to understand what that may look like in the future.

This meeting was enlightening and now allows us more understanding of how to write the job description for our new lead pastor. Thank you to all who took part in the survey. It was a tremendous help in understanding who we are as a church and what types of candidates we need to pursue.