PASTOR SEARCH UPDATES

Committee selection has been completed along with training from the Ga. Baptist Mission Board.

Our Communication Plan is underway. A church survey on pastor preferences will take place on Nov. 24 & Dec. 1. The church will also be updated through this website, announcements from the pulpit, and also updated in the church bulletin.

We are in the process of gathering potential prospects for a transitional pastor starting January 1st until we select a new pastor. The Ga. Baptist Mission board is helping with this also.

After completing the surveys, we will develop an ideal candidate profile based on the ministry needs, the vision, the mission, the values, reviewing church profile and demographics and determine future needs and directions.

As you can see, it is a significant task requiring lots of prayer and diligent effort from our team and our church family. God’s Blessings on each one!

12/4/2024 - We reviewed our pastor surveys and are putting together our criteria for our new pastor. We are also considering candidates for our transitional pastor from recommendations from our Ga Baptist Association.

1/4/2025 - Search committee met to discuss candidates for our transitional pastor. We plan to invite them to give a sermon and meet with the committee.

2/1/2025 - Search committee met regarding two potential transitional pastors who are no longer available. We also continue to seek others to fill the pulpit until our transitional pastor is found. The committee began creating a job description for the permanent pastor using our bylaws and a congregation survey questionnaire. We will update the church on our progress through the Sunday school classes. Next meeting scheduled.

2/8/2025 - Search committee met to nail down the job description for the permanent pastor, including qualifications needed and posting methods. Also, outlined how we would receive the resumes via email. Next meeting: Wednesday evening with a training leader from the Ga Baptist Mission Board.

2/12/2025 - Search committee met with Jeff Gongwer from GBMB

2/16/2025 - Search committee went through some updates that Jeff Gongwer gave us on finding a transitional pastor and our church needs.

2/26/2025 - search committee met to discuss transitional candidate.

3/9/2025 - We have called Dr. John Bryan as our transitional pastor. We are excited for him to lead our church as we continue to look for our permanent senior pastor.

3/25/25 - The Search Committee met to finalize the job posting for our senior pastor and the qualifications our church is looking for. We will be posting the position on several outlets and begin taking applications.

4/16/25 - The search committee met to go over the demographics report prepared by Dr. John Bryan. He explained the use of these reports to be used as a tool to build a biography of Fleming Baptist Church to discuss with potential pastoral candidates. We discussed the demographic reports and how they reveal who makes up our community around the church and how it can help shape Fleming’s mission focus. We also developed a timetable for receiving and reviewing resumes as well as posting sites like Ga Baptist Mission, Southern Baptist Association, and Christian Index.

5/1/25- We are now receiving resumes from potential pastoral candidates.

5/25/25- The search committee met to discuss and begin to go through many resumes that we have received. Prayerfully looking over them, watching attached videos of sermons and making sure the qualifications we have set are met.

6/25/25 - Today’s meeting we went over each groups resumes and how we have narrowed them down with a top 3-5 prospects. We will meet soon to hand in our top prospects and do a combined look at what we have left in total and begin the narrowing down of those.

7/16/25- Today we met and went over our combined top prospects and everyone received those prospect’s resumes and video files to go back and research and listen to.

8/13/24 - We met and narrowed our prospects to about 10 and agreed to send letters to each of them to make sure they we still available or interested in going forward. We will meet again next week to see who responded and to agree who are the top 5 we want to start some kind of interview process.

8/20/25- Most of our top 10 prospects replied back to say they are still interested in Fleming Baptist. We are now coming up with our definite top 5 and also interview questions to ask each one as we do a phone screening interview.

9/3/25 - We combined each of our phone interview questions from the 4 categories from the “Playbook” and discussed what would be a good opening question for the prospects. Our homework before next meeting is to narrow down all the combined questions into 5-7 total questions to ask each pastoral candidates during the phone interview.

9/17/25