The Elders recently decided to hire the Vanderbloemen search firm to help guide our search for a new Senior Pastor. The Elders and the Search Committee are excited to be working with Vanderbloemen and wanted to share a few reasons why they chose this partnership.
Resources: Vanderbloemen has 40 full-time employees, many of whom have seminary and theological experience. In addition, they have the largest candidate database – one they have created and maintained on their own. Combining a large and experienced team with a large database means we will have access to a broader pool of candidates going forward and will have the resources available to efficiently and effectively assess those candidates. This opens up the search to new possibilities not previously available.
Experience and Process: While The Moody Church had not gone through a pastoral search process in nearly 40 years, Vanderbloemen has extensive experience taking churches of all types, as well as faith-based non-profits, through a successful search. This includes working with large churches that are looking to replace a legacy pastor, much like The Moody Church is doing now.
Their experience has helped them create a process that will guide the Elders and Search Committee going forward. The first piece of the process is listening. Vanderbloemen engaged in extensive discussions with the Elders and Search Committee to identify what we are looking for in a Senior Pastor. Armed with this information, they are currently working through their extensive pool of candidates, and will ultimately come to the Search Committee with a slate of four to seven candidates. Vanderbloemen expects this identification process to take about 12 weeks (from the revised search launch in September). Once the initial list of four to seven candidates is presented, the Elders and Search Committee will go deeper with the candidates, listening to sermons, conducting interviews, and visiting churches, all with the assistance of Vanderbloemen along the way. Vanderbloemen has a very high success rate in terms of identifying a candidate in the initial pool of candidates. They will remain our active partners until the position is filled.
Prayer: When the Search Committee met with William Vanderbloemen, founder of the firm, he began the meeting by highlighting the importance of prayer. He indicated that their full staff of 40 would be praying over this search on a regular basis. We know that no amount of resources or experience, and no particular process, can do more for the search than calling on the name of the Lord for guidance. We are heartened that this is a central piece of what they will be doing, and we hope you will join us in regularly going to the Lord.
More Information: We encourage you to learn more about the new search firm by visiting their website. We also encourage you to connect with an Elder or member of the Search Committee to ask questions about the process. Regular visits with each TMC Community and general Q&A sessions for the congregation will be scheduled in the coming weeks. Thank you for engagement throughout this important search process.
If you know someone who would like to apply, please send them to this page where they can read the overview and submit their information.
