HireAYouthPastor.com

Job Description

We’re Praying for a Proactive Leader with:
1. A love for youth, college students, and young adults and a shepherd’s heart.
2. A mature faith consistent with the Reformed Christian tradition and compatible with mainline Christian church ministry, values, and priorities.
3. Personal integrity grounded in truthfulness, transparency, and a solid awareness of appropriate professional ministry boundaries.
4. The personal confidence and warmth to reach out to junior and senior highers, college students, and young adults on their own terms, instilling the desire to participate in church ministries and outreach, and helping them know, love, and serve Jesus.
5. At least 2 years of demonstrated experience as a volunteer, employee, or participant in Christian youth, campus, and/or camping ministry leadership.
6. A serious and sustained commitment to involving youth, college students, and young adults in serving others, through transformative mission outreach in the community and world.
7. Relational and listening skills, interpersonal sensitivity, and the ability to recruit, organize, inspire, engage, and support volunteers.
8. Creative, consistent communication skills, including social media, texting, online newsletters, etc.
9. An enthusiastic sense of humor and fun, combined with a passion for teaching and forming youth, college students, and young adults to be committed followers of Jesus.
10. A sense of call to church ministry, with possible interest in seminary and ongoing ministry formation.
11. As many of the following as possible: music leadership; a background in the performing arts; a love of sports; experience in leading camps, retreats, and outdoor activities; community outreach experience; cross-cultural mission experiences.
12. A bachelor’s degree (required).

Specific Duties and Responsibilities
1. Youth Ministry (approximately 55%)
a. Cultivate nurturing, supportive relationships with all church youth.
b. Build leadership teams of older youth, college students, young adults, parents, and others to broaden the church’s ministry with junior and senior highers.
c. Plan and lead exciting, involving, and spiritually enriching weekly youth gatherings for 7-12th grade students.
d. Model, teach, and encourage Christian faith, worship, and service.
e. Plan and lead youth retreats, camps, conferences, mission trips, and service activities, working with area churches and the Presbytery of Arkansas.
2. College and Young Adult Ministry (approximately 30%)
a. Initiate, build, and deepen supportive ministry relationships with young adults, including college students, to engage them in the church’s worship, life, ministries, outreach, and service.
b. Develop and lead church-based ministry opportunities, local and global mission outreach and service, and small groups with college students and young adults. Recruit volunteer church leaders to broaden these efforts.
c. Be present with United Campus Ministry at the University of Arkansas, collaborating and building relationships with students, and helping students to embrace church participation and leadership.
3. Overall Church Involvement (approximately 15%)
a. Regular leadership and weekly participation in worship (including preaching if desired).
b. service on appropriate church ministry teams.
c. participation and leadership in church family activities.
d. connecting, interacting, and engaging with parents and families of youth and young adults.

First United Presbyterian Church

First United Presbyterian Church is a vital, Christ-centered, outward-focused, 430-member congregation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), served by Co-Pastors Jan and Phil Butin. Our vision is "Reaching out as a visible expression of God's grace, we will meet people where they are, inviting all into Christ's family through engaging worship, fellowship, learning, and service." Currently, the church has a staff of 9, including a part-time Director of Christian Education who also serves United Campus Ministry; a full-time Director of Music Ministries; and a variety of dedicated support staff. We embrace all styles of music in worship, involve youth and children in weekly worship leadership, and cultivate warm, loving relationships across generations among all ages. We are committed to community outreach focused on hunger and homelessness, and embrace a mission partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Honduras. We seek to reflect the breadth of God's love by reaching out as widely as possible both towards the theological and political left and right.