November 3, 2025 Update

Greetings to our Century family, from your Lead Pastor Search Committee.  

Since our last communication, the committee has met three times, including last Tuesday, October 28^th.  During this last meeting, we began our process of working with a company called Vanderbloemen.  Vanderbloemen is a faith-based company that specializes in executive searches for churches, non-profits and schools.   They also provide services like staff consulting, culture consulting and assessments about organizational health. 

Why contract and pay for a company like Vanderbloemen?   In searching for our next Lead Pastor, we want to ensure we cast a wide net and pursue every and all opportunities.   James reminds us how faith and works are tied together, how real trust in God produces movement and effort.  James 2:17 “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead”.   We know that God is ultimately in charge of this search, but we also want to ensure we do our part.   The Search Committee will be working with someone at Vanderbloemen who is familiar with Century Baptist Church.   Our Executive Search Consultant is Brett Connolly, who we were fortunate to work with during our search for our Care Pastor, which resulted in the hiring of Pastor Paul Ewing.   Brett has provided us with a task list of duties like writing a formal Lead Pastor job description and producing a recruitment video, that will be posted to Vanderbloemen’s website.   When our task list is completed, we “go live” which simply means Vanderbloemen can now formally start their process of vetting candidates. We estimate roughly two months of time before we go live.  One of the many questions we asked Brett, on Tuesday night, was for a rough estimate of a timeline from the go live date to when we might be greeting our new Lead Pastor.   His answer was “roughly six months”.     

Below is a link we are providing to Vanderbloemen’s website, please take some time to really look into who they are. 

https://www.vanderbloemen.com

As you all know, we also continue to work closely with Vital Church Ministries.   Pastor Dave Miles is the founder of VCM and is now the director of their Intentional Interim Pastor Division.   Dave spent some time with us on June 22^nd walking us through the comprehensive Assessment conducted by VCM.  That  full Assessment was provided to us by the Elders this past week, in the October 28^th Vine.  We will welcome Pastor Dave back to CBC the weekend of December 5^th, as he will be assisting our leadership with ideas about making some changes to our governance.   

https://vitalchurchministry.org

So, what does your Lead Pastor Search Committee need?

·      We covet your prayers! 

·      Please ask us questions; our names are below.  We see questions and comments as engagement and caring for CBC.

·      Patience.   Yes, it’s been over a year and a half since Pastor Paul Nather resigned as our LP, but this is not the time to rush, we promise we are moving forward.

·      And more prayer!  😊