Solo Pastor - Fredonia, NY
Listed 02-02-2021
Employer
First Presbyterian Church, 219 Central Ave., Fredonia , NY 14063 | 716-679-1501 | fredoniapres.org
Location
Fredonia, NY
Start Date
08-01-2021
Type
Full Time
Please check out their MIF # 05355.AA0 for additional information and self-referral details on the Church Leadership Connection. This position is suitable for a first call and would include a housing allowance.
Our congregation has a deep faith in God’s abiding love, and a foundational belief in the central tenets of the great commandments: We strive to follow Christ by loving God and loving neighbors. We try, with God’s help, to live this vision by dedicating ourselves to doing the work of Christ in our community. We’re a welcoming and loving congregation with an emphasis on spiritual growth and service. We seek passionate and challenging preaching/teaching during our worship services. Difficult topics are discussed openly and without stigma, while dialog is encouraged across a range of ideologies. We support and respect each other even across differences. We are a small congregation, but our membership is active and happy to help with an “everyone’s a deacon mentality.” We generally work with a sense of humor and genuinely enjoy each other’s company as we try to live holy and joyful lives, but that attitude isn’t reserved just for our church members. We have many active and ongoing community ministries, and we are known throughout the area as being an outward-looking congregation. In our ongoing attempts to encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and do good to one another, our church often serves as home to local groups needing meeting space and support for food justice, mental health, environmental concerns, and human rights issues. We strive to be a center for spiritual healing, inspiration, hope, and tangible support for the most vulnerable in our area.
We feel called to welcome all people, both into our sanctuary and into active membership. We accept people wherever they may be in their faith journey, and we celebrate the diversity of God’s creation by being an open and affirming community of faith with fully inclusive worship services. In following Christ, we advocate for the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. Many of our ministries focus on food justice whether in the form of a monthly food pantry, a yearly food drive involving the entire community and regularly raising two tons of food, or selling Equal Exchange/fair-trade goods to support farmers worldwide. We offer free use of our building to mental health organizations and drug and alcohol abuse prevention agencies. We also provide space for supervised parental visitation. As we care for all of God’s creation, we’re a certified Earth Care Congregation. We host a massive yard sale each year with the proceeds going to local missions, and we run an alternative Christmas market encouraging the community to consider giving non-traditional/charitable gifts instead of commercial ones. We are a regional collection site for disaster relief hygiene kits, and we collect and distribute school supplies, hats, underwear, and mittens for local children in need. Even with so many opportunities to serve, our members consistently express the desire to do more around global issues. The desire to show Christ’s love is the thread that holds our congregation together.
The pastor who accepts a call to our congregation will be a strong, engaging, articulate, and open-minded worship leader who teaches as much as preaches and encourages spiritual growth by both supporting and challenging the congregation through their sermons and worship. They will be someone who can comfortably provide support, encouragement and compassion for those suffering illness or other life issues and be a presence in times of personal or collective need. They will foster a strong sense of fellowship and model open communication. They will support/steer our service work, while strategically guiding us towards continued financial stability and growth of the congregation. Our new pastor will be relied upon to help discern God’s call in both our community and the world at large while providing insights into how Christ’s ministry can best inform our daily lives.
Any pastor who is open to being called to this position will be as open and welcoming as our congregation. They will embrace diversity across a broad spectrum of faith, culture, race, and identity. They will have a passion for engaging preaching/teaching both on personal and global issues and a heart for service. They will be hopeful, positive, authentic, and willing to look past surface level measurements (number of members, size of endowments) to focus on actual impact. While we would never expect any pastor to fulfill all of our mission initiatives, we would love to have their full support, encouragement, and counsel in these endeavors. In that vein, they will possess a zeal for social justice and helping those in need. We look forward to learning and growing along with our new pastor, and we hope they’ll bring new ideas and inspire new outreaches. We would be especially excited if they offer new ways to connect with our local college community. The pastor who accepts a call for Fredonia Presbyterian should have a sense of humor and enjoy thinking outside the box. They would have an appreciation for quirkiness, and a willingness to meet people where they are rather than rely solely on tradition or dogma. They would be flexible enough to help us adapt and grow to fit our changing needs, but always stand firm in their commitment to love God and neighbor without hesitation or reservation.
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