Lead Pastor Full Time

Lead Pastor Job Description
New Hope Church
 
 
 
At New Hope Church we are Becoming fully-engaged followers of Jesus Christ by Belonging together, Believing in Christ alone, and Blessing our world. Under the leadership of our current Lead Pastor, we have transitioned from a legacy to a missional church culture. Our new Lead Pastor will share this missional focus.
 
 
Our future Pastor will be responsible for:
 
Spiritual Modeling. The Lead Pastor should conspicuously model prayer; personal Bible study; encouraging the spiritual faith of the one-another’s in a personal way; doing non-anonymous good deeds in the name of Jesus Christ; and sharing the Gospel with not-yet-believers.
 
Mission Alignment. The Lead Pastor is responsible for keeping the vision before the congregation through preaching, teaching, writing, and conversation. He is responsible to ensure that everything the church does is aligned with its mission, is achieving its vision, and is operating within its values. To that end, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound objectives (SMART Objectives) should be annually proposed by the lead pastor so that achievement can be measured.

Team Building. The Lead Pastor is responsible for ensuring the right leaders are in the right roles. Key volunteers, who give sacrificially of their time and gifting, are to be treasured, trained, encouraged, and led well to become the fully-engaged follower of Jesus Christ they were created to be.

Fund Raising. The Lead Pastor is responsible for ensuring the funding for ministry is available.
 
Care Provider. The Lead Pastor is responsible to “equip the saints” to provide care for the members of the church according to Ephesians 4:11-13.
 
 
 
A strong candidate would have:
 
·       Experience as the Lead Pastor of a growing church.
·       Educational equivalent of an MDiv degree or higher.
·       Alignment with our beliefs as outlined in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
·       Exceptionally strong communication skills.
·       Extroverted personality who connects well with both believers and not-yet-believers.
·       Comfortable with an Elder-led church polity and a strong Teamwork culture among the staff.
 
 
 
Brief History
 
 
New Hope Church is strategically located right in the heart of Cape Coral, Florida. The church was planted 24 years ago during a time of dramatic growth in Southwest Florida. Our current Lead Pastor is a former IMB missionary who visited New Hope on many occasions during his ministry sabbaticals. The financial crisis of the early 2000’s hit our area hard causing many church members to move away. When the founding Pastor retired in 2019, and the church called Pastor David, weekly attendance had fallen to around 75 people. The church knew that they wanted a big change and to become more outwardly focused. Calling a missionary as their new Senior Pastor seemed like the best way to do that.
Many changes were made in those early years including a shift from a legacy church to a missional church culture. This means that the activities of the church (gatherings, trainings, worship, counseling) are developed organically and incorporated as needed to equip the church members in their mission to reconcile a lost world back to the Father. We understand that the goal of every activity and event on the church calendar is an opportunity to be on mission for God. We understand that the majority of the missional activities undertaken by our members will not be included in the church calendar. We seek to live our lives on mission every day, using the church for training, fellowship, and larger missional activities that cannot be produced at the house level. The goal of the church calendar is not to draw in, overload and isolate the believer; but rather to provide growth and outreach opportunities that we cannot facilitate in a small group. At New Hope Church, Bible verses are to be internalized, not just memorized, talents and skills are to be lived out, not just learned, the not-yet-believing world is to be engaged, not just informed, and good works are not seen as handouts, but rather “Hand in Hand.”
In 2024 we have baptized 21 new believers, gather with 250-300 people each weekend, hired a gifted Family Pastor, and sent both our Student and our Lead Pastor to the global mission field as church planters. It is a very exciting time to be at New Hope Church!