Our Path Forward: Personnel & Team Updates
Personnel & Team Updates
The past several years have brought significant staff adjustments to our team at Third. We think it’s important to keep our church family updated on these changes, as well as periodically touch base on who is doing what on staff! We hope this is insightful and helpful, should you need to get in touch with anyone on the team.
If you ever have any questions pertaining to our staff, don’t hesitate to reach out to Ed Satterfield: eds@thirdrva.org
The Personnel Committee: Bill Mims (chair) David Skove, Sue Kimball, Melissa Lincoln, Mike Armstrong, and Ed Satterfield
Team Updates
Worship and Music Staff: Just prior to the start of the pandemic, Brooke Wright moved from her Music Associate role to become Director of Worship and Music. John White’s time has increasingly focused on Pastoral Care, shifting his leadership with music and worship to focus on classical arts and working with the choir, brass, and orchestral music teams.
Family Ministry Staff: After Tracie Meadows left her position at the end of June 2021, her responsibilities were divided between two staff members: Blair Bigelow added responsibility for grades 1-4 and Andrea Woie took responsibility for the Club 56 ministry. After working with this arrangement for several months, we will also be splitting off the responsibility for managing the Nursery staff, and are currently planning to hire a Child Care Coordinator to work under Blair Bigelow as soon as possible. This role will manage and coordinate paid and volunteer childcare teams for children on Sunday mornings and special events. The job will be part-time from 10-15 hours per week. Stay tuned for this job posting in the weeks to come.
Parish, Women’s, and Newcomers Ministry Staff: Jenny Benson was hired in August 2020 to be responsible for supporting Parish Groups, Women’s ministry, and the Newcomers Class. Living in Norfolk, she has traveled to Richmond weekly, and was actively planning to move to Richmond once her husband found a job locally. We prayed for the Lord’s provision of work and he answered that prayer this summer. Rather than providing work in Richmond, he gave Andy and their family the wonderful opportunity to work for the Navy in Naples, Italy. Jenny and her family will be moving there at the end of September.
While we will certainly miss Jenny, we have been fortunate to set up a temporary solution to cover these ministry areas in the near term while we consider a staffing plan for the longer term. Elisabeth Hayes has focused her Pastoral Internship on Parish ministry alongside Jenny and will increase to full time as we ramp up for a more intensive focus on Parish Groups this fall. The majority of her time will be focused there while still maintaining a quarter of her hours on her Pastoral Internship work, special projects with Corey and preaching.
Then, we split off the responsibilities for Women’s and Connections ministries and have been fortunate to hire Third Covenant Partner Becky Bowers to a temporary part time position addressing those aspects of ministry. Becky had been one of the finalists in our search for the Parish ministry position that Jenny occupies and brings real strengths to both Women’s and Connections ministry. She will not only work with a women’s leadership team to build the ministry for women by women, but will also work with teams in helping build connections with visitors and regular attenders to Third and our Newcomer’s Class process.
Grant Award for Immigrant and Refugee Tutoring Ministry: We are excited that we were awarded a grant for two and a half years to provide leadership for the Immigrant and Refugee Tutoring Ministry. Andi Redmond has been faithfully leading this ministry for over a decade in a volunteer capacity. The ministry has grown to provide tutor matchups for over 75 students every week, with the demand always growing. Since this has become a huge organizational challenge, we have been seeking a way to provide sustainable leadership for the ministry for the years ahead. This grant gives us a significant way forward.
The grant supports three part-time staff for the next two and a half years. Emily Sherman will serve as coordinator– handling promotion, recruiting, and matching tutors with children and overall management of the ministry. Sara Hanna, a member of the Christian Arabic Church, will serve as logistics coordinator on Wednesday evenings. She will help with the set up and preparation for all the materials that the tutors will need and will help support them as they find their rooms and connect with their students each evening. Maia Kling will serve as an English as a Second Language coordinator. We have had an Arabic class in past years, and she will help provide wider and more responsive assistance particularly for parents to learn English.
We are thankful to the Lord for his provision for this transition and growth in leadership for this growing ministry.
Personnel Strategic Planning Team
3 Year Staffing Plan: The Session has tasked the Personnel Committee to provide a three-year staffing plan along with sharpeningourvalues for hiring, promoting excellence, and pursuing greater diversity onourstaff. A team of staff, Personnel and Strategic Planning members are currently meeting to work on these objectives (Ed Satterfield, Lauren Earley, Bill Mims, Erin Holbrook, Becca Payne, Melissa Lincoln).
We are producing a new Personnel Procedures manual that will set staff values, hiring and interviewing processes that help us avoid bias and complete competent, thorough, and consistent processes with all search teams. It will provide resources and require training for all our search teams. The procedures will also address our onboarding, staff development, supervision, and evaluation processes.
In preparation for this work, we have completed a personnel survey with 20 other similar churches to help us understand trends in staffing as well as provide perspective on the appropriate percentage of budget for personnel for churches like ours. We are also using income projections, and staffing needs-assessments (submitted by each of our ministry area teams) to help conduct this work.
Our plan is to consider all these inputs to formulate a three-year plan before Thanksgiving.
Current Staff List
Take a glance at the PDF document below for a breakdown of who does what on staff. For fuller bios and job responsibilities, click here.
