Current News
Potential Candidates
The pastor search committee has begun its work of preparing the congregation and will be looking at resumes soon. If you have interest in applying for the position of Senior Pastor, please email your materials to: fbcabilenesearchcommittee@gmail.com.
This email will be accessed by only the search committee and will be confidential.
We thank you for your interest and will be in touch soon!
Past Updates
Letter from Senior Pastor Search Committee to the Church dated October 15, 2024
October 15, 2024
Dear FBC Family,
We wanted to take this opportunity to catch you up on the work of your Pastor Search Committee and share some important information with you about where we are in the process, and the steps we’ll be taking over the coming months.
What’s Happened So Far
For the past two months we’ve been primarily in listening mode.
First, we wanted to listen to God and invite all of you to do the same. That is why we spent the month of September inviting you to join us in a concentrated time of prayer. We hope that the prayer prompts have enabled all of us to be reminded that God is with us as we consider what happens next.
Second, we wanted to listen to you. Pastoral transitions are challenging and complex and this one probably more than most. So, we’ve wanted to take time to simply listen. Members of the Pastor Search Committee have had a number of individual conversations, conversations with Sunday school classes, conversations with the previous Pastor Search Committee, and conversations with our ministry and staff. While we are about to switch gears a bit out of these weeks of behind the scenes, informal listening, we also want you to know that we will remain available to hear from you all along the way.
Third, we’ve also spent time listening to what was said during the Pastor search process that took place two years ago. The good news is that we not only have the Congregational Profile and Next Pastor Profile from the last process but all of the original data as well. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been reviewing all of this material, deciding what is still applicable, what needs to be updated, and what additional information we will need to gather.
What’s About to Happen
That brings us to where we are now. Based on what we’ve heard from talking to you, and from reviewing the information gathered two years ago, we believe that we have most, but not all, of what we need to move forward in our search for our next Pastor.
More importantly, we wanted to make sure the whole congregation has an opportunity to share their thoughts before we edit our Congregational Profile and create a new Pastor profile. To make sure you get a chance to share what you’re thinking with us we’re going to do two things.
- On November 3 at 4:45 p.m. we hold a Congregational Conversation (dinner will begin at 4:45 p.m., the conversation will begin at 5:30 p.m.). The purpose of this conversation will be to give everyone an opportunity to share their thoughts, primarily related to who we are as a congregation. The first question every congregation has to ask in a pastoral transition isn’t “who should our next Pastor be” but instead, is “what has God created our congregation to be and do?” Along those lines, we will be including some time to talk about our financial priorities as a congregation. In conversations between the Pastor Search Committee, the Budget and Finance Committees, and the Ministry Staff, there is a shared sense that our financial future is an important component of this transition. We expect that Pastoral candidates will be asking important questions, and just as important we want to be good stewards at all times.
- After the Congregational Conversation, we will also send out a Congregational Survey. While the main purpose of the Congregational Conversation is to focus on our congregation, the main purpose of the Survey will be to give you an opportunity to share your thoughts about what you think we need in our next Senior Pastor. While much of the information we gathered two years ago is still helpful, we thought it was crucial to hear from you on the values and capabilities you believe we’ll need from a Senior Pastor in our next season of mission and ministry. We will also give everyone an opportunity to share any other thoughts with the Pastor Search Committee that you think will help us carry out our task of recommending a candidate to serve as our next Pastor.
- What Will Happen Next
We won’t know for sure what we’re going to hear from you until we give you an opportunity to share your thoughts. Assuming there is nothing that emerges from what you tell us that would cause us to want to gather additional information or to add unexpected aspects of our transition, we expect to take what you gave us to edit our Congregational Profile and create a new Pastor Profile during the months of November and December. If all goes as planned that means that we would then start the interview process early in 2025.
We expect to perform a national search in order to connect with prospects that fit the current and future needs of our congregation. We will work with the Center for Healthy Churches in this process, but we will also be advertising and hoping that people who know and love our church (including our members) might make suggestions that we could consider in our process.
We do not want to put a timeline on when we expect to be able to recommend a candidate to you, but we will also be updating you along the way so that you’ll have a sense of where we are in the overall timeline of the transition process.
We continue to covet your prayers. We would ask that you pray for wisdom, patience, and energy for us as we do this work. We would ask you to pray for our ministry staff as they continue to lead and serve us. We would ask that you pray for our church, that we would ask not “what do I want in our next Pastor” but “what does God want?” And finally, we would certainly ask that you pray for the person that God will use to lead our church in the coming years.
If there are questions that we can answer for you, please let us know, and do not forget to register for our upcoming Congregational Conversation on November 3, 2024.
Prayerfully,
The Pastor Search Committee
Allan Frizzell Marci Cole Casey Curnutt Debbie Langford
Jerry Hendrix Paul Thames Lisa Lester Shelly Utley Myles Werntz