There is a church in my area in Tampa that I will leave un-named that I saw a job description for a youth minister online while i was browsing around. Here are some tidbits. I'm posting this and not saying anything about it. I just want you to tell me what stands out to you. I'm doing this experiment to see if I'm normal or not so please comment on anything that sticks out to you.
1. Leadership gift with deep spiritual relationship with God
2. Strong personal drive
3. Creative
4. Team-oriented
5. Highly relational
6. Able to take a strong foundation and take it to the next level
7. Strong integrity
8. Able handle a lot of autonomy
9. Able to organize teams, budget, and students together and rally them to achieve ministry goals and objectives.
10. MUST have Purpose-driven youth ministry experience in a contemporary church environment.
11. Recruiter
[Recent college graduates will be considered if they have sufficient experience in a large church atmosphere.]
This church is a team-oriented leadership environment. Do you have a consistent, vital, and growing relationship with Christ? We would like to get to know you. This is a full-time position with a complete benefits package. If you match the above qualities...please send a current resume with a personal/family photo to the following:
Please understand we will only reply/contact those candidates who seem to be a fit for our ministry. PLEASE, NO PHONE CALLS.
15 comments:
MUST?? MUST have purpose-driven blah blah blah. i just want someone (besides rick f-ing warren) to define what is purpose-driven and what isn't. that is what stuck out to me. the 'purpose driven' crap. by the way, if i sound bitter...i am. i also thought the picture thing at the end was weird. does it matter??
actually, now that i look at it again...the part about large church experience is completely retarded, too.
"take it to the *next level*"
What the hell does that mean. So what is this youth group?...a VIDEO GAME??
i guess service and submission aren't important, but the aesthetics of you and your family are. if i were applying, i would dress my family in corduroy and denim, make sure i had a high ball glass in hand and take the swellest family photo ever!
i also think the words "autonomy" and "church" should never be uttered in the same sentence, paragraph or page. there is nothing autonomous or independent about the church. NOTHING!
Not to comment again, but...
This "job" listing reaks with churchianity ("team oriented", "next level", "Purpose-driven").
Not that this matters, but by some of the wording I can tell it's a charismatic church. And most charismatic churches (not all) have varying levels of abuses within leadership. Abusive examples like:
1) "deep spiritual relationship" in #1 kills me as it demonstrates a high performance-oriented church. Honestly...how can they tell if you have a DEEP, SPIRITUAL relationship? Is the applicant supposed to BRAG about how much they pray, fast, etc. Sheesh.
2) "team-oriented" basically says, "are you gonna do what WE tell you to do" (not necessarily what god says, etc)
Oh yeah...and the "send photo" part. Is that REAL? Is this a modeling job? Do they want to make sure you look good in case they advertise in Charisma magazine.
Just some after thoughts...
strong personal drive sounds perverted to me
I think it is funny that they want to have a foundation that is taken to the next level. Now, I'm not an engineer or anything but...is that physically possible? By sure definition, isn't a foundation supposed to stay in place.
Would it be evil to send a sarcastic resume to point out all the funny verbage? Probably so. I need to be kinder...after I send this resume.
I don’t know....... im probably not very cool, but this doesn’t sound that bad to me. Obviously its a lot of insider language, but its written for insiders. The "Purpose Driven" statement is a little narrow, but I assume most people who would by applying for a youth ministry position would know what that philosophy, and most people would have a hard time arguing that "purpose driven youth ministry" away from all the conferences and clones is a true concept.
anyways...
Hentrich
forgot #12:
wear a cape and spandex with a big yellow "S" (changing outfits in phonebooths is optional).
Sometimes I think Church job descriptions should simply read: "you should be the MOST AWESOME person we've ever met."
Being "team oriented" and "autonomous" seem to be self contridictions...
A couple of things:
1. "NO Phone Calls"--aparently how a person communicates verbally matters not.
2. "send a current...personal/family photo"--apparently how a person looks matters much.
Ok fine, it's not practical to talk to every applicant...but come on, a picture? What are they afraid of? A person who posseses attributes 1-11 and an ugly mug? A porn-star mustache and aviator shades? Or maybe a wandering eye? Since it's a youth ministry position, maybe they want to make sure the applicant has a gotee (a prerequisite as we all know)
--drew
thanks for all your comments, those were especially enlightening and funny. I would love to send a fake resume in to this place or at least copy and paste all of these and email them to the guy letting him know what we all think about the job description. The thing that stuck out to me was the "NO PHONE CALLS" thing. Seems kind of strange to me. I can understand the picture thing, wanting to place a face with the name more than anything else. But the other thing that ticked me off was the "we will only respond to you if you are a potential person to fill the position" thing. Even in corporate America you get a letter or at least an email saying that you are not a good fit for the job. It's frustrating that they can't even take two seconds to let someone know they are not in line to get the job and let people hanging like that. They take their time a little too seriously I think!
Well why do they want to see your photo? Is this going to be like American Idol where they take all the photos of all the hopeful applicants and pin them up on a board, and then mix and match the other staff photos around them to see who looks the most marketable?
Autonomy sounds suspicious.
Purpose driven youth experience? As opposed to...?
How about the Holy Spirit buddies? Why don't you pray and ask for a dream from God about who's supposed to work in your crummy superchurch and then wait for him to deliver?
I refuse to believe that this is a holy spirit inspired list of requirement. This is an almighty dollar inspired list. They want to get more bang for their buck.
Assholes. Fuck them.
Was that inspired? yes.
hahahaha, thanks for the thoughts Michael. You always make me laugh!
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