Music/worship leader (and more, if you’d like!)

Overview

Very short version: 

Our quirky, community-focused little church in Valparaiso, Indiana, is hiring a part-time music leader to start as soon as available. Starting at $100-$150/week (quarter-time position) to lead music in two services each Sunday and coordinate with any volunteer musicians for rehearsals, etc. At first, there will be Sundays leading solo, so we need someone who can both sing and play, but we have volunteer musicians who can and will join in when available.

 

More:

Since starting this church in 2000, we’ve often had this as a part-time paid position. For the past several years we have been blessed with enough skilled musicians that they could take turns leading us as volunteers. But moves and changing schedules, that’s no longer possible, so we are working to expand our part-time staff team by one this year. (We have 3 quarter-timers now: associate pastor Judy, youth director Romeo, and office person Deb. Plus 1 full-time pastor, me.)

We’re a fairly non-traditional Church of the Nazarene, in various ways: nothing “Naz” on the sign, very casual dress, communion every Sunday, sit around tables, etc. We have two basically-identical services on Sunday morning (9:00 & 10:30) to provide options for people and make plenty of room for guests. Since March 2020, we’ve been livestreaming the 9:00 service to YouTube and Facebook. Links to watch past services: YouTube.com/@livinghopevalpo or Facebook.com/livinghopevalpo.

“Open Acceptance” is one of our core values. We’re about as diverse as our community, which means we’re mostly white, but not entirely, and have a mix of ages, marital statuses, political opinions, and socio-economic statuses represented. We try to welcome and love all our neighbors well, including those who are homeless, disabled, LGBTQ, recovering from addictions, etc. The religious backgrounds of our people are all over the map. Very few are long-time Nazarenes. We’re not too liberal and not too conservative. (Which, frankly, probably makes us feel liberal to a lot of folks with a Nazarene background.) 

For a small-ish church (60-80 on a Sunday), we’re having an out-sized impact in our community. We host a free community dinner every Friday night that feeds 50+ community members and involves volunteers from several different groups and churches. We participate in multiple ministries serving our homeless neighbors, including opening our doors as an emergency overnight warming center every night in January and February. We are happy to have a number of our homeless and formerly-homeless neighbors as a regular part of our church family. We partner with Habitat for Humanity every year to help build a house. We partner with World Vision every year to host the Global 6k and raise thousands of dollars for clean water. We partner with a local group that gives away dozens of bikes in our parking lot throughout the summer. We basically partner with anyone we can to use our resources (building, people, energy, cash) to serve our community.

We view this as a quarter-time position: approx. 8 hours/week, $100-$150/week in salary. So we anticipate that you would be bivocational (or married to a very understanding and well-employed spouse). Of course, we understand the limitations that would put on your time. We have no unrealistic expectations here of getting more time than we can pay you for! Depending on your marriage/family situation, we may be able to provide housing with a family from the church for a few months if you’re transitioning to the Valparaiso area. (If you’re a single female, another option might be one of the bedrooms in our 3-bedroom house that provides low-income housing for formerly-homeless women. That might be an additional ministry opportunity, if you’re interested!) We’re looking for someone who sees this as a ministry, not just a music gig.

As the founding pastor, I’ve really enjoyed helping associates/staff grow and develop over the years. If you have other aspects of ministry that you’d like to explore, we’d love to help you do that. My style of leadership is basically supportive and permission-giving, willing to be as helpful as you want me to be. I like to discuss and figure things out together. So you would have a lot of freedom to try new things. We currently have a weekly staff meeting on zoom in the evening that’s pretty free-flowing, and we occasionally meet for lunch on Sunday or dinner on Friday. It’s a fun group to be a part of.

Oh, I should add that Valparaiso / Northwest Indiana is a decent place to live. 🙂 Downtown Chicago is just over an hour away. The beach and dunes at Lake Michigan is 15-30 minutes. Valparaiso itself is a city of around 35,000 with a vibrant downtown, lots of interesting restaurants, plenty of retail, a movie theater + a drive-in, two different community theaters, Valparaiso University, etc, etc. People here like to make things happen.

 

If you’re interested:

If any of this sounds appealing, please reach out! I’d love to have a conversation with you about it. Email me at rich@LivingHope.info or text/call me on my cell: 219-242-4532.