May 16th, 2025
STAFFING UPDATE
Stafford Greer, Bearspaw Lead Site Pastor
Hello RockPointe,
Over the past 10 months, the Board of Elders, myself, and the Lead Team have worked diligently on discovering and unearthing the purpose and vision of our church and defining the new 4G strategy to support it all. Inevitably this means that some organizational shifts are required to accomplish the vision that we believe God has been revealing to us. This past week, on Monday May 12, there were some staffing role changes to let you know about.
Roles that are concluding as of May 25, 2025:
Associate Pastor Role: The full time associate pastor roles across our sites are concluding. These roles were created 2 years ago in an effort to respond to leadership changes at RockPointe Church. Pastor Stephanie Grunau and Pastor Brandon Trotter have been serving in the Associate Pastor capacity at Bearspaw these past two years, and both of them have had various roles at RockPointe throughout their tenure here. We want to celebrate and thank them for many years of pastoral ministry at RockPointe! The conclusion of the Associate Pastor role at RockPointe Church is part of a larger and strategic organizational shift within staffing moving forward.
Custodian Role: Dennis Gregory has served as “Facilities Lead” at RockPointe for the past four years. The recent hire of a Facilities Director has made this role at RockPointe unnecessary moving forward.
Additionally, there are a few roles that have been operating on a one-year contract that will be not be renewed when they expire on June 30, 2025:
Young Adults Pastor: We celebrate with Meredith Den Engelsen, who will be married at the end of May and will be relocating to Edmonton this summer. This role will not be rehired for, but we are excited to share that RockPointe will be welcoming an Ambrose intern this September who will help work with the Young Adults leadership team to ensure that this ministry continues to run and have leadership this coming fall.
Westhills Children’s Ministry Director: Taya Zieber has been serving faithfully in this capacity for the past year. We identified that, while children’s ministry is a vital ministry of RockPointe Church, having a paid role to oversee CM at Westhills is presently not a sustainable approach for the CM ministry needs at Westhills. Pastor Ashley Issler will continue to work with the CM team, key lay leaders at Westhills, and Interim Site Pastor Nathaniel Froese to ensure that a vibrant children’s ministry is able to continue at Westhills.
Bearspaw Worship Leader: Stefan Schmitt has been serving as the Bearspaw Worship Leader for the past year, helping fill in and provide leadership and scheduling for worship arts teams. Stef has been doing this in a very part-time capacity as he works a separate, full-time job in nursing, and we celebrate the level of leadership and excellence he’s provided in this role. It has also become apparent that this role requires more than the 10 hours per week that was allotted to Stef. We are in the process of working through the logistics of what it looks like for Bearspaw worship to have a Worship Arts Pastor in a larger role for this next season of ministry.
Audio/Visual Technician: Ayden Larabie, who has been in this role for the past two years, has recently resigned from his position and we celebrate with him as he leaves RockPointe Church to advance his engineering career.
A couple items of note with these changes:
These changes were vision-based. This means that as we evaluate what roles we believe we need to accomplish our vision, we examined all the current and needed roles, and are now beginning to make adjustments to best help us get there.
These changes were financially-informed. We have recently celebrated that we have had some stronger giving that has helped move us out of a deficit position. However, we realized that our current personnel expenses were not a sustainable model in the long term.
These changes also address a shift towards a healthier staff:congregation ratio. Simply put, we are overstaffed for a congregation the size of RockPointe and need to adjust accordingly.
All of these changes are based on roles, the present needs of RockPointe Church, and the desire to lean into equipping, engaging, and empowering our congregation. None of these changes are based on the character, competency, or personal performance of anyone who is currently in these roles.
These role shifts are driven by a conviction to live into a ministry philosophy based in Ephesians 4:11-12 where the Apostle Paul writes: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” If we are to live into that conviction, we have to ensure that the roles we do staff for are designed to be equippers and developers of people. The removal of the Associate roles is one way for us to do that and to step away from our tendency to over-staff so that we can equip and develop others.
With all of these changes, it does bring with it many questions about how things will be done and who will provide leadership to these various areas. Due to the complexity of our organization, we realize that even small changes at a staffing level have a cascading effect on roles and responsibilities in various ministry areas. To some of these questions, we do have answers; and for other questions, we are still working on figuring out exactly what that will look like. We are working closely with our staff to figure out these gaps, make the necessary adjustments in order to best fulfill our vision of doubling our reach by 2030, and will be communicating with different ministry leaders as we get clarity on these areas.
As we move forward, I look forward to sharing more about our direction. Next week’s To The Pointe will have more information that will be focused more on ‘looking ahead’ as an organization. Additionally, we will be hosting a gathering on the evening of Monday, May 26 at 7 p.m. at our Bowridge location to walk through the changes in more detail for anyone (from any site) that is interested in hearing more.
Change is never easy, and I completely understand that RockPointe has sustained much of it over the past years. But in the midst of the difficulty associated with change, I am also extremely excited. Excited about the future, about where we are going, and ultimately the vision of seeing more and more people come to know Jesus.
I encourage all of you at RockPointe to reach out to, thank, and honour our staff as we walk through these changes.
Press on!
Stafford
