June 13th, 2025
THE EXECUTIVE PASTOR OF MINISTRY ROLE
Stafford Greer, Bearspaw Lead Site Pastor
Hello RockPointe!
As many of you know, we have made some staffing changes at RockPointe. These changes resulted in adjusted responsibilities for many roles (worship arts and missions in particular) and the removal of eight roles across all sites - perhaps most notably, the Associate Pastor position.
For those who attended the May 26 congregational meeting, we had the opportunity to talk about the creation of a new pastoral role to our team that we are seeking to fill.
The position we are hiring for is an Executive Pastor of Ministry or commonly referred to as XPM. I know that this is not a position that RPC has ever had in the past, so there could be many different questions about what this role is and is not. I'll do my best to preemptively answer some of those:
What does an Executive Pastor of Ministry (XPM) do? It sounds very corporate?
Like in many vocations, the titles of roles in churches do change and adjust over time: Senior Pastor becomes Lead Pastor; Youth Pastor becomes Student Ministry Pastor; and Sr. Associate Pastor has often become Executive Pastor. The use of “Executive” is meant to denote the leadership level of the role - in this case, a high-level leadership position. While it can sound corporate and not very pastoral, candidates who would be applying for a position like this would understand the “industry vernacular” and be drawn to its leadership-level position.
What is different about the XPM and Executive Pastor (XP) positions that RockPointe has had before?
The XP role is often responsible for a lot of the administrative duties of churches (finance, facility, staffing, HR, etc.) that require a more specific area of expertise outside of preaching/teaching that a Lead Pastor would do and be gifted in. The larger the church, the more specific an XP role usually is. What larger churches like RockPointe are recognizing is that there is a need for a similar level role, but for overseeing the various ministries of the church. For a multisite church like RockPointe, this position would help give leadership to the ‘Central’ ministries of our church (the ministries we share across all our sites): Children’s Ministry, Youth Ministry, Worship Arts, Discipleship, etc. Where an XP role would focus on ensuring the ‘operations’ side of the church was functioning well, the XPM role would give that same level of oversight to the ‘ministry’ side of the church.
Why would RPC need a role like this?
This is a new role for RPC. It was created to help meet our current needs as a church and help us move forward together towards our vision and purpose. Due to the multisite complexities of a church like RockPointe, we’re realizing that a role is needed to help better keep all of our sites and ministries aligned with vision and strategy.
How much overlap is there with the XPM role and the former positions of Associate Pastor?
As both positions are very much pastoral in nature, there will be some overlap: speaking, teaching, pastoral duties (visitation, weddings, funerals, etc), but the XPM role is much larger in scope and will be focusing on helping equip our congregation and small groups to care for each other. It may be helpful to think of this role not as a professional doer, but as a skilled equipper. We envision community care to be much larger than a single pastoral position and want to better equip each other for works of service (Ephesians 4:12).
I think I'm getting it, but what will the XPM role oversee, again?
Great question! This position will oversee three main areas:
Discipleship/Ministry - This person will focus significant energy to our Small Groups, RPC-wide discipleship strategy, and outreach. They will also preach and be a staff contact person for many of the various ministries in our church - specifically at Bearspaw.
Leadership - They will work closely with myself and the Lead Team to help create strategy, provide support, equip the staff, and help us stay aligned to our mission and vision to double our reach by 2030.
Development & Training - They will help our staff and congregation identify their spiritual gifts, create opportunity to serve, develop, train, and release others for ministry.
I didn't know that we were looking to fill this role, was the job listing posted anywhere?
Because this role requires a person with a pretty specific skillset, experience, and chemistry with myself and the staff, we chose to first seek out possible candidates through our District Superintendent and other denominational and personal ties before posting it widely. It is now posted on our website :https://rockpointe.ca/about/work-with-us
When are you expecting to fill this role?
We are hoping to be able to have this role filled by mid-summer and will be conducting the first round of preliminary interviews next week.
While I may not have answered all of your questions about this role, I hope I was able to give a bit more of an understanding as to what this role is. If you have any specific questions you'd like to talk about, you can reply to this email (or email [email protected] directly) and we can arrange a time to connect
Press on!
Stafford
