Church Staff and Ministry Roles

Southwood Baptist Church published a full staff roster. The staff roster included the following roles. The people who held these positions are living private individuals, so their names, photographs and biographies are omitted. What remains is the structure — which is, for anyone trying to understand how a congregation of this size actually worked, the more useful half of the record.

The church is no longer meeting; these roles are described as they existed while the congregation was active.

The six positions

The roster listed six: a pastor, a business administrator, a worship leader, a senior adults minister, an administrative assistant, and facilities management. That is a small paid staff by any measure, and every one of the six is a load-bearing position rather than a specialism.

Pastor

The preaching and teaching office, and the church's public voice. In a self-governing congregation the pastor is called by the members rather than appointed by any denominational body — the Baptist Bible Fellowship that Southwood was affiliated with cooperates in missions and training but does not govern its churches. The weekly load ran to three services, plus visitation, weddings, funerals, counselling and oversight of the ministries. That work is described in more detail on the pastoral ministry page.

Business administrator

The role that keeps a church legal and solvent. A congregation owning a property with an auditorium and a separate fellowship center has a budget, payroll, insurance, utilities, contractors, missions giving to disburse and annual reporting obligations to meet. Churches in the United States are subject to specific federal rules on employment, payroll withholding and tax-exempt status, and a mid-sized congregation needs someone whose actual job is to attend to them rather than someone squeezing it in between other duties.

Worship leader

Southwood's music programme was among the most developed things it ran. The music programme included an adult sanctuary choir, a teen praise ensemble, a praise band, an orchestra, and audio, video and projection teams. Every one of those needed rehearsal, scheduling, repertoire selection and people willing to turn up on a weeknight. The worship leader carried all of it, and also carried the weekly obligation that the music be ready by Sunday morning regardless of who did not come to rehearsal.

Senior adults minister

A dedicated position for ministry to older members, which not every church of this size funded. Southwood ran a senior adults group and, separately, ministries to shut-ins and to people in nursing homes. That is visiting work above all — sustained, unglamorous, largely invisible from the pews, and concentrated on precisely the members least able to come to the building. The church also ran a deaf ministry, so accessibility was evidently a settled commitment rather than an occasional gesture.

The position is also a piece of evidence in its own right. A staff of six that spends one of its salaries on ministry to older members is telling you where the congregation's attention went, whatever the exact age profile of the membership happened to be — and the buildings say the same thing, since a fellowship centre usable in the daytime and a recording ministry whose first audience was the members who could no longer travel are both investments in the same group of people.

Administrative assistant

The office. Bulletins and a monthly newsletter to produce and mail, a calendar to keep, correspondence, records, and the day-to-day traffic of a building in near-continuous use. In practice a church office is also the first point of human contact for anyone who walks in or telephones, which makes the role considerably more pastoral than the job title suggests.

Facilities management

The property. Southwood's campus held an auditorium, a fellowship center with a gymnasium, and enough classrooms for a fully graded Sunday School running from a baby nursery through the school grades to adult classes. A building used on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening and for open gym, camps, socials and a fall festival needs cleaning, setting up, resetting and repairing on a continuous cycle.

Six paid, and a great many unpaid

The important thing about the roster is its size relative to the programme. Six people could not have run what the site describes. Behind them stood the volunteer body: Sunday School teachers for every grade, nursery and toddler workers, choir and orchestra members, praise team and drama ministry participants, audio, video and projection operators, youth workers, visitation teams for the GROW programme, and the members who assembled Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets, ran the fall festival and staffed the camps.

The paid staff, in other words, were mostly enabling other people's work rather than doing it themselves. That is the normal shape of a congregation of this size, and it is worth stating plainly because a roster of six job titles can otherwise give a misleading impression of a small operation. The programme was not small. The payroll was.

Service was a recurring theme at Southwood. The pastoral letter encouraged visitors and members to consider the many opportunities to serve; see the pastor's welcome page. A congregation running this many ministries on six salaries depended on it.

A note on names

Staff and Sunday School rosters included names and volunteer teachers' personal mobile numbers. Those private details are omitted. Southwood Baptist Church is named throughout, but former staff members are identified only by role. The privacy approach is explained on the about Southwood page, and the wider congregational picture appears under about Southwood.