“Promotion & Recruitment” is my title at VantagePoint3. To be completely honest, when I first started in this role, I very strongly disliked (bordering on hated) my title. I was fine with the “Promotion” part. It was the “Recruitment” part of my title that I did not like. One part of my role is connecting with new pastors and churches and inviting them to partner with us. Technically, that is the definition of “Recruitment.” However, who wants to talk to a “recruiter”? I felt as though that title had a negative stigma attached to it. A “recruiter” is someone who wants something from you…you meet with a recruiter to “sign your life away.” I often wondered how big of a hindrance that title would be…how big of a barrier it would be to beginning a conversation.
In the last couple of months I’ve developed a new passion for both the “Promotion” & the “Recruitment” parts of my title. I have a desire to reverse the negative stigma associated with the word “recruiter.”
How is that going to happen? You may ask…
As VantagePoint3’s agent of “Promotion & Recruitment,” I want to GIVE something of myself to each person I have the privilege of talking with. I do not want something FROM you…I want something FOR you. The more conversations I have, the more I realize the powerful life transformation many people experience as they take part in our processes AND how many people truly desire that type of life transformation. As a VP3 “recruiter” I want to give all that I have to give, and invite you into a process where hearts have been renewed and lives have been changed.
At our VP3 team meeting the other day, Marilyn shared part of an article from Christianity Today. Something in that article really resonated in me…
Sometimes I think of Christian discipleship as a kind of editing, or co-editing with the Holy Spirit. The story of our lives is meant to conform to the shape of Jesus’ life and the life he imagined for us, his church.
The Christian story is surprising—it’s an unexpected way. It is the story of a God who loved us into being, who delights in us and all that he made, and who spares nothing, not even his own Son, to rescue and restore us to the whole and beautiful images of he meant for us to be.
But it is also a story that takes its time moving through the valley of the shadow of death. It is a story that shows us that resurrection and restoration is coming—although the agony of the cross comes first.
How to live a better life story: The power of revising our stories in light of the gospel.
Rachel Marie Stone – Christianity Today Online – Feb 2015
I was just in the Pacific Northwest last week meeting with North American Baptist pastors in Portland, OR and University Place, WA. I had so much fun sharing, discussing, challenging, and inviting pastors and their church families to join in the process of “co-editing” the story of our lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit, into “the life he imagined for us” to live. I was blessed spending time with such great people deeply passionate about what God is doing in and through them. I was encouraged with how they responded to my version of “Recruitment”…more of an “education and invitation” – a giving of who I am and what we have learned, then inviting them to participate in the process of co-editing with the Holy Spirit.
In a couple weeks I head back south to “Recruit” the Atlanta area! I am looking forward to the great people I will meet and the great stories we will have the privilege of participating in the co-editing process…
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Before I am finished, I would like to invite anyone and everyone to join me, Randy Reese, and Pam Edwards for our next VP3 webinar, “What We Are Learning About Adult Development,” next Wednesday (February 25th) at 12:00pm (CST). We will be “unpacking” some of the things we have been learning in our 16 years of partnership with churches. We will also “dive deeper” into the results of our recent Research Initiative where we asked pastors and church leaders some tough questions about the impact partnering with VantagePoint3 has had on their church families.
(Register here to participate in this free webinar)
