Parenting Pastor

Creative Church•Maple Grove, MN

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Parenting Pastor will serve as a trusted spiritual parent, coach, and pastoral resource to families—helping parents grow in their relationship with Jesus, their relationship with their children, their confidence as parents, and their commitment to building a healthy Christian home. The Parenting Pastor should become someone parents naturally think: “I need some wisdom. I should talk to them.” This person should have the maturity and life experience to serve as a spiritual parent or grandparent to many within the church while remaining approachable, warm, patient, compassionate, and firmly grounded in Scripture.

Requirements

A clear testimony of faith in Jesus Christ and a growing personal relationship with Him.
A lifestyle consistent with biblical standards for Christian leadership.
Demonstrate the household leadership principles described in 1 Timothy 3, including managing their own household faithfully and leading their family with integrity.
Deeply rooted in Scripture and committed to biblical authority.
Strong belief in the importance of the local church and being planted, committed, accountable, and active within a church family.
Demonstrate wisdom, maturity, humility, integrity, patience, kindness, and spiritual discernment.
Committed to personal holiness and righteous living.
Teachable and submitted to the spiritual leadership and doctrine of Creative Church.
Actual parenting experience.
Personally raised children through multiple stages of childhood and/or adolescence.
Understand from experience that parenting a toddler, elementary child, teenager, and emerging adult each requires different wisdom and approaches.
Demonstrated healthy and faithful parenting within their own household.
Possess the humility to recognize that no family or parent is perfect while still being able to model biblical principles with credibility.
Able to draw from personal experience without assuming every family's circumstances will be identical to their own.
Demonstrated ability to pastor and spiritually guide people.
Demonstrated ability to counsel parents and families from a biblical perspective.
Ability to listen carefully before offering advice.
Ability to navigate difficult, emotional, and sensitive conversations.
Ability to pray with and for families.
Ability to discern when a situation requires additional pastoral, professional counseling, medical, legal, child-safety, or other specialized support.
Ability to teach Scripture clearly and practically.
Ability to maintain appropriate confidentiality and pastoral boundaries.
Ability to follow Creative Church's pastoral-care and safeguarding procedures.
Willingness to learn, embrace, teach, and reinforce Creative Church's established approach to parenting and family discipleship.
Become deeply familiar with Pastor Jonathan's Home Team teachings, parenting trainings, books and written resources, sermons and teachings on family, and Creative Church's statement of faith, core values and biblical philosophy of parenting, marriage, family, discipleship, and church involvement.
Highly organized.

Nice To Haves

Platform ministry is secondary to personal pastoral ministry.
Mature parents are becoming spiritual mothers and fathers to others.
Parenting ministry is multiplying beyond the Parenting Pastor.

Responsibilities

Maintain a consistent schedule of individual and couple parenting meetings.
Meet with parents navigating young children, elementary-age children, preteens, teenagers, young adults, blended families, single parenting, grandparenting, and difficult family transitions.
Listen, pray, encourage, teach, and provide biblical guidance.
Provide appropriate follow-up after significant conversations.
Develop ongoing relationships rather than simply providing one-time advice.
Help identify families needing additional pastoral support.
Help parents establish healthy biblical practices within their homes, including prayer, Scripture, family discipleship, church attendance, healthy communication, honor, discipline, boundaries, responsibility, forgiveness, purity, faith, generosity, serving, and biblical decision-making.
Help parents understand that spiritual formation does not happen only at church.
Work intentionally to help families become deeply planted at Creative Church.
Encourage and help parents move toward consistent Sunday attendance, children participating consistently in age-appropriate ministry, small groups, membership, serving, giving and tithing, relationships with other believers, biblical discipleship, and church events and family opportunities.
Follow up with families who are beginning to disconnect or become inconsistent when appropriate.
Develop and lead opportunities for parents to grow together, such as parenting small groups, parenting classes, short-term discipleship cohorts, parent Q&A gatherings, age/stage-specific groups, parent prayer gatherings, workshops, and Home Team studies.
Create clear pathways for parents to move from attending an event into ongoing relationships and discipleship.
As assigned, teach parenting classes, lead workshops, facilitate panels, lead parent moments during services or events, preach or teach in larger ministry environments, host or moderate parenting conversations, participate in podcasts or video content, and create parenting teaching resources.
Maintain an organized ministry calendar.
Schedule and confirm appointments.
Maintain appropriate pastoral-care records.
Track follow-up needs.
Complete follow-up when promised.
Track ministry activity and measurable fruit.
Communicate significant pastoral concerns through the appropriate leadership channels.
Protect confidential information according to church policy.