Crossroads family,

You’ve probably noticed the incredible growth happening within our church community. More families are joining us, and new people are walking through our doors every week. It’s a huge blessing from God, and it’s also a reminder that our ministry structure needs to grow with us so that we can continue to: foster deep discipleship, spiritual maturity, and Christ-centered community, all while helping the lost get found and the found live free.

To effectively steward this season of rapid growth and ensure our ministries are best equipped to make and send out disciples, we held a comprehensive strategic planning session. Our leadership team (Elders, Management Team, and Staff) intentionally broadened its representation to include their spouses for a time of prayer and strategic planning back in February. This brought together 30 committed individuals for the strategic session led by Cal Rychener on Friday, February 14th, and Saturday, February 15th, 2025. Cal, the Founding Pastor of Northwood Church in Peoria, IL, who planted and grew that church to over 4,000 over 30 years in ministry, brought invaluable insight to our discussions. As a result of that time, we honed in on five key strategic initiatives that will help us transition our ministry and focus our efforts over the next 3-5 years:

1. Discipleship Process (Deepening Faith Journeys): We thought through our need to deepen our commitment on discipleship by defining a structured pathway for new believers on how to begin their faith journey with Jesus and go deeper in it, as well as by providing new tools, curriculum, and classes for spiritual growth.
2. Connect Groups (Building Community & Equipping Leaders): We focused on strengthening our vital Connect Groups by developing robust leader training, creating an effective onboarding process to welcome new attendees into these communities, and increasing our outreach efforts to expand participation.
3. Staffing Needs Assessment and Expansion (Sustaining Our Teams): We addressed the critical need to assess our current staffing levels, develop comprehensive plans for volunteer sustainability to prevent burnout, and improve internal communication to enhance efficiency and support.
4. Children’s Ministry and Youth Development (Investing in the Next Generation): We committed to expanding our volunteer training and support, developing structured curricula for both children and youth, and investing more deeply in our youth through intentional programming and missions trips to foster leadership and spiritual growth in our teens.
5. Assimilation and Church Commitment (Welcoming & Engaging Newcomers): We sought to define a clear and welcoming roadmap that guides first-time guests to become committed and core family members of Crossroads, while also strengthening our follow-up strategies and engagement pathways for all new believers.

These initiatives are already underway, with our elders, management team, and their spouses all stepping up to lead these initiatives in volunteer capacities! We have begun beta testing some of our teams’ work and are excited to begin rolling out new programs and processes as they are ready to our body over the coming months and years!

However, as we began to work through the plans, it became clear that some of these areas required more than just volunteer oversight. To continue resourcing and leading our growing number of ministries and volunteers well, we needed additional paid staff.

So, we began to look for individuals from within our own church body—people who we have seen demonstrate a proven track record of dedication, leadership, and impact. We were looking for character, competency, and a genuine chemistry with both our leadership and the wider congregation. We identified a few key people, shared the job descriptions with them, and invited them to pray about whether God was calling them to these new roles.

We are so excited to announce that all of them said yes!

Before we announce the names below, we want to speak to the process a bit more. This entire process reflects our commitment to a healthy and accountable leadership structure. At Crossroads, the congregation affirms our leaders (Management Team and Elders), and these affirmed leaders are then entrusted with a high level of autonomy to prayerfully make decisions within a plurality of leadership, guided by God’s calling to hire staff based on biblical qualifications, character, competency, chemistry and call. There is real and meaningful accountability between our three spheres of leadership: the Elders, the Management, and the Staff Teams. You can view our full Leadership & Organizational Structure here. We also want to assure you that throughout this hiring process, especially when setting salaries, any leaders who might have been affected by nepotism or had close family ties to a candidate were recused from the discussions and decision-making for that specific role. This ensured impartiality and integrity.

With this foundation of prayer, strategic vision, and diligent process in place, we are now thrilled to introduce the individuals God has called to serve in these vital new roles, beginning with our full-time Executive Director.

A New Full-Time Role: The Executive Director

Interim Youth and Children’s Ministry Directors

In addition to the Executive Director role, we are excited to introduce three individuals who will be stepping into new part-time, interim roles to lead our youth and children’s ministries. We feel we have found the best candidates from within our congregation to serve in these roles. Their talent, passion, and spiritual maturity are evident to all who know them, and yet, these positions will be interim for the coming school year. Leadership believes that this provides a meaningful checkpoint for us to assess with each individual their continued calling in ministry and ensure we are building these ministries on a solid, sustainable foundation.

We are so excited to introduce:

We also want to share a bit about our decision to offer these interim positions as paid roles, even when Lynne, Emily, and Brett generously offered to serve as volunteers for this year. Our Elders and Management team felt strongly that it would be inappropriate to accept their offer for two key reasons. Firstly, rooted in the biblical principle, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain” (Deuteronomy 25:4, 1 Timothy 5:17-18, 1 Corinthians 9:9-11, 14, and Luke 10:7), we believe those who labor in ministry should be fairly compensated for their spiritual work. Secondly, these roles entail significant responsibility, including oversight of large volunteer teams, curriculum development, training, and a substantial time commitment. Offering compensation acknowledges this dedication and provides a higher level of accountability inherent in a paid staff position, enabling us to effectively lead and grow these vital ministries.

Please join us in giving a warm welcome to our new staff members! Their willingness to serve and sacrifice for the future of our church is a great encouragement to all of us. As a body, let’s continue to pray for them as they begin to lead in these new capacities.