An honest but funny job ad
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,507
    Worship Leader
    One Missoula Church
    Missoula, Montana, United States

    Date Posted: 09/17/2019
    Categories: Church Developer - Church Planter - Media/Technology - Music Ministry - Worship Pastor
    Denominations: Non-Denominational
    Church Size: 101 to 150
    Job Type: Part-Time

    Job Description:
    Are you addicted to being awesome? Do more people than just your Mom think you can sing and play guitar? If so, God is probably calling you to Montana! One Missoula Church is looking for a mission-minded, discipleship-oriented, worship leader who smashes down obstacles and loathes grumbling and complaining. NO NEEDY CRYBABY DIVAS ALLOWED! We need you to build a team and lead worship in a modern rock style every three weeks through the fall of 2019 and then week-to-week starting the second week of January 2020. We can pay you a negotiable stipend for your skills and time while we discuss more permanent options and test you to see if you're legit. Let's be clear: this is the elite special forces version of church planting. Our lead planter left his homeland, parents, and beloved Florida Gators to move across the country a year ago and has been serving bi-vocationally in retail sales while gathering a launch team for the last 11 months. The church is just now large enough and generous enough for him to give this full-time attention. If you sign on for this, you will be expected to have the same missional "whatever-it-takes" spirit and mind. That means you are going to need to work bi-vocationally, or fundraise your own salary, or live off the inheritance Grandma left you when she passed (God rest her soul). If you are looking for an incredible missions/planting opportunity to die-to-yourself and rip Satan's head off, let's talk. If you're looking for a paycheck and a spotlight, keep moving.

    Here's why you should come here:

    You get to collaborate with a Jesus-loving, Bible preaching planting pastor who cares a great deal about excellence + truth + a boots-on-ground application of discipleship. If you jive with the vision and fast pace of the church, and can prove yourself tough enough to hang in this context, you will get to build a worship ministry from the ground up without having to deal with all the bad habits set in place from some negligent diva predecessor. You will get to live in a true American mission field. Missoula is a hyper-liberal college town of about 75,000 people suffering the ravages of their statism, secularism, hedonism, and new-agey weirdness. These awesome people are plagued by suicide, addiction, domestic violence, homelessness, debt and all the other unnecessary agony that comes from hostility toward Jesus Christ. If you are humble enough to respond to this post, you are going to be salt and light in this place and you will see radical transformation of real lives. Lastly, you will get to live in an incredibly beautiful place surrounded by mountains, lakes, rivers, forests, wolves, bear, elk, moose and our official state rodent - the deer. If you like snow skiing, snowboarding, snow mobiling, mountain biking, kayaking, rafting, hunting, shooting, camping, hiking, and peeing on trees, this place will be your heaven on earth. If you like to knit... well you could probably do that here too, but you will have a hard time connecting with the man beast dudes who make up our church. After all, this is Montana, where the men are men and the women are too.

    Our IDEAL candidate would be...

    ...able to sing like an angel but also able to catch and kill an elk with his bare hands.

    ...Eddie van Halen's guitar teacher but also proficient with Ableton Live OR Loop Community/Prime app.

    ...a recruiting and discipleship Picasso.

    ...confused by (and maybe even hostile towards) skinny jeans.

    ...organized, punctual, driven and a destroyer of all excuses.

    ...addicted to being the best...and most humble person ever.

    ...able to live without food, shelter, clothing, or pay.

    We might be willing to compromise on some of these, but something we will never yield on is that you must be seriously committed to Jesus Christ, His Church, His Word, and the expansion of His Kingdom by tearing through the gates of hell in this rebel world ravaged by sin.

    If you think you have what it takes to make an incredible difference with your life here in the epicenter of the known universe, click the link and send in that application. We are praying for your wisdom and our discernment in finding the right dude to come and build this thing with us.

    Last note: Our website, like the rest of our church, is under construction. You can check it out, but know that is has some dated content and is missing some info about who we are and what we believe. The amazingly talented volunteer who put it together built it as a placeholder. She is now working with Subsplash on our app and website 2.0. If you come here, we will all bring our absolute best together.
  • This is amazing.
    Thanked by 1Schönbergian
  • How can we prevent such nonsense from taking root?
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • Peeing on trees . . . where men are men and the women are too.

    My application is in the mail.
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,086
    Oh, Randolph, just imagine the wonders you could stun them with! Like the Sanctus from the Langlais Messe Solennelle:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7Q16e0Ksnw

    Doesn't that sound like angels who could kill an elk with bare non-corporeal hands? The kind referenced in "The Prophecy" movie (1995)?

    "Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?" -Thomas Daggett
  • Here I was wondering what else a church planter might be (we have two; cast iron, one on either side of the main doors), when I saw “if you jive with the vision and fast pace of the church”

    I was going to suggest that this should read “jibe”
    But after a little further reflection, I realized that
    it’s jive, all right.
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,320
    I love the honesty and lack of boilerplate.
  • Irishtenor,

    Perhaps you also accept that Gospel music is entirely spontaneous?
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,320
    Not that I'm an expert in Gospel music, but I would not say that it's entirely spontaneous, at least in my experience.
  • Exactly. Neither is this advertisement lacking boilerplate. You're just not used to the oven involved.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,086
    Nor the fuel. Think ... shooting kerosene from a water gun onto an open fire. That's the desired effect.
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,320
    Thanks for clarifying, CGZ; I didn't understand what you were driving at before. If you're able to expand, I would love to learn more.
  • Years ago I interviewed for posts as Choir Director in parishes. When a parish was "thoroughly Vatican II" (or anything similar) I knew that, as one pastor told me, "you shouldn't mention your like of John Paul or Cardinal Ratzinger if you want the job." I did, forthrightly, and so I didn't get the job.

    "Church planting" is part of the vocabulary here.
    "Jesus loving" is another part. Catholics love Christ, but wouldn't be welcome here.
    "Bible preaching" is another.

    If you jive with the vision and fast pace of the church, and can prove yourself tough enough to hang in this context, you will get to build a worship ministry from the ground up without having to deal with all the bad habits set in place from some negligent diva predecessor.


    In other contexts, we call parts of this "virtue signaling".
    "Worship ministry" identifies the kind of person this ad seeks.
    "Negligent diva predecessor" -- we don't care if you have any actual skill as a musician.
  • we don't care if you have any actual skill as a musician.


    Nope, they just want a different skillset to what most readers here have.

    You guys have advanced degrees, classical training and can run fabulous music programmes using the best of music. But some of you would struggle to engage a group of people who at best like both kinds of music (country and western).

    God calls people with different skills to different jobs in building the kingdom.
  • Pax,

    Recognizing a grain of truth in what you say, i.e.,
    God calls people with different skills to different jobs in building the kingdom.
    is clearly true.

    On the other hand, while some here have advanced degrees, others by no means do.

    To refer to a situation having not to cope with "Negligent diva predecessor" is to say "We want you to have skills other than what we consider a 'diva'", which is anti-intellectual short-hand for anyone with an education or skill. No doubt there are readers and posters here who have had to cope with the wreckage left by a predecessor, but the image evoked by "negligent diva" is explained by the joke I heard at the conservatory many years ago: "How many voice majors does it take to change a light bulb?" (The answer is, "One: She holds the light bulb and the world revolves around her")