Church: Vox Veniae (Austin, TX)

Position: Pastor of Children and Families

Category: Full Time position 40 hours/week. Pay based on experience.

Peer Supervisor: Leadership Team

Vox Veniae is a 16 year old multi-ethnic and multi-generational church community rooted in the historical Christian church and embedded in East Austin. There are about 140 members and an average of 130 attendees each Sunday. The values that provide the motivation for what we do and how we live are artistry, posture, empathy, participation, peculiarity, and mystery.

The Pastor of Children and Families supports the Vox community in partnering with both children and adults to facilitate a mutual space of learning, care and formation for our children and youth so they can be grounded in knowing they are inherently loved by God as they discern how they are invited to love their little neighbors and the world around them.

The Leadership Team is made up of the Pastoral and Navigation Teams. The Pastor of Children and Families will join the Pastoral Team in a shared leadership structure. The Pastoral Team consists of the Pastor of Formation and Administration, the Pastor of Community and Teaching, and the Pastor of Children and Families. The Navigation Team consists of four church-nominated lay leaders who are responsible for spiritual formation, community and partnerships, children and youth (known as Greenhouse and ZAMYN), administration, and finance.

Our desire for families with children and youth is that through Greenhouse (children ministry) and ZAMYN (teenage youth ministry) our kids will have an authentic experience with God and each other as they grow in community. We want Greenhouse and ZAMYN to feel like an extension of our liturgy and hope to create a safe space for kids of all ages to wonder, contemplate, create, celebrate and have fun together. On average, there are currently 30 children and 10 youth that attend each Sunday (our full Greenhouse roster currently has upwards of 80 kids, with many growing families).

General Responsibilities – Pastor of Children & Families:

• Lead in developing the mission and vision for Greenhouse and ZAMYN to families with children & youth.
• Partner with families with children and youth in promoting their spiritual formation and development, inviting conversation and mutuality between Vox and families.
• Integrate children and youth into the greater Vox community, including: coordinating child/family dedications, children and youth baptisms, opportunities at churchwide Fall Retreat.
• Facilitate periodic learning opportunities (workshop, book club, providing resources, etc.) for families with children and youth to become equipped in navigating faith formation and identity development together.
• Foster an inviting, safe, and creative atmosphere in which children and youth can grow, including: tending the children’s and youth space at Vesper, reviewing/updating Greenhouse and ZAMYN safety policies, welcoming new families with children and youth.
• Select, adapt, or create developmentally appropriate theological curriculum for Greenhouse and ZAMYN.
• Equip and organize a team of volunteers for Greenhouse and ZAMYN.
• Coordinate ZAMYN including monthly Sunday morning meetings, periodic social gatherings, explore camp/retreat options, and facilitate transitions from Greenhouse into ZAMYN.
• Share multiple times annually in the Sunday morning homily in coordination with the Vox preaching team. For someone new to preaching, we would love the opportunity to help develop this capacity.

Shared Responsibilities with Pastoral Team:

• Explore and implement Vox vision, mission and values. Proactively model and implement creative ways to effectively communicate church-wide vision.
• Provide day-to-day operational oversight.
• Provide pastoral care for the community.
• Ensure seamless leadership with all areas of ministry.
• Develop mutual relationships with local churches in Austin and global partnerships.
• Work with the Navigation Team, Ministry Teams, and other staff members in promoting the entire ministry plan of Vox Veniae.
• Provide servant leadership, vision and peer-mentoring for pastoral team through monthly meetings and annual touchbases.
  • Actively give and receive feedback from pastoral team for the purpose of team building and strengthening/improving of each respective job role.
  • Clarifies expectations, needs, roles and responsibilities, and decision-making processes as needed.
• Consistently and actively engage with larger community during Sunday morning liturgy and other major functions (teaching, administrative support, announcements, or other support roles). Determine a rotation for a pastoral presence at Vox events (workshops, community events, gatherings, etc). Attend and participate in essential church wide gatherings, included, but not limited to: weekly staff meetings, twice annual covenant member meetings, quarterly covenant member orientation, and monthly navigation team meeting during assigned rotation.
• Provide resources, documentation and communication for leadership, as requested.
• Adhere to approved guidelines as set forth in the Vox Veniae Bylaws and Vox HR Manual.

Qualifications

• Must be a believer and follower of Jesus, and demonstrate integrity, grace, vulnerability, healthy boundaries, and commitment to the Vox community. True self is embodied and congruent with life and values demonstrated in and outside of work. 
• Must have an understanding and practice the core beliefs and values of Vox.
• Must be able to take an initiative from brainstorming to active or implemented with minimal outside support.
• Must exercise discernment and wise judgment.
• Has strong interpersonal, communication, management, organizational, and problem solving skills.
• Knowledgeable of ethical and safe practices including maintaining standards of privacy and confidentiality.
• Leadership experience.
• Experience in children’s ministry or children-related work.
• Experience in church-related ministry (preferred).
• Master’s Degree in seminary or other child development related field (preferred).

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Vox Veniae is an equal opportunity employer. Vox Veniae is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, or veteran status in employment.

If you are interested in this position, please apply here and submit your resume with three references:

https://voxveniae.com/childrenspastor

Questions: [email protected]

ABOUT VOX VENIAE

Vox Veniae is a multi-ethnic and multi-generational church community rooted in the historical Christian church and embedded in an East Austin neighborhood.  East Austin has been a historically underserved African-American and Hispanic neighborhood and is presently in the midst of shifting demographics due to gentrification and the challenges that it brings.

Vox began as a church plant in 2006 from a Chinese immigrant church in north Austin.  We envisioned birthing a community that would be indigenous to the city filled with artists and creatives and to be reflective of, learn from and serve the beautiful city we live in.

In 2008, Vox started a community center called Space12 as a way to partner with the neighborhood and city.  Instead of creating inferior versions of what existing organizations were already doing, our vision was to enable hospitality and collaboration and partner with existing non-profits to serve our city by offering a space to host them.

In 2015, Vox began a journey of discernment and learning around gender and sexual diversity through engaging the scriptures and listening to God, our LGBTQ+ members, ourselves, and each other.  We will continue to practice empathy within diversity and hold space for different perspectives while advocating for the marginalized.  We welcome and invite LGBTQ persons and families to participate at all levels of community, partaking in sacraments (including marriage), serving in ministry, joining as members, and holding leadership roles.

In 2019, Vox purchased and moved into a church building (named Vesper) just a few blocks from Space12 to remain rooted and connected to the neighborhood.  As we maintain our core partnerships with organizations like the Inside Books Project, our hope is to expand our hospitality and further develop our building as an accessible gallery for artists of color and offering a contemplative space in an urban setting.

Now almost seventeen years into our journey of learning how to live the church, we are becoming more diverse, less young, and continuing to learn how to love God, our neighbors and ourselves.  In this context, we are looking for a Pastor of Children and Families who will be part of our Pastoral Team and participate in the work of the people that God has invited us into here in Austin.

ABOUT GREENHOUSE AND ZAMYN

Greenhouse was birthed as our children’s ministry when we started with 3 tiny kids in 2006. We started off by simply caring for infants in a small room and eventually incorporating hand-made lessons that only required one or two volunteers each Sunday.  In our early years, our pastors’ spouses discovered Godly Play which offered a curriculum and approach that encouraged our children to wonder and ask questions about God and faith. They would hear stories from Scripture in a tangible way with wood figures and pieces.

In 2013, we hired our first part-time Greenhouse Coordinator to help manage our volunteers and plan out our classes each Sunday.  As our family makeup continued to grow, we formed three separate classes based on age – Pods, Sprouts and Seedlings.

In 2014, ZAMYN began as our youth ministry (middle and high schoolers) when our youth came up with the name “Zombies Ate MY Narwaffles”.  We ran with their creativity and also offered an alternative play on words with “Ex-ZAMYN – providing our youth with ways to “examine” how they relate with God and each other.  Originally, when there were only a handful of youth, we provided young adult mentors for each of them to support them in their faith journey.  Currently, we host a monthly class on Sundays and a monthly social hang.

Over the quarantine years of 2020 and 2021 Vox welcomed an “unprecedented” (remember how the country kept using that word?) number of babies being born into our community. In the May 2021 Vox Covenant Member meeting, our congregation voiced a desire to shift from a part time children’s director model to a full time pastoral position with both theological and developmental experience to equip families with children in age-appropriate faith formation. Children already make up a significant portion of our Sunday participants, and in a few years youth will not be far behind.

Like many families with children navigating faith formation, we carry our own experiences of both beautiful belonging and constraining conformity, safe spaces to explore and places of pain and trauma, mentors who companioned us well and leaders who let us down, scriptures interpreted to animate a compassionate global faith, and interpretations used violently to shame and dehumanize. This leaves many adults in our community still working through their own history of growing up in the church while struggling to know how to offer something  more lifegiving, formative, and inviting to our children and youth.

We are under no illusions of someone having all the answers for Greenhouse and ZAMYN. We look forward to calling a pastor to children and families who is both theologically equipped and experienced in child development. We are excited for this person to enter into the conversation among our families with children and youth, leading us in experimenting with a more hopeful and holistic way forward.

VOX’S VALUES

https://voxveniae.com/values/

Over the course of our journey as a church community, our values have slowly surfaced to the top. They capture who we are and shape who we hope to become. It is these values that provide the motivation for what we do and how we live.

• Artistry: We are a community of creative makers who live into God’s artistry (Gen 1)
• Posture: We practice humility, recognizing each person has profound intrinsic worth (Phil 2)
• Empathy: We practice creating space to listen, feel, and be with people who are different than us. We try to be an intentionally diverse community including background, life stage, socioeconomics, sexual orientation, and orthodoxy, and we allow empathy to guide us in our responsiveness to injustice (1 Cor 8; 1 Cor 12)
• Participation: We invite us all to become the hands and feet of Christ, and to participate in Liturgy, which means “the work of the people” (1 Cor 12)
• Peculiarity: We seek to live a life worthy of the calling we’ve received, radically loving our enemies, and relentlessly offering grace to ourselves, one another and the world around us   (Matt 5)
• Mystery: We lean into the mystery of Christ leading us on our bright days and in our darkest hours, and invite us all to become a people of healthy faith learning to trust what we hope for and do not see (Ex 13:21, Eph 3:9; 5:32; Col 4:3, Hebrews 11:1)

WE STRIVE TO LIVE WITH THE CONVICTION THAT

Scripture is creatively inspired by God in perfection to be relevant for every generation and culture. This living text straightens us out and teaches us to live in the way of Christ. It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to be and do.  (Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

God is the grand artist and author of all life. To demonstrate love, God stepped into humanity as Jesus in order to bring restoration between God and humankind and humanity with each other.  Jesus received violence by death on a cross and resurrected in order to end the cycle of violence and scapegoating. God relates to humanity through a wonderful mystery that the church has historically understood as the Trinity. God serves us through the comforting and convicting presence of the Holy Spirit until the return of Christ. (John 1:1-4; Romans 5:8; I John 2:1-2; John 14:15-27)

Humanity was beautifully created to know, love, and trust God. However, through our rebellion this intended purpose has been fragmented. As a result, every person exists in this corrupted version of our original beauty. (Romans 3:23; 1 Peter 2:24-25; Isaiah 53:6)

Life and its intended purpose is restored through Jesus Christ. By choosing to passionately pursue Him and allowing Him to transform us, we receive eternal significance that shapes our lives with new hope and purpose. (Ephesians 2:10; Romans 6:1-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17)

The Church is designed to be the presence of God on earth fulfilling Christ’s mission of grace. It is a community of broken people that strives to use our passions and abilities to love God and love people. (Matthew 16:18-19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-21; Romans 12:4-8)