New Pastor Called…

Over the past eleven months, the Pastoral Search Committee has been engaged in an intense and rigorous process to find the person whom the Lord is calling to ministry at Eastwood Baptist Church. We are delighted to announce that on June 28th the voting members of the congregation approved the committee’s recommendation to call Reverend Paul Bailey as our new pastor. He will be joining us in September.

Reverend Bailey was ordained in 1980. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Marriage and Family Ministry from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary; a Masters of Divinity Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; a Masters in Education from Lemoyne College; and a Bachelors of Arts degree from Eastern University.

Paul served as pastor of Manlius Baptist Church from 1989 to 2002. After concluding his ministry at Manlius, he entered the field of elementary education and taught fifth and sixth grade in the area for three years. Paul served as interim pastor here at Eastwood Baptist Church while Pastor Olmstead was serving as a chaplain in the military. Reverend Bailey has been involved in a bi-vocational ministry since 2006, serving as pastor of Camillus Baptist Church and teaching at Onondaga Community College. He also assists the Karen and Chin Baptist congregations in Syracuse.

He and his wife Phyllis have three grown children.

We are grateful to the congregation for its support and prayers. We owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Hast, our area minister, for his insights and to the American Baptist Churches’ Personnel Services which developed the process and protocols that we adopted to guide our search.

As a result of all these things, we have gained new hope for our future and we firmly believe God has great things in store for Eastwood Baptist Church.

Sincerely,

The Pastoral Search Committee

Pastoral Search Committee

The pastoral search committee continues to make excellent progress. We are following a very precise, comprehensive and rigorous process recommended by American Baptist Churches.  It is an excellent model and we are confident it will lead to the right person.

The committee began working in mid July by first creating an extensive 40 page “Church Reflections Document” which is designed to match the needs of Eastwood Baptist Church to the strengths and interests of potential candidates. We conducted interviews, focus groups and surveys to gather that information. This data was combined with historical and demographic information about our church and the surrounding community. That document was completed in September and is available for review.

In October our Area Minister Tom Hast went to a national data base of American Baptist ministers who are interested in seeking new assignments. The data base contains hundreds of “profiles” that use the same criteria outlined in our reflections document to match us with Pastors that have the expertise to meet our needs.  We received 21 matches. The committee carefully reviewed and screened all the pastoral profiles. The matches were excellent and we did not eliminate any of the 21 from consideration. We then called all of these individuals personally to determine if they were available and if they would be interested in possibly moving to Central New York.  Nine individuals responded in the affirmative. We then sent all nine our 40 page reflections document along with our annual report, constitution and bylaws and invited them to participate in a telephone interview.

We began conducting the telephone interviews in early January. The interviews were concluded in early March and the field narrowed.  References were checked and the committee met on March 16 to decide which candidates we will select for face to face interviews. At that point visits to the Syracuse area will be scheduled and arrangements made to observe the finalist preach in a neutral pulpit.

Be assured we have excellent candidates all of whom have a great deal of experience in working with churches like EBC.  The Lord is leading us to the right person for the job. We hope to bring a candidate to the Board of Deacons and congregation sometime around June.  We appreciate your patience and we seek your continued support in prayer.