What drives the things we do?
Our team has grown significantly over the past year. This has been an exciting season, but it is also one that has been slightly terrifying. We are convinced that our ability to serve churches well is directly connected to the quality of our team. When we walk with a church through a search process, we encourage them to keep their core values in mind when making a hire. We also challenge them to discern whether the values that they espouse are core values or aspirational values (aspirational values are what we’d like to be… not who we are now). For Chemistry, as we seek to bring people on our team, we screen them through our own core values:
- We love the local church: We are convinced that the local church is the most important institution on the face of the planet. It is the vehicle that God has chosen to bring about transformation in his children, and this world. We recognize that the local church has blemishes, flaws, and foibles, but we love Christ’s bride just the same. As we seek out teammates, we seek out people who have a genuine 1 Corinthians 13 love for the church. They are patient, they are kind, they seek to protect, trust and hope for the best for the churches we serve. While we can teach our team many skills, we can not teach someone who is cynical, jaded, and embittered by the church to love the church.
- We champion church leaders: Ministry is tough, thankless work. It is also incredibly important work. We are convinced that part of what we, as a company, are called to do is champion those who lead our churches. We do this through our candidate-centered approach where much of our time is focused on walking alongside ministry leaders in transition, helping them to navigate this process in a healthy way that enables them to hit the ground running in their new church. The other way that we do this is by creating a business model that supports local church leaders by providing them a secondary income stream. This enables pastors, and their families, a little financial breathing room while allowing them to use their experience to speak into the lives of other ministry leaders.
- We lead with generosity: Everyone of us on the Chemistry team is committed to seeing local churches thrive. This is why some of our best work will never be compensated. It is not uncommon for us to spend time helping candidates process a challenging season or pray through whether they need to consider stepping away from ministry for a season or to spend time helping a rural church looking for a 10 hour per week worship leader develop their search strategy. While we wish we could work with every church, regardless of finances, we are committed as a company to be as generous as possible with our time, talent, and treasure when it comes to serving churches and church leaders.
- We place the Kingdom first: Chemistry embraces a triple bottom line mindset. This means we judge our success or failure based on three key impact areas: the spiritual impact of the churches we serve, the health of our candidates, and our financial stability. We can be highly profitable as a company, but if we are not helping strengthen our churches and candidates, we have failed. Because of this, we are genuinely excited to see churches find the right fit, whether they work with us or not. We celebrate when candidates find a new church home, regardless of how they found it, and there are times that we will encourage a church to work with a competitor that might be a better fit. The bottom line for us is that we want to see the Kingdom advance and churches succeed, this, more than our financial bottom line, is what drives us as a company.
These four core values are what drive Chemistry as a company, and define all that we do. This also serves as a remarkable filter to help us screen who is the fit for our team.