Worship & Creative Director

Why You Want This Job

New Heights is a rapidly growing church full of people who love Jesus, love to serve, are generous, and desire to reach future generations with the Gospel. We have a senior pastor who loves and values worship and creative excellence, having served for more than a decade as a full-time worship pastor. We have excellent Bible teaching and a deep desire to be a church that is pleasing to Jesus. New Heights values deep relationships (for real). The Tri-Cities is a great place to live and raise a family, and our church is a great place to grow in Christ and ministry skills.

Worship Ministry

Where We Want to Go

• We want to raise the level of musical excellence across our Sunday morning worship and A/V teams while continuing to focus on sincerity, congregational participation, and a worship expression that is pleasing to the Lord.
• Stylistically, we’re not looking for massive, attractional levels of production. Think drums with rods, percussion, bass, keys, an acoustic guitar, and one electric guitar with 3 vocalists.
• We want to modernize our song rotation while still including a hymn at least every other week to help our congregation's broad range of ages and musical preferences feel represented in our song choice.
• We want to move to working with loops and the MultiTracks.com ecosystem.
• We are seeking times of worship that provide a sustained focus on Jesus. This means minimal talking between songs, creating smooth transitions between songs, and doing all we can to remove distractions.
• In the future, we’d like to see a youth worship team developed and pastored. This may include teaching students how to play basic drums, bass, and guitar.

Where We Are

Our worship ministry is currently led by volunteers who are deeply loved by many in our congregation. They oversee a team of around 20 musicians and vocalists and have faithfully given their best to meet the church's worship needs over the past three years. New Heights loves to sing together to the Lord and has a high level of congregational participation. We also have room to grow in other expressions, such as clapping and the lifting of hands. The current musical style is closer to the late 90s / early 2000s.

Abilities / Skills / Qualifications

• Sing and play acoustic guitar at a high level.
• Understand how leading worship is different from simply singing lead (I.E., lead with a sensitivity to the Spirit and the congregation).
• Be able to arrange songs, change keys, and read chords (sheet music is a plus but not required). Be able to adapt arrangements for different contexts and worship team member combinations.
• Be able to direct a band by communicating competently with other musicians (E.G., be able to communicate to a bass player or drummer using terms like “8^th’s” and “16^th’s”).
• Be able to effectively run a practice by giving clear direction, being decisive, yet always being honoring and respectful.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the Sunday morning worship teams.
• Schedule worship team members.
• Honor the worship team members by preparing materials needed for them to practice and prepare effectively well in advance.
• Ensure all equipment is ready for worship practices so they can start on time and run in a way that shows we value their time.
• Work with the senior pastor on the song rotation and the selection of new songs.
• Be consistently looking for great new worship songs by listening to new worship music.
• Support and strengthen the A/V team members (i.e., sound and ProPresenter operators).
• Lead special times of worship (e.g., baptisms).
• Prepare special songs and videos for Christmas and easter services.
• Develop a young adult worship ministry if the need arises.
• Regularly meet with and report to the senior pastor.

Creative Ministry

Where We Want to Go

We’re looking for someone who loves Jesus and His Church deeply and desires to utilize their creative gifts with excellence in service of building a Christ-centered church that brings Him glory and makes disciples. We’re not trying to be the most creatively cutting-edge church out there. We want to communicate with clarity, excellence, and a consistent style that is both modern and welcoming to a broad demographic.

Where We Are

Creative output in our church is currently handled by a team of volunteers who take care of basic tasks like updating the bulletin and creating the sermon slides. There is currently no audio or video editing, and social media posting is very basic. The website is barely functional, and there is no centralized control of creative output (e.g., what gets printed and distributed on behalf of the church). We have wonderful people who love to serve and are doing their best, but there’s a reason we’re looking for help in this area.

Abilities / Skills / Qualifications

• Must be able to creatively design with excellence.
• Must have reasonably good professional writing skills.
• Must be comfortable and familiar with a well-known DAW (E.G., Logic), video editing software (E.G., FCPX or Da Vinci Resolve), and Microsoft Office.
• Must be aware of evolving design trends and what is/isn’t working in social media.
• Must work well with others and be comfortable recruiting and training volunteers.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the designer and gatekeeper for all church media (E.G., ProPresenter content, Connect Cards, signs, bulletins, logos).
• Overhaul and maintain the church’s social media presence.
• Oversee the recording, post-production, uploading, and posting of the weekly sermon to online outlets (E.G., the church’s website, YouTube).
• Create at least 2 video clips from each Sunday’s sermon for social media.
• Meet the regular creative needs of the church and her ministries (e.g., sermon series graphics, ministries needing help with flyers).
• Train and incorporate volunteers wherever possible (i.e., if you could train someone on a weekly task and someone is available, we expect you to).
• Plan, film, and produce testimony videos (E.G., for people being baptized).
• Help make the Easter and Christmas services special.
• Oversee the development, implementation, and maintenance of a new church website (film a welcome tour, take photos, etc.).
• Develop a branding kit for our church, including a new logo.
• Regularly meet with and report to the senior pastor.

Spiritual Life and Character

• Meet the biblical requirements for deacons as described in 1 Timothy 3:8-13.
• Have a consistent and disciplined walk with Christ including daily time in the Word and prayer.
• Display clear evidence of a life lived under the Lordship of Christ in good and bad times, marriage, parenting, work, relationships, and all areas of life.
• If married, your spouse should love Christ and the Church deeply.
• Display Christlikeness and servant-heartedness, especially in your dealings with others.
• Practice financial giving to the church in a manner consistent with the New Testament Scriptures.
• Agree with our Statement of Faith.
• Pursue church membership.

Compensation and Work Hours

Our church has been blessed with resources that will enable us to provide compensation based on qualifications, experience, ability, and the cost of living in the Tri-Cities. Our leaders care about the families of our staff team members and will offer market rate benefits and salary levels.

This level of care extends to the expected work hours. We want team members to live in a healthy, sustainable rhythm while functioning at a high level and taking responsibility for their areas of ministry.

When one of these roles requires full-time hours, we have the financial ability to offer that and bring on another staff member.

For more information about our church, please see below.

Resume Submission Guidelines

• The first thing we’re going to look at is your worship-leading ability. Please provide video samples of you singing and playing guitar. Please ensure these samples accurately reflect your abilities.
• Please provide samples of your creative design work (e.g., videos, sermon series, logos, etc.).
• Ensure your resume includes your work history and family details (married, kids, etc.).
• Email resumes to jefft@newheightsrichland.org
• We are hoping to fill this position ASAP.

About New Heights Church

Our Church’s Theology & Distinctives

• We are an expositional Bible-teaching church.
• We hold historically orthodox, biblical beliefs regarding issues like gender, sexuality, marriage, and abortion.
• We are led by a plurality of elders who share equal authority. The senior pastor is one of the elders, is their equal, and serves as the spiritual leader of the church.
• We are Complementarian.
• Our eschatology is Pre-Millennial and Pre-Trib.

A Note from Our Elders About Our Church and Culture

New Heights is a church family where the average age is in the upper 50s, but the church is passionate about reaching younger generations. They recently welcomed Jeff Thompson as the new senior pastor (he’s 42), and our congregation loves to serve and give generously.

We are a church that strongly desires to be biblically substantive. We love God’s Word and pursue the “one another’s” of Scripture through small groups. We don’t want corporate worship that’s a show or tries to “wow” anybody; our goal is a focused time of worship centered on glorifying Christ in a way that involves the congregation as much as possible. Our worship and creative pursuits are driven by an ethos of removing distractions and focusing attention on Christ – which is why excellence matters.

We do not believe we compete with the world; the Church is to be something altogether different. We want to continue pursuing the real thing – a church dependent on the grace and truth of Jesus and the power of His Spirit. We want to offer the Lord the very best we can, but we also want to do church in a way that would still work if we lost our building and all our technology. We really do believe that Christ is the Cornerstone, and we never want our church to be built on anything else.

Our church is not trying to turn into a corporation with countless employees. We value the lay service of our brothers and sisters who make up the body. So, we’re looking for someone who can empower volunteers for greater ministry while caring for and protecting them from the possibility of burnout.

If you’re passionate about Jesus and long to be part of a church that exists to please, bless, and honor Him above all else, we’d love to talk with you.

Our Statement of Faith can be found at newheights.ch/about-us/what-we-believe.