“Bringing together seminary education and the local church experience.”
Program Overview
The Four Oaks Pastoral Residency is a two-year program designed for healthy ministry engagement, candid feedback and support, and leadership development. Believing the local church, as God designed it, is the hope of the world, Four Oaks seeks to provide aspiring church leaders a healthy church environment to learn, grow, and practice ministry. Our desire is for church leaders to begin in leadership roles from a position of experience and wholistic strength.
Why Consider Our Residency?
The Pastoral Residency is a paid staff position with full benefits including health care, retirement, and ministry spending allowance. Designed after a medical residence model, the Residency will provide a wide range of real ministry opportunities with intentional feedback and care. Residents at Four Oaks will serve as pastors alongside other residents in a cohort model as well as the staff teams of each congregation. We have three congregations with differing demographics and sizes, and you will receive feedback and mentoring from each lead pastor.
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS AT THIS TIME.
Requirements
Four Oaks desires to select men with “integrity of heart and skillful hands” (Psalm 78:70-72) to participate in this program. Applicants should have a settled conviction of calling to senior level leadership in a local church, demonstrated ministry fruitfulness, and most of a seminary degree completed. Applicants will exhibit a commitment to following Christ, leadership ability, and a heart for serving the local church. If still in seminary, those selected for the Residency are eligible to receive tuition assistance in their final year and would commit to moving to the Tallahassee area upon completion of their degree.
Questions
Select a question below.
-
Is the Pastoral Residency open to international students?
Prospective residents must be able to provide documentation for authorization to work in the United States when applying for the residency. Four Oaks does not sponsor visas for employees. International students must be able to gain work authorization through another means in order to be a part of the residency program.
-
Four Oaks is a multi-congregational church whose mission is to treasure, grow, and go in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Fulfilling this mission requires models and methods.
Fundamentally, Four Oaks has chosen the model and method of being a multi-congregational church because it’s our firm conviction that our congregations are better together.
Rather than use the language of “campus” (popular among multi-site movements) we’ve chosen to use the language of “congregations” that partner with each other, mutually benefit from one another and share resources. While there are various local expressions of Four Oaks (East, Midtown, & Killearn), there’s also what’s called Four Oaks Central. Four Oaks Central serves to support and enhance the ministries of the various Four Oaks congregations as they seek to contextualize the gospel in their own local pockets of Tallahassee.
Congregations have shared mission & values, doctrinal convictions, membership commitments, and philosophy of ministry as well as a shared budget, set of bylaws, 501c3, and some shared staff (business administration, branding & communication).
While there is no biblical mandate to organize a church through multiple congregations, we believe it to be theologically faithful and missionally strategic to organize Four Oaks Church in this way. The churches best positioned to reach people are new churches. We believe that planting congregations is a faithful model of church planting, to be done alongside and in addition to traditional models of church planting.
For more information
Fill out and submit the form below.
