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The Team: The Riv Pastors

Mar 9, 2009 The Team | Print This Post

I have the honor of working with one of the best church staff teams in the known universe (although I may be a tad biased). Today, I want to highlight the guys that lead this crazy staff team: The Riv Pastors.

When I think of these guys, I am reminded of William Shakespeare’s words in Henry V:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

At Riverview, we have a team-model to leadership. That means that the five pastors serve together to lead the church. We have different roles, but equal responsibility for the church. This can sometimes be a cumbersome structure, but it gives each of us the freedom to work in our “sweet spots.” Here are a few thoughts on each of these guys:

Mark Brett

Mark serves as a “bi-vocational pastor” at Riv. That means he works his butt off and we don’t pay him anything. He has a day job that is super demanding and he still finds time to serve on our team. Mark is an operations master and uses that gift to oversee our East Lansing Venue and EPIC (our ministry at MSU). He also gives me tons of counsel on big-picture issues and has a great ability to see the forest instead of the trees.

Paul DenHerder

I can honestly say I wouldn’t be a pastor if it wasn’t for Paul. He is a shepherd at heart and spent years and years pouring his life into mine. When I was a young punk, he bought me lunch 300 weeks in a row. He would listen (a lot), advise, and pray with me. Paul writes the Message Notes we email out each week, which allows him to use his shepherd’s gift on a big scale. He also works with a lot of our different counseling deals going on and oversees a lot of day to day ministry.

Dan Price

Dan and I first met at a conference where he was leading the music and I was teaching. We clicked then and the rest is history. When we hired Dan, we knew he was a phenomenal musician but had no idea what a great leader he is. In addition to overseeing our 7 bands (which includes writing and arranging a lot of music, recorded albums, etc), he is an intuitive discipler and socratic teacher. He works with an amazing number of ministries around Riv and is my primary sounding board for crazy ideas.

Steve Sommerlot

Steve is our elder statesman around here. I’m contractually limited from disclosing his age, but let’s just say he’s been bald most of his life (you do the math). Steve teaches a lot at our Holt Venue both on the main stage and in classes. He is a self-taught theologian and he works hard to keep us from going off the deep end with our doctrine. He oversees our RivU classes and generally makes sure I’m reigned in and heading in the right direction.