The Team: The Riv Pastors
Mar 9, 2009 The Team
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.
The Team: Eddie and Renee Cloutier
Mar 2, 2009 The Team
Today I continue my little Monday tradition highlighting someone from Riv’s team that rocks my socks off.
This post highlights 2 people who are 1 in the flesh: Eddie and Renee Cloutier
Eddie and Renee have been part of our team at Riv since…well…since I wasn’t even a teenager yet. Let’s just say it was a long time ago.
I remember the first time I met them. A bunch of us were heading to a conference and when we boarded an airport shuttle, there weren’t enough seats. So I sat on this dude’s lap. He looked vaguely familiar to me, but little did I know how much…
The first time I visited their home, Renee made me whole wheat cinnamon rolls from scratch. Oh man. They are still one of my favorite things ever.
At the time, Eddie was co-pastoring one of Riv’s daughter churches in the Detroit area. Over time, they ended up moving back to the Lansing area and that’s where I got to know them better and better.
Eddie serves around here as a volunteer extraordinaire. I seriously don’t know how he has time to run his business with all he does for us. He has overseen many projects at Riv; from our finances, to our operations, to our facility. Eddie is a “trend genius.” He can predict where our finances are going with the most subtle of changes and can spot building problems before anyone sees them. Eddie is singlehandedly the reason our building is in as good of shape as it is. His most recent project was getting our building expansion built. He kept everything going smoothly and on budget.
Renee is a part-time staffer around here in the office. She works with our financial gifts, doing all the grunt work of entering data and producing my favorite piece of paper of the week: the weekend report on attendance and giving. She also keeps her eye on our Own It. campaign. But one of Renee’s most valuable roles for me personally is cheerleader. She constantly shoots me encouraging emails about what’s happening around Riv and when necessary challenges me to get my butt in line. Awesome.
Eddie and Renee are uniquely gifted to help make other people successful. I owe a large measure of my personal growth to them and Riv owes them more than anyone will ever realize.
The Team: Kristie Henry
Feb 23, 2009 The Team
At Riv, we have the best (and most overworked) team. We only have 4 full-time staff that are fully paid by the church. Everyone else is volunteer, part-time or raises their support through GCM.
And since we can’t pay them what they are worth with actual money, I thought of something even better. I’ll start to pay them with an all coveted NoelHeikkinen.com Blog Post! Over the next several weeks (and who knows how much longer), I am going to use my Monday posts to highlight / embarrass / praise someone from our team.
To start this off, I have to talk about our Creative Director, Kristie Henry.
Kristie started out at Riv as an unpaid intern. She spent a summer cleaning up all of our graphic design (she was a design student at NC State). A few years later, she fell into our trap by falling in love with our web-guru Eric. They married and she moved to town to become our part-time graphic artist.
Over the years, her influence has spread greatly. She is part of the benevolent dictatorship (along with Dan and I) of the Black Shirt Club, which is a group of artistic weirdos that do a lot of the weekend service madness around here. She has become the primary architect of Riv’s artistic style, from the weekend services, to the signage, to the building’s aesthetic, to the Corridor Gallery, to the monthly newsletter. Riv would not be nearly as “cool” without Kristie. We wouldn’t be able to help the Right Brained people in the church track with the teachings quite as well without her artistic ability. I have no idea how many hours she tirelessly works, but I do know that she never complains, always looks for things to tweek, and is seriously one of the MVPs around here.
And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t quote Steve Sommerlot:
“This water tastes like Kristie smells.”
True words.
