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About Don
Founder and CEO

Don can best be described as an entrepreneur with a passion for God, family and his community (in that order). He founded Minister Match after serving on two separate search committees - one inside and one outside of the church. He was struck by the lack of resources that were available to help the church identify best practices and source a strong pool of candidates as compared to what he was seeing in the professional community. Through Minister Match, he aims to help congregations make better hiring decisions that lead to longer minister tenures and healthier congregations.



Recruiter
Tyler Carr

Tyler is a native of Cookeville, Tennessee, and has lived there his whole life. After he went on a mission trip in 2014 to help the tiny congregation in Galway, Ireland, put on a summer Bible camp, Tyler began to have a passion for missions and church growth. This is why he strongly believes in the purpose Minister Match has of bringing about growth by finding and hiring ministers who are the “right fit” for their congregations. He began working at Minister Match in August 2015 within a week of finding out it existed! Tyler also works with Willow Avenue Church of Christ's college ministry and preaches for small congregations in the area on a regular basis.


Search Manager
John Nichols

John Nichols is a Search Manager for Minister Match.  He has been on the Minister Match team since the beginning of the organization.  John oversees the search process on the Minister Match side and stays in close contact with the committee chairman from the local church.  He makes sure the candidate pool is complete and each candidate meets minimum and preferred qualities.  John firmly believes in Don Viar's vision that quality hiring processes produce more church stability and Kingdom growth.  He also serves as one of the ministers at the Netherland Church of Christ.

Testimonials

The candidate pool for our need was something we had to work to develop but Don was insistent we wait for God's guidance and let it fill up when our human nature wanted to start right away. This served us well since our best qualified candidate ...
Jon Bouley - Family Minister Search Committee Chairman, Mesa Church of Christ
It was a great process for me. Minister Match did a good job of keeping confidentiality in collecting information, and the communication process was very clear. The staff was very easy to deal with and very helpful. Overall the experience was very ...
Joel Soumar - Youth Minister, Mesa Church of Christ
The Minister Match team was very professional. The entire process was very transparent. It was structured and organized, which made it a whole lot easier. I felt that the team also had a genuine concern for the Lord's church and His ministers. ...
Joshua Duboise - Family Minister, Mesa Church of Christ
I think that because of the format that was there and the process that we followed, it made us stand out to our quality group of finalists who had other lines in the water looking for opportunities. When it came time to offer our finalist the ...
Joel Shelton - Search Committee Chairman, Commerce Church of Christ
We would not have been exposed to the large number of qualified candidates without the resources and expertise of Minister Match.  The search process was very organized and accomplished very efficiently with the program and schedule provided by ...
Ken Fox - Elder, Mesa Church of Christ
Our Search Committee is so grateful that we used Minister Match when we needed to hire our new Youth Minister. Minister Match assisted us in recruiting many serious candidates (over 30) that fit what our congregation was looking for. The ...
Jorge Acebo - Search Committee Chairman, Sunset Church of Christ
I strongly encourage ministers to take advantage of the expertise of the folks at Minister Match to help put together a high quality resume. They will help you identify strong points you didn't even know you have! I am extremely satisfied with the ...
Joel Shelton - Commerce Church of Christ
Minister Match helped us hire a new minister in half the time we took for our previous hire.  We used the Minister Match process which helped us build a consensus of what we wanted.  Minister Match's network then helped us to build an ...
Tom Long - Search Committee Chairman, South Fork Church of Christ
We would like to thank you for your efforts to make the minister hiring process simple and well defined. The congregation here has not been through the minister hiring process in sixteen years and had little experience left for trying to do so. We ...
Jim Burdette - Elder, Frederick Church of Christ
From my standpoint as one of the elders, I can say we were pleased with the process, and feel the time and money spent was well worth it. We felt we received excellent service from your firm, and because we were among the first to use your service ...
Bob Perkins - Elder, Sunset Church of Christ

Contact Information

Minister Match
410 South Lowe Avenue
Cookeville, TN 38501

ABC Blocks

Your congregation has just hired a minister, and it seems like they are the perfect fit. Congratulations! There is one more step to the process, though, and it is just as important as the process of finding the right minister. You might have heard people refer to how the “first hundred days” of someone’s job usually sets the tone for their entire career with that organization. The same is true with ministers. Just as your congregation is going through a major transition, so is your new minister. The first few months of a job are a stressful time, and it is the job of the elders and search committee to help your new minister through their transition.

We refer to this as the “On-Boarding Stage.” Since the “first hundred days” is so important to the rest of a minister’s career with your congregation, we believe this stage is one of the keys to reducing minister turnover in the church. In this post, we want to talk about a few of the things that a new minister needs from their congregation during this transition period. We will refer to them as the ABC’s of the On-Boarding Phase.