Mesa Church of Christ, an active, diverse congregation of about 450 members located in Mesa, Arizona, began looking for two new ministers in the summer of 2015. Traditionally, they had had one minister in the combined role of Youth and Family Minister, but Mesa decided to change that when they began this search. As one of the strongest congregations in the Phoenix area, they thought it best to split that position up into separate roles so that more time and energy could be focused on both aspects of ministry. Since churches of Christ do not have a large presence in Arizona, it was difficult for Mesa to attract ministers to live in an arid desert climate like that of Arizona. That is why, in late 2015, they turned to Minister Match for help. Here are the details of the Family Minister Search.
Minister Match was hired in late 2015 and began recruiting on January 4. Since family ministry is still a growing trend in the church and many churches who have family ministers take them from within the congregation, Minister Match was diving into relatively uncharted territory in looking for men seeking family ministry positions. Despite the difficulties, however, Minister Match accepted the challenge.
The Minister Match recruiting team set out on an aggressive recruiting and networking campaign that included attempts to connect with virtually every existing Youth and Family Minister in the country at congregations of 200 members or more. For congregations without a Youth and Family Minister, we attempted to contact at least one other minister for every congregation in the western US of 200 members or more as well as every pulpit minister in Arizona of 100 members or more. We also reached out to the heads of youth and family ministry programs at major brotherhood universities and dozens of pulpit ministers from smaller congregations across the country. Needless to say, it was an exhaustive process that included more than 2,500 attempted calls targeting over 850 ministers, and it resulted in a candidate pool of just over 25 highly qualified candidates.
The Mesa Family Minister Search Committee was extremely pleased with the depth and quality of the candidate pool. Minister Match walked with them through every step of the Selection Phase and facilitated the entire process (including multiple trips to Mesa). In the end, they hired Joshua DuBoise (who, funny enough, had originally contacted Minister Match about a position in North Carolina)!
About Joshua Duboise
Joshua DuBoise was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. He entered the U.S. Army after high school and served as a Human Resource Specialist from 2002-2004. In 2006, he began serving as Associate Minister for the Oak Grove Church of Christ in Henderson, Tennessee. While serving there over the next several years he worked as a Direct Care provider for the West Tennessee Children’s Home and obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Bible from Freed-Hardeman University. When he began attending Freed-Hardeman, he married his wife Diamond, and they now have two young children named London and Gavin. During his time at Oak Grove Joshua also completed mission work in Brazil and established a prison ministry.
From 2012-2016 Joshua served as Youth and Family Minister for the Bypass Church of Christ in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where in addition to conducting counseling for members of the congregation and working with its youth, he created and facilitated a youth rally focused on apologetics. He was very involved in volunteer work at local shelters in Vicksburg as well as teaching and facilitating classes for the Child and Parent Center dealing with parenting and domestic violence. In 2014, he earned his Master’s Degree in Counseling from Mississippi College, became a National Certified Counselor, and started professional counseling work for Grace Christian Counseling Center while still working with Bypass.
These experiences made a Family Minister position in Mesa, Arizona, a wonderful opportunity for Joshua DuBoise and his family. He started working with Mesa on 09/01/2016.
