Steve Ezra Email and Phone Number

Senior leadership position in a city church with comprehensive ministries including a food pantry and thrift shop. Develop and lead weekly events for teaching and motivating up to 600 people participating in-person and online; manage 13 employees through 8 direct reports; oversee HR, finance, property management, and leadership development teams.

Senior leadership position in a suburban church with comprehensive ministries including a preschool and food pantry. Developed and led weekly events for teaching and motivating up to 400 people participating in-person and online and up to 700 for special events. Oversaw HR, finance, property management, and leadership development teams; managed 34 employees through 7 direct reports; responsible for overall $1,600,000 annual budget.• Assignment was to turnaround a declining church.• Optimized, streamlined, and clarified leadership structures to stabilize and refocus the organization on its mission.• Brought order and structure to HR processes; realized $50,000 in annual cost savings through redesigning the org chart and eliminating, replacing, or repositioning roles with low ROI.• Successfully fundraised over $100,000 outside of the budget through donor development for critical capital improvements.• Turned around the preschool program from losing money to becoming a profit center for the church; enrollment grew from 39 to 140.• Grew worship attendance by 10% from 2015 to 2018 by reenergizing worship services and initiating the use of cloud-based software for planning, communication, and coordination.

Senior leadership position in a suburban church with comprehensive ministries including a preschool. Developed and led weekly events including teaching of up to 750 people, up to 1,800 for special events; oversaw HR, finance, property management, and leadership development teams; managed 40 employees through 5 direct reports; responsible for overall $2,300,000 annual budget.• Assignment was to stabilize and rebuild a culture of trust within a church with damaged DNA and culture.• Optimized, streamlined, and clarified leadership structures to stabilize and refocus the organization on its mission.• Brought order and structure to the staff team, including the hiring of an COO (executive pastor) and creation of a senior management team.• Developed on-going leadership development and training for staff and volunteers to slowly rebuild a culture of trust within the organization.• Created systems to ensure fair and equitable treatment of employees and to ensure high standards of integrity and honesty.• Revitalized Wednesday evening programming, increasing the number of participants by 100%.• Initiated a one-year men’s leadership development program for young professionals.• Successfully led $1.4 million capital campaign in the spring of 2015.

Senior leadership position for a suburban church with comprehensive ministries including a preschool. Partnered with the senior pastor to lead a 2000-member congregation with a $2,000,000+ budget. Oversaw worship event planning and implementation teams; developed and led weekly services including 40% weekly teaching of up to 1,000 people, up to 2,000 for special events; initiated new events and programs to attract and serve young families; managed 5 employees.• Assignment was to partner with and support the Senior Pastor in providing leadership to a 2,000-member church to reduce his workload and to infuse creativity and energy into an established organization.• Envisioned, planned, and launched a new weekly worship event for younger families.• Launched, taught, and supervised on-going Alpha groups.• Initiated a one-year men’s leadership development program for young professionals.• Pioneered a comprehensive worship planning process for the church.• Assisted the Senior Pastor in leading a successful $6,700,000 capital campaign.

When I began at Southern Wells Community Church, it was a struggling new church start because it launched prematurely and their first pastor quit the church after its launch. I was appointed to see if the church could be salvaged. From June 1998 through September 2002, I was able to help this church achieve its vision of "reaching younger unchurched rural families for Jesus Christ" through ministries of intentional outreach, seeker-friendly contemporary worship, and lay-led ministries. I developed leadership teams and created systems to enable the church to make disciples. When my ministry was completed, I had doubled the size the congregation, leaving a healthy and growing United Methodist congregation which surpassed the expectations of my conference leadership.

I shared the responsibility for the spiritual and administrative life of this large traditional church with the senior pastor. Teaching and preaching were two of my primary responsibilities. My major ministry initiatives included launching a contemporary worship service, revitalizing the young adult ministry and restarting the men's ministry. I also supervised staff and volunteers in Christian education, children's ministry, youth ministry, and missions.