It's Happening: We Hired Adam
Staff isn’t something we have much of here at Freedom Fellowships, so it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to hire a much needed Associate Pastor to serve and minister to the needs within Freedom Fellowship. Welcome, Adam Esterle!
The leadership team announced their decision and timeframe to hire Adam full time at this year’s FST retreat in February. As we do not have many people on staff it can be somewhat obvious why we would need someone hired, especially compared to other churches that have people full time focusing on serving the church. FF’s website, technology, organization (and more) has been largely volunteer basis so another hand on deck will give much needed attention to areas that could be especially fruitful.
Adam’s new title is “Associate Pastor.” His job description will be teaching CT, classes and handling technology (including websites and resources.) One of his first projects will be working with the resources we have online. “We have hundreds of teachings, classes and books that are not easily accessible because they are on old formats like tapes,” said Adam. “It will be great to have all of our resources catalogues and searchable for anyone who wants to use them to study.”
Unlike many other churches that hire pastors, we have the unique privilege to hire someone who met Christ in FF and has grown uniquely within our fellowship, knowing the people, our vision and able to relate personally instead of just being hired on. Adam met Christ at a Bible study his junior year of high school. Although Adam grew up in a Christian school, he did not know what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ until being invited to Word (FF’s old high school group) by his buddy Jordan. He found a difference in the friendships he met and enjoyed what he learned from the Bible studies. He decided to receive Christ shortly after coming around and has “had a blast walking with the Lord and the awesome people here ever since.” Not only has Adam been leading cell groups, fellowship groups, discipling and regularly teaching CTs and classes, in 2019 he also received his seminary degree Master of Arts in Theological Studies from TEDS, which will surely assist his efforts in his new career path.
Adam is leaving his programming job at Kent State this month to serve our fellowship full time. Please let us join in prayer for our brother: that God would continue to mold his character and show him how to advance his Kingdom. As well as for his family through this transition: his wife Anele and daughter Joy. Their family have been dedicated to ministry and loving the people God puts in front of them. So far, he says, the transition has been, “fun and challenging. It seems that whenever God wants you to do something else for him, he shapes your character to handle it which involves facing your ugly flesh.”
“Hiring Adam is really going to help us out with all our tech needs and it will free him up to teach more often as well,” said Senior Elder Greg Morscher. “It has been very cool seeing how the Lord has transformed Adam into a powerful servant and teacher. I’m very excited to see how the Lord is going to use Adam in our fellowship in this new role.”
Adam is also up to become an Elder for FF, which was announced at the FST. There is no set timeline as to when that is happening yet, according to Greg, just that Adam continues to move toward Eldership.
Praise God he has given us the ability to hire someone fully dedicated to serving Him, His people and passionate about advancing His Kingdom. Pray this brings our fellowship and mission much fruit!