Application & Assessment
Reliant takes ministry assessment seriously. We want you to be ready. Ministry leaders are often placed in positions of high visibility and spiritual leadership. Plus, fundraising for ministry is a calling with particular challenges and rewards, and it is not appropriate for every circumstance. We can help discern this with you.
Those starting with Reliant range from new-to-ministry to church-planting pastors with many years of experience. We want to understand where you have been and what God is leading you to next.
Standards
What do we look for when assessing ministry staff and church planters?
Local Endorsement
Because we work in ministry partnership with local spiritual leadership, the first assessment is by the local church. Your local ministry must be enthusiastically ready and willing to commission and spiritually oversee your ministry work.
Confidence in Calling
How confident are you that this is the ministry God has called you to do? Why now? Why is support-based the way God has called you to do it?
Ministry Skill
How gifted and experienced are you in relation to the ministry role you are seeking to fill? Key factors can include: evangelism, discipleship, shepherding, administration, leadership, entrepreneurship. We understand that roles vary greatly from experienced pastor to young campus minister.
Walk with God and Spiritual Formation
What is your testimony of conversion and spiritual growth? What are your habits in spiritual disciplines and knowledge of scripture, and how do you respond to difficult times?
Moral Conduct and Emotional Health
Do you meet our standards of Christian character? Christian ministers must maintain high standards in ethical conduct, sexual purity, substance-dependence, relationship to self and others.
Fundraising Readiness
Are you ready to launch and be successful in the fundraising process? Do you have sufficient financial health, an ability to cast vision for others, a current platform of relational support, and a realistic timeline and plan?
Spousal and Family Support
Does your family or spouse or dependents support the vocation you are seeking?
International Readiness
Ministry staff and church planters working outside the US have additional challenges, and our process adds assessment on cross-cultural flexibility and mental health through our partners at International Personnel Consultants.
Process
Your application and assessment process is organized step-by-step at our online application site (see below for individual partner tracks).
As a general rule, submit your application at least two months before the training you want to attend. If the training of your choice is already less than two months away, please reach out to us at apply@reliant.org, and we will do our best to accommodate you if possible.
You'll go through these phases:
- Application Phase: Get answers to your questions before applying.
- Ministry Assessment Phase: Tell us all about you and your ministry.
- Local Interview: Secure a local review of your ministry role.
- Reliant Review: An independent review by a Reliant assessor.
- Decision & Discernment Phase: Reliant and local representatives collaborate on a hiring decision.
- Provisionally Accepted Phase: Ready to head to Reliant training.
(International Missionaries should plan an additional 4-6 weeks. Interns or Residents with terms less than nine months have an abbreviated process.)
