My Favorite Team Ever, Part Two [Todd]

Still talking about our staff team, but I left one Part-Timer out the other day:

Mike Grubbs - Counseling Pastor. Mike is not compensated by the church, but we do subsidize his counseling ministry to make it affordable to nearly everyone. Mike is crazy skilled at penetrating to the heart of issues and struggles and has helped more people get "unstuck" than just about anyone I know. Plus, I am told he has great taste in cigars (I wouldn't know)...

Full-Time Staff

Kathy Risch - The indispensable one. It is RARE for a church our size to have only one administrative staff member, but Kathy does it all. With excellence, patience, kindness, and skill. Check this out: she is going on vacation next week and so to prepare us for that she put together a spreadsheet of what she does, who is filling in for her, contact names and phone numbers and, I think, directions to the Lost Ark.

Mark Gillming - People are shocked to learn that this is Mark's first full time church gig! He has been a traveling musician, ran an insurance agency, and worked part time for churches, but Next Level was his first full time church position. He was NLC's first employee and it is not too much to say that there would not be a Next Level today if not for Mark. He is that central.

Jared Kirk - The guy is a biomedical engineer who gave up a potentially way lucrative career to lead students at Next Level. In addition he is one of central communicators. Smart, thoughtful, great at applying the Gospel to all of life, compassionate, gifted...but with a really bad sense of humor, unfortunately.

Harrison Gillming - You guys can stop asking him about American Idol now. He hates it. The rarest of guys - someone who could be touring as a musician but is passionate about Next Level and leads wisely and well. Great taste in music, always stretching, learning, and growing. HIs one character flaw is an unreasoning and frankly ugly hate for all things Carolina Tar Heels. I keep asking him: "Is it the unbroken record of integrity? The academic excellence? The record of success on the court and field? What is it? Why you gotta hate?" Oh, sorry, I digress.

Next time...Doug and Rob.