Mt View update | November 5, 2025

Pastor Ben

Dear JPBC, first off thank you to everyone for praying and supporting this possibility of sending myself and others to revitalize Mount View. I want to provide a brief update and also some direction for you as we think about next steps.

Update

The Mount View search committee has officially voted to offer me the position as pastor. The church still needs to vote as well, and I am waiting to hear the date that will take place, but the committee seems very confident that they will vote in favor. Also, I was able to teach on elders at a special meeting at Mount View last Wednesday evening. I was honestly quite surprised by how well the meeting went. They were a captive audience for almost 2 hours, asked great questions, and many expressed outright support for making that change. I got the impression that they were quite teachable and willing to follow the Bible. So this leaves me feeling good about moving ahead, and given that Mount View also seems close to officially offering the position, it seems very likely that this will happen. I am personally excited about this, and especially thankful for those who have already expressed intent to join me. Knowing that there is a core group with me is very reassuring. Also, their current pastor is retiring at the end of 2025, so the church desires a start date of January.

Next Steps

In light of the above, the elders met last Wednesday (right after I was at Mount View) and have begun planning with the assumption that this is happening. This is exciting but also bittersweet because it will bring change and be costly to JPBC. I am personally very grateful for the other elders' willingness to enthusiastically support this in spite of the costs. At the same time, I also want to ensure that this is done in a way that cares well for JPBC, so together we are hoping to provide as much clarity and direction as we can.

Thus far, I have heard from a number of members who have said they have prayerfully considered this and are committed to coming. Others have expressed varying levels of interest. As elders, we mapped out lists of both, and gave some thought to members we might encourage to go and others we might encourage to stay. Of course we don't believe we have the authority to force anyone to do either, and we want to be as sensitive as possible to each member's personal desires. But we're grateful that there are those looking to us for guidance, and we think sending something in the range of 30 members is about right (though the raw number is not everything because it also matters how depended-upon each member is by JPBC, and how they may help round-out the team of those going to Mount View). So we hope to be able to lead everyone through this in a way that best cares for individual needs as well as both churches.

To that end, we know that some who are seriously considering going have still not had the opportunity to visit. Please prioritize visiting this Sunday! For those who are not really considering going, but would like to visit sometime just to check it out, we'd encourage you to wait for a future date so that we don't have too many people all out from JPBC at once. Prioritizing visiting on Sunday is particularly important because the elders would like to have a (close-as-possible) list of who's going by the November 16 Members' Meeting. This is to facilitate planning for the gaps in various JPBC ministries that will need filled. At the same time, we understand that this is a short timeframe, so if you are feeling pressured to make a decision before you're ready, please talk to us, and we'd love to work through that with you.

Lastly, for those who are going or seriously considering it, I plan to schedule a more focused interest meeting soon where we can discuss more specifics of what the transition process and life at Mount View could look like. Stay posted for more details on that. We will also dedicate the December 10 prayer service to discussing and praying about this transition.

Thank you for praying for me through this process, and please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions. In Christ,

Ben