20698

Harvest Raleigh Church

Executive Pastor

Raleigh,

North Carolina

Harvest Raleigh Church is seeking an Executive Pastor who will serve as the Lead Pastor’s primary ministry partner and the church’s chief operational leader. This new role will help translate vision into action by providing leadership across staff development, organizational systems, finances, facilities, project management, and strategic execution, while also serving as a pastor and shepherd within the congregation. The Executive Pastor will work closely with Pastor Mike Willis and the elder team to strengthen organizational effectiveness, increase communication and clarity, and position Harvest for its next season of discipleship, outreach, missions, and church planting. The opportunity is not to reinvent Harvest, but to help an already healthy and deeply committed church become increasingly effective in accomplishing its mission.

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Why We Love This Opportunity

Harvest Raleigh has something that is difficult to manufacture: a deeply committed church family, strong biblical convictions, remarkably high volunteer engagement, a thriving Small Group culture, and stable leadership. The next Executive Pastor gets to build from health rather than repair dysfunction.

I especially love the opportunity for this leader to become a genuine ministry partner to Pastor Mike. Harvest is looking for someone who loves people and systems, shepherding and execution, and who finds great satisfaction in helping vision become reality.

A great match for this position would be:

A great match will be a spiritually mature, relationally healthy leader who is comfortable and energized serving in the second chair. He will have the confidence to lead staff and organizational initiatives while possessing the humility to serve Pastor Mike, the elders, and a church family with a deeply established culture.
He will likely bring significant experience in organizational leadership, team development, personnel management, and execution. Previous Executive Pastor or pastoral experience would be highly valuable, but Harvest is also open to an accomplished leader from the corporate or nonprofit world who has substantial church leadership experience, pastoral gifting, and the character qualifications of an elder. Harvest specifically identifies potential backgrounds including Executive Pastor, Associate Pastor, Senior Pastor, President, Vice President, Director, or Manager.
The strongest candidate will also understand discipleship and Small Group ministry, communicate clearly, follow through relentlessly, and build systems without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Most importantly, he will genuinely enjoy Pastor Mike’s fast moving, relational, high expectation leadership style and desire to develop both a strong working relationship and friendship with him.

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About This Organization

Harvest Raleigh Church is a gospel centered, elder led church in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a strong commitment to biblical preaching, meaningful church membership, Small Groups, missions, and church planting.

The church was planted in 2009 by Pastor Mike Willis and has grown steadily from 33 members into a healthy congregation of approximately 215 people each weekend. Harvest is led by Pastor Mike alongside six lay elders and a committed ministry staff. The church was an original member of the Great Commission Collective and remains actively engaged in that network and its church strengthening and church planting mission.

One of the clearest markers of Harvest’s culture is participation. Small Groups are the primary pathway for discipleship, and the church has an unusually high level of volunteer engagement, with approximately 90 percent of members serving in some capacity. Harvest Kids serves roughly 45 to 65 children each Sunday, while the student ministry regularly engages 30 to 40 middle and high school students.

Harvest is known for being welcoming, stable, relational, and deeply committed to Scripture. The church combines expositional preaching with a strong emphasis on practical obedience and seeks to form disciples who do not simply know biblical truth, but live it. Its theology is conservative, broadly baptistic, elder led, complementarian, and Reformed leaning, with a thoughtful and cautious openness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Executive Pastor will be joining a church with a well established identity and deeply rooted members. The goal is not to change Harvest’s DNA, but to strengthen the organizational systems, communication, leadership development, and execution that will allow its ministry to flourish in the years ahead.

Location

Raleigh is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic cities in the Southeast, offering a unique combination of professional opportunity, family life, education, recreation, and Southern hospitality.

Harvest Raleigh is located in North Raleigh in Wake County, part of the broader Research Triangle region. The area is shaped by major universities including NC State, Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and nearby Wake Forest, as well as Research Triangle Park and its concentration of technology, science, healthcare, engineering, and professional industries.

The surrounding community is highly family oriented, with strong participation in youth sports, parks, outdoor activities, and local events. Residents also enjoy access to professional sports, including NHL hockey, Minor League Baseball, and professional women’s soccer, along with the college athletics culture of the ACC.

While Raleigh is the state capital and part of a growing metropolitan region, many of its surrounding communities retain a smaller city feel. North Raleigh and Wake County offer a wide range of suburban neighborhoods, schools, parks, restaurants, and community amenities, making the area especially attractive for families and professionals.

Harvest describes its surrounding community as active, highly committed, and filled with people who invest deeply in the organizations and relationships they value. The church reports an average home price in its immediate area of approximately $428,000.

For the next Executive Pastor, Raleigh offers both a compelling place to live and a significant ministry opportunity in one of the most influential and rapidly developing regions of North Carolina.

Position Profile

Mission, Vision, and Values

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