Posted: 2/06/04
BGCT online ministerial job search
engine now available in Spanish
DALLAS The Baptist General Convention of Texas has launched what is believed to be the first online Spanish ministry job search engine.
Ministers can post their resumes and search for positions online in Spanish via the Church Personnel Information Services site, www.cpis.org/sp/. Churches also can display vacancies and sort through resumes in Spanish.
The site is the first BGCT web page translated completely into Spanish at the request of ministers.
As Olivia Lerma, manager of CPIS, spoke to church leaders statewide about the English site, www.cpis.org, pastors asked her to translate the material for Spanish-speaking congregations to use it more easily. Some were having their children translate the page so they could use it.
“We had a lot of people ask us about it,” Lerma commented. “A lot of pastors said we go online, but we can't understand it.”
The system will help Spanish-speaking Baptists find ministry positions and churches find bilingual or Spanish-speaking candidates for vacant positions, Lerma said. After three weeks, the Spanish site had eight resumes posted, but interest is building as word of the resource spreads.
Lerma expects the Spanish site to grow steadily as the English service did when it started.
Two other resources have been translated into Spanish. The first assists ministers who are putting together a resume. The other provides tools to help a search committee find a minister.
More than 1,700 resumes are posted on the English site. There currently are 218 church vacancies through the service, and Lerma is working to increase that number. She is contacting churches daily to encourage them to use the service. The free resource for BGCT-affiliated churches receives about 500,000 hits a month.
“I am very grateful for CPIS,” commented Benito Villarreal, who served as interim pastor of Genesis Church in Hereford. “This is an invaluable resources and tool that was made available to us.”
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.