Matthew L. Tinkham, Jr.
the journey and reflections of a passionate pastor-teacher
"... his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot" (Jeremiah 20:9 NIV).
"I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, ... preach the word!"
(II Timothy 4:1-2 ESV)
Management
Executing responsibilities in a timely and organized fashion
and helping others to do the same
A. Skilled in Organizing Special Events
Below are samples of documents I created to help keep me and my team organized when planning and implementing my first public evangelism series in 2005 at Collegedale Academy in Collegedale, Tennessee.
"Prophecy Unveiled" Flyer/Poster
"Prophecy Unveiled" Planning Calendar
"Prophecy Unveiled" Marketing Campaign to Local Churches
"Prophecy Unveiled" Survey Data & Attendance Record
"Prophecy Unveiled" Attendance Ticket
"Prophecy Unveiled" Committees
"Prophecy Unveiled" Nightly Schedule
"Prophecy Unveiled" Decision Cards
"Prophecy Unveiled" Attendee Survey
"Prophecy Unveiled" Registration Cards
B. Responsible in Financial Oversight
The church's financial base consists of the generous, Spirit-led donations of our members in tithe and offering contributions. As these monies are sacred in that they belong to Lord, they require intentional stewardship. Every month, I take time to review my treasurers' financial reports prior to and during board meetings.
Sample of Treasurer's Report for the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church
Sample of Treasurer's Report for the Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church
Since the beginning of my pastorate at the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church in July of 2019, God has blessed the church with membership growth that has had a direct impact on giving. Below, is a five-year comparison of the local church budget, tithe, and total giving from 2017 to October 2021, created by the treasurer, Donna Asbury.
The following document is a resource of local church financial policy that then-treasurer Joseph Hamilton created in consultation with then-senior pastor Peter Kulakov and myself, the finance committee, and the church board of the Lakeview Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Financial Policy Handbook of the Lakeview Seventh-day Adventist Church
In order to avoid the "appearance of evil," uphold my personal integrity and public reputation, and be fully transparent concerning my financial oversight of my churches, I intentionally keep a healthy distance from the churches' treasuries. I am not named on any church bank account, I do not have access to my churches' checkbooks or debit and credit cards, and I allow the treasurers of my churches to make most of the purchases, especially large ones. When I do need to make a minor purchase for my churches, I get prior approval from my treasurers and/or church boards for the purchase, use my own credit card, and make reimbursement requests in writing via hardcopy forms so that there is a paper trail. To demonstrate the careful oversight of my treasurers and me for church finances, I have included our most recent audit reports.
2021 Audit Report for the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church
2020 Audit Report for the Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church
This church will be undergoing an audit again on February 15, 2022.
C. Skilled in Church Governance
Below, are the resources that I use to guide my management of church board and committee meetings. While I seek to maintain an atmosphere of friendliness and informality, I also strive to keep meetings moving efficiently by following good parliamentary procedures and denominational policies.
I have uploaded some board meeting and business meeting agendas that demonstrate my organization and skill in chairing meetings.
Sample of Church Board Meeting Agendas of the Hiram Seventh-day Adventist Church
Sample of Church Board Meeting Agendas of the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church
Sample of Church Business Meeting Agendas of the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church
Sample of Church Board Meeting Agendas of the Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church
Sample of Church Business Meeting Agendas of the Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church
D. Gets Things Done on Time
Click here to see a very rough outline of my weekly schedule that I created at the beginning of my pastorate in the Knoxville Grace/Lenoir City church district.
I utilize some key technologies to help me meet personal, family, and ministry deadlines and appointments.
Apple's iCalendar in iCloud—an application that helps me to coordinate with my wife our personal, family, and work/ministry appointments.
ToDoist—an application that provides me with a platform for organizing ministry tasks, assigning deadlines to them, and tracking my progress of completing them on time.
Calendly—an application that I use to open time on my calendar for church members to schedule visitations and meetings with me.
I also use an Apple Watch to track my health goals, keep an eye on the time, and alert me to upcoming appointments through vibrations on my wrist.
E. Available to Members and Ensures Visitation
Accessibility
It is important to me to be accessible and available to my congregants.
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I make myself available to answer/make phone calls and send/receive text messages, social media messages, and e-mail from 09:00 a.m. to 09:00 p.m. except during my Pastor's Day-off on Mondays, holidays, and when I take vacation time.
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Additionally, I have both of my churches' phone numbers forwarded to my cell phone, using Google Voice, so that there is always someone to answer church calls and respond to voicemails.
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I publish my contact information in the weekly worship bulletins, in my monthly e-letters and digital announcements, and on the church websites. I also carry around business cards to distribute when doing visitations or at meetings.
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I post my weekly church office hours, which are presently Wednesdays and Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 02:30 p.m. in the pastoral study at the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church. Moreover, I send out my monthly calendar in every e-letter so that members know what I am doing and when I am doing it.
Visitation
Visitation is the life-blood of any successful pastoral ministry, as it enables the pastor to come to know better his/her members individually and understand their spiritual journey and present needs. To ensure regular visitation occurs, I do the following in my ministry.
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I create fellowship opportunities with members nearly every Sabbath by my family and I contributing to and eating with them at weekly fellowship meals.
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I included an invitation for pastoral visitations every month in my e-letter, as well as a link to my Calendly schedule where members can sign up for a visitation time during the open slots on my calendar. I work with my elders and other church leaders to receive communication from them regarding the known needs of members for pastoral visitations.
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I make a personal attempt to visit all of my members in their homes once a year. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made this difficult. Many of my visits are now done by phone or video conferencing.
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I have set up small parishes of church members under visitation teams composed of an elder, deacons, and deaconesses. Click here for an example from the Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church.
F. Promotes Risk and Crisis Management
Risk Management
Keeping my parishioners safe is a top priority. For this reason, I ensure that each of my churches always has a designated safety and security officer, who is intentional about identifying and remedying potential risk factors. The safety and security officer does an entire-campus safety and security inspection annually and reports his/her findings to the church board to be addressed. We also have the fire department inspect all of the fire extinguishers and detectors annually and third-party companies service our HVAC systems every six months to ensure all is in working order. Additionally, I lead my church boards in assessing and updating our overall church safety plans annually and our COVID-19 response monthly. Below, are some examples of these plans that I had a hand in writing.
2012 Safety Plan for the Hiram Seventh-day Adventist Church
"Our Response to COVID-19" (Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church)
"Safety Plan for Reopening during the COVID-19 Pandemic" (Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church)
In 2021, I began reviewing our property values and insurance coverage annually with my church boards to make sure that our church liability and property insurances aligned with current property replacement costs and coverage needs.
Balancing the safety of my churches and continuing our ministry was a major challenge that required a lot of wisdom, counsel, and trial by error. One of the major initiatives, of which I was the main "mover and shaker." was having air and surfacing purifying ionization units installed in our facilities' HVAC systems to reduce significantly the risk of spreading illnesses, such as COVID-19 and the flu. Click here for more information about this safety initiative. See above for the guidelines I drafted under church board advisory for the Knoxville Grace and Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Churches to address safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Crisis Management
To become better equipped to triage crisis situations, I did some continuing education credits (CEUs) in March of 2013 with the Suicide Prevention Resource Center on the subject of "Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk: Core Competencies for Mental Health Professionals." I learned how to assess suicide risk and create a suicide prevention safety plan with individuals who come to me expressing that they are struggling with suicidal ideation and/or planning.
Additionally, I have used the following document for finding counseling and mental health resources in the area of Knoxville, Tennessee, to which I can refer people after I have been the "first responder" for them.
Knoxville Counseling and Mental Health Resource Guide
G. Practices and Promotes Holistic Stewardship
While most think of money when they hear the term "stewardship," the reality is that this concept goes beyond finances to encompass proper management of all one's resources that can be memorably be summarized as the four Ts:
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treasure (i.e., finances, assets, etc.),
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time,
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talents, and
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temple of God (i.e., health and wellness of body, mind, and spirit).
Since I mention my stewardship of the latter three Ts in other parts of this portfolio, I will concentrate here on the first T.
Practice of Stewardship
Personally, I went through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University in 2006 to learn how to better manage my own finances before I transitioned to university, gaining more financial independence. Soon after getting married in 2011, my wife and I purchased a lifetime subscription to Mvelopes, a personal finance and budgeting software that is essentially a web-based electronic version of the old envelopes system of managing money. This has truly been a lifesaver for us! It has helped us to live within our means, build savings, and reduce/eliminate debt. It even has free financial management vides that users can watch (which I have viewed) and other tips and tools to promote personal financial health.
Additionally, my wife and I have a strong ethic to be cheerful and generous givers. The first then we do with our pay from our professions is give 10% of it to the church as our tithe and another 10% in systematic giving to the ministries of our local churches. On occasion, we felt led by the Holy Spirit to give freewill offers to special causes and mission projects.
Promotion of Stewardship
Click below to view a 3-part stewardship sermon series on Matt 6 that I preached at the Knoxville Grace and Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Churches in 2020 when many were struggling financially during the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of the series was to remind people that God will take care of them through any and all financial difficulties and to encourage them to be faithful in giving.
"How to Live WORRY-FREE in the COVID-19 Pandemic"
It is my goal to arrange a special guest speaker to talk to my churches about the importance of stewardship and share practical tips and resources to help my churches to be better stewards and even more generous givers. In 2021, Ray Hartwell, director of Planned Giving & Trust Services for the Georgia-Cumberland Conference came. Click here to watch/listen to his presentation titled "It's a Matter of Trust." In 2022, Stephen Reese, Trust Officer and Field Representative for the Georgia-Cumberland Conference will be coming to speak to my churches about stewardship.
Every month, I dedicate a section of my church e-letter to encourage giving, highlight different methods for giving, and supply my churches with links to our Adventist Giving pages.
H. Articulates Clearly in Oral and Written Communication
Bulletin
I use printed announcements in the weekly Sabbath worship bulletins to communicate important information to my churches who read them.
Website
The churches' websites are also helpful resources for communicating with members, but mostly with members of the churches' respective communities.
Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church Website
Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church Website
To view an archive of recent e-letters and announcements that I regularly send to my churches, click here. I use a web-based platform called MailChimp to create these types of communication. To communicate electronically with my church leaders day to day, I send standard e-mails through my conference e-mail account, mtinkham@gccsda.com.
Phone
I utilize a web-based platform called CallingPost to send phone and text messages to my congregations quickly and efficiently, especially those who do not use communication technologies, such as e-mail, social media, and text messaging.
Social Media
Social media has become an important modern means of communication, and many of my members regularly check their various social media profiles. So, I primarily use our church Facebook pages to communicate with those who prefer that form of communication.
Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church Facebook Page
Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church Facebook Page
I. Proficient in Social Media and Computing
Social Media
Here is a list of the social media accounts that I manage.
Knoxville Grace Seventh-day Adventist Church Facebook Page
Lenoir City Seventh-day Adventist Church Facebook Page
Computing
In middle school, I took a basic computing extracurricular class that taught me how to perform basic functions on the computer. I completed a more advanced class in computing skills when in university. In high school, I took a computer typing class that taught me the proper placement of my hands on the keyboard and what fingers I am to use to push certain keys. My current typing speed is about 65 words per minute (WPM) with 98% accuracy. I also took classes in using word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentation, database, desktop publishing, and website design software. I went on to take more advanced versions of these classes specifically for Microsoft Office products (i.e., Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) during my first two years in university. Another helpful class I took during high school was accounting, which further strengthened my proficiency in using spreadsheets software.
Additionally, my years of work in office settings have required a high level of computing skills to carry out the responsibilities of those jobs.
01/2006–09/2008 RE/MAX Properties in Chattanooga, TN
Realtor Office Assistant
Performed typical office work for the Darwin White Realty Team, such as answering phones, filling out paperwork, designing advertisements, creating presentations, filing, mailing, e-mailing, database entry, etc.
05/2009–12/2010 Records and Advisement, Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, TN
Office Assistant
Performed typical office work, such as answering phones, filling out paperwork, designing flyers, creating advertisements and presentations, filing, mailing, e-mailing, database entry, HTML coding to create a website, degree-audit coding, making fillable forms in Adobe Acrobat, etc.
04/2016–01/2019 Andrews University Seminary Studies, SDA Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, MI
Editorial Assistant
Assisted the editors in evaluating the content and writing of articles and book reviews, selecting journal contents, and supervising the publication process (refereeing, copy editing, and formatting) from start to finish.
Performed office management tasks, such as answering phones, scanning and filing documents, sending out mailings, e-mail communications, managing the inventory of the print and digital archives, website design and upkeep, etc.
Used Adobe software products, such as InDesign and PhotoShop, to create publications.
