Director of Engagement

Location: Chicago (Hybrid, in office 3 days a week)

Position Summary

The Director of Engagement provides strategic leadership to help people move from initial connection with Fourth Presbyterian Church into meaningful participation, relationships, service, spiritual growth, and leadership. This role designs and oversees an integrated engagement pathway that welcomes newcomers, strengthens connection among members and regular participants, expands volunteer involvement, and equips people to contribute their gifts to the life and mission of the congregation.

Reporting to the Senior Associate Pastor, the Director of Engagement works across ministry areas to create clear, hospitable, and sustainable systems for connection. The position supervises the Director of Volunteer Ministry and collaborates closely with pastoral staff, program staff, communications staff, Chicago Lights staff, and congregational leaders.

The Director of Engagement combines strategic planning, organizational leadership, data-informed decision-making, theological reflection, and a warm personal presence. The successful candidate will convey that engagement is not merely attendance or recruitment but the cultivation of a diverse Christian community in which people are known, growing, serving, and participating in God’s work in Chicago and beyond.

Engagement Strategy and Leadership

• Develop and lead a comprehensive congregational engagement strategy that guides people from first contact to active participation, membership, small-group or formation involvement, service, leadership, and ongoing connection.
• Establish a clear and shared definition of engagement for Fourth Presbyterian Church, including meaningful measures of connection, belonging and participation.
• Assess existing pathways for visitors, prospective members, members, volunteers, and ministry participants to identify gaps, duplication, barriers, and opportunities for greater clarity and hospitality.
• Design practical next-step pathways for people at differing stages of relationship with the church, including first-time worshipers, online participants, new residents, families, long-time members, and people returning after a period of absence.

Newcomer and Membership Engagement

• Oversee systems that ensure visitors and prospective members receive timely, personal, and appropriate follow-up.
• Strengthen processes for welcoming, orienting, and integrating newcomers into the worshiping and serving community.
• Partner with pastors and ministry leaders to plan and evaluate membership exploration, new-member welcome, and opportunities for relationship-building after membership.
• Create opportunities for newcomers and newer members to meet staff, lay leaders, peers, and ministry representatives in settings that encourage genuine connection.

Relationship Building and Congregational Belonging

• Oversee a Sunday morning community time (coffee hour) in which worshipers and program participants are actively welcomed and invited into meaningful connection.
• Develop practices that foster connection among online participants in worship and ministry programs.
• Support engagement initiatives that are attentive to the realities of church membership, including varied schedules, commuting patterns, online participation, and changing patterns of religious affiliation.
• Encourage accessible and inclusive participation for people of different ages, abilities, family configurations, cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic circumstances, and levels of familiarity with church life.

Systems, Data, and Communication

• Establish reliable systems for tracking engagement activity, follow-up, volunteer involvement, attendance or…