Because of my work with a network of churches, I often get requests from people looking for church work. I am often amazed at the poor grammar in many of these requests, and in resumes that I receive. I got this one today. I have removed the person’s name, the name of the church, and the name of the town. It is not my desire to embarrass this young man; but rather to make a point. If you are trying to impress someone to help you look for a job where communication is one of the most important skills, you may want to have someone look over your request before sending it.
ACTUAL EMAIL:
Hey my name is _________ and I am the pastor son at ________ baptist church in ____________ NC and I am licence in the ministry and I am also have my associate degree in bibical studies and bachelor degree in Bible studies and I have been preaching at different churches for almost 3 years and I was was wondering are there any churches in this assocation looking for a supply pastor or intermin or full time pastor.
I have a few suggested improvements. Some of these are grammatical, other are stylistic:
- Don’t start a correspondence with someone you don’t know with “Hey”.
- Pastor’s son (possessive).
- Baptist (capitalized).
- __________, NC. (add comma after city name and period after “NC“).
- I am licensed (drop “and”, begin new sentence, spell “license” correctly and put it in the past tense).
- to the Ministry (replace “in” with “to”).
- I also have (drop “and”, begin new sentence, drop “am”).
- Associate’s Degree (capitalize and add possessive).
- Biblical Studies (capitalize and correct spelling).
- Bachelor’s Degree (capitalize and add possessive).
- Bible Studies (capitalize “studies” for consistency’s sake; was this the actual degree program?).
- I have been (drop “and”, start a new sentence).
- and I was (drop extra “was”).
- wondering if there are any church (reword).
- association (spell correctly).
- supply pastor, interim pastor, or full-time pastor. (reword, add comma, spell interim correctly, hyphenate full-time).
This may sound harsh, but I wouldn’t recommend him to a church based on this email. It also makes me wonder where he got his two degrees!