We are very blessed to have a staff full of people who believe in the vision of OneLife so much that they are willing to be volunteer staff, verrrrrry part-time staff, or bare-bones-living-on-love full-time staff. In fact, talking with a larger church a couple months ago it was discovered that our entire staff gets paid barely more than one pastor at a church they planted.

Now don’t get me wrong. We don’t always want to stay here!

But for now it’s amazing to see people willing to do whatever it takes to see us reach our dreams and goals of being the church God has called us to be. This week we added two more people in official roles. Once again, they are either doing it for free or next-to-nothing!

Dylan Martin – Student Ministry

Dylan started attending OneLife a few months ago and quickly hit the ground running. He has a heart for students like none I have ever seen and over the past couple of weeks has taken this opportunity to run wild with his passion. Dylan has served at several other churches in the role of student pastor and brings that experience to OneLife.

What got me excited about Dylan is his shared passion that he has to lead a ministry that fits what OneLife is already doing. He has no desire to create a “church-within-a-church” kind of student ministry that happens at so many churches. Our student ministry will be small groups based and encourage students to volunteer and serve with other OneLifers.

I don’t think I’ve been this excited since we launched 8 months ago! Contact Dylan at students@onelifeknox.com or call the church office at 865.238.4242.

Natalie Dixon – Assistant to Lead Pastor

Natalie is a life saver! Her job is to protect me from myself. One thing I didn’t anticipate when we launched this church is just how much time I would end up spending on administrative duties and tasks. Things like returning emails, scheduling meetings, tracking expenses, returning phone calls, answering basic questions, etc. that kept me from focusing on studying for Sundays, leading the staff, and doing what only I could do as pastor.

So enter Natalie. She is now managing my calendar, email (which all of you who have waited weeks for a response – if you ever got one – are excited about!), answering basic questions, tracking my credit card receipts (which will also make our bookkeeper very happy…since 3 months of statements are on my desk!) and setting up any meetings that are needed along the way. So basically, if you need me – she is the one to go to! I won’t have a clue otherwise To do just that, email her at pastor@onelifeknox.com or call the church office at 865.238.4242.

I am so thankful for the staff God has brought together at OneLife and their heart to reach the disconnected and unchurched in our community. Why don’t you do me a favor? Visit www.onelifeknox.com/staff and pray for each of these folks. And even though I’m not listed on that same page, I could use a prayer too!

Thanks OneLife. I truly love each of you with all of my heart!

How We Met: I met Kydon when he was a freshman at UT and he came to a Bible study I led for new students. Over the years I got to know Kydon better as he became more and more involved with ministry at UT and his wife and my wife became close through a small group Bible study they did together.

What He Does: Kydon works part-time for OneLife and part-time for the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at UT. For the BCM, Kydon oversees the ministry to new students and for OneLife he oversees our volunteer ministry. That means he is responsible for plugging people in to various areas of ministry and making sure that all of our areas are covered on Sunday mornings. This is a huge role because at this point, Volunteer Ministry acts as our small groups and our main strategy for assimilating new people into our church.

Sunday Responsibilities: Kydon’s day starts by overseeing pretty much all of our setup in terms of making sure we have people in the right places to get it all done. Under his leadership our setup has gone from an hour and a half to an hour at the most and some days as little as 45 minutes. He then makes sure that each volunteer knows where they need to be and helps new volunteers plug in to different ministry teams as they try to discover their role. At the end of each service, Kydon hosts “The Tour” which is a behind-the-scenes look at OneLife for new volunteers to see all of the many opportunities we have for them to serve. Then he probably goes home and crashes after a long but fun-filled day at OneLife.