In lots of ways he is and in lots of ways he is not. Paul was the Lead Pastor of Woodridge and now Zac will be. But Paul was also the Lead Pastor of our network and the founder of Woodridge and our network. Drew Johnson is going to become the Lead Pastor of the network but neither Drew or Zac or the two of them together will really be replacing Paul. This transition and Paul’s retirement from full-time ministry is the end of an incredibly faithful and fruitful era for Paul and his wife Darla, for Woodridge, and for our network. With it comes new staff, new leaders, and new organizational structures. 

We also believe that God has always been leading and guiding us and so that baton of faith in God, and faithfulness toward God is the one that is being passed. And, it isn’t just Paul and Darla passing it to the next generation of staff leaders — it is a baton that they have been continually passing to all of us for years now and we’re just continuing in that same direction. 

Zac is a very gifted leader and an exceptional teacher. He is humble, entrepreneurial, team oriented, and he has a heart for people who don’t know Jesus. He is excited about getting to work for Paul for a time and then with him in Paul’s next chapter at Woodridge. He is also really looking forward to the dynamics of working with Drew and Aaron and the rest of the leadership team in helping the network and Woodridge thrive.  

He is currently working at a church similar to Woodridge and similar to our network in some ways that make us confident he will be a good fit in our team approach and in an organization that has some additional layers and complexities. 

Zac’s previous experience is different in some helpful ways too. Westwood has three locations and it’s original location is significantly larger. We believe Zac will have a lot to teach in addition to having a lot to learn as he steps into his new role at Woodridge and in our network.  

Throughout the succession planning process connected to Paul’s retirement we have been targeting the fall of 2025 as the time when Paul would retire from full-time ministry. Our initial thought was that we would have Paul and his successor overlap for at least a year and that Drew would take on the Lead Pastor of Aspen Grove job for a full year while Paul was still the Lead Pastor of Woodridge. 

However, we have always tried to be open to God’s timing within this process. In some ways we were more open to slowing down. But, we very clearly sense God’s activity in bringing this opportunity to Zac, to Woodridge, and to Aspen Grove so we are speeding up. 

Part of Zac being a candidate at all felt like we needed to be ready for Zac to be a candidate right now and adjust our timeline accordingly. 

We are arriving at this moment as quickly as we possibly could have not because we are rushing but because we are ready. At several different moments opportunities to slow down were built in if anyone on the Overseers or Leadership Team needed more time or additional steps. 

We believe the speed at which we have arrived at this moment is an indication of God’s leading and the confidence of our Overseers and Leadership Team in the process and Zac as a candidate.  

Zac's first day at Woodridge will be August 1. But, he is going to preach four consecutive Sundays in July and August at Westwood because their Senior Pastor will be on his yearly summer study leave. So, Zac will start to be around Woodridge and the Aspen Grove staff in August but his first Sunday preaching won't be until August 26/27 at Woodridge. 

We wanted to offer Zac the job so that we could announce his candidacy and have our special member meeting before schools were out for the summer even though we knew in working with Westwood on the transition that Zac wouldn't start until later in the summer.

The Overseers and Site Leaders finalized a set of goals and a timeline at the end of February 2023. In early March Pastor Drew was going to Arizona as a guest of World Vision to attend their Pastors Gathering. Our network is pretty invested financially and logistically with Compassion International and they do similar things to World Vision so we weren’t interested in starting a new partnership. But, Drew got invited three times by two different people. As the time for the trip approached someone told Drew that “God must have a reason for you being in Arizona.” So, Drew asked the Mercy Hill prayer team to pray for him during his time on the trip. It was on this trip that Drew and Zac connected with each other for the first time about Zac’s desire to become a Lead Pastor in the near future and Woodridge’s plan to hire a new Lead Pastor in the near future.   

After this initial conversation Drew met with Paul, Paul talked to Zac about his interest and then talked to Joel Johnson (the Senior Pastor at Westwood Community Church in Chanhassen where Zac works). Joel and Paul are friends, Westwood is a church plant from Wooddale like Woodridge, and we are obviously geographical neighbors so getting Joel’s ok on interviewing Zac was important. 

Once those initial interactions happened we brought up the possibility of Zac as a candidate to the Overseers. They took time to fast and pray, agreed that Zac was a great candidate worth interviewing and we continued to move forward with the process that eventually also included the Leadership Team and has now led us to recommend Zac to our members.

This has actually been a really long and diligent process that began getting clarified in 2018. At various points throughout the years we have updated members and staff about the broad strokes of Paul’s retirement. It may feel fast and in many ways the last few months have involved a lot of meetings and prayer and interviews and discernment in a more condensed timeframe than in previous months. But, that was always going to be the case with the months leading up to announcing a candidate we were recommending to be the next Lead Pastor at Woodridge. 

So, it hasn’t been fast but it has been sudden for a lot of people. We think that the overlap time where Zac is on staff but not in his role as Lead Pastor at Woodridge will be a great time to get to know him and for him to get to know Woodridge, and our network.

We utilized the Overseers and the Leadership Team as parallel search committees rather than recruiting an additional search team made up of people from outside of this group because we felt like confidentiality was important with Zac working close by at Westwood and wanting to tell our staff and our entire church after we had decided whether or not to offer Zac the job and after he had accepted. 

In some of our initial conversations about the Woodridge Lead Pastor job we talked about someone “like Zac” because some of us were familiar with him and we felt like he was exactly the type of person with the type of gifting, experience, and commitment to a team based leadership approach we would be looking for. When we found out he would be interested in the opportunity at Woodridge we fasted and prayed about looking at him exclusively and felt a great sense of peace that this was the right approach. 

Interviewing a single candidate for an opportunity is something that we have done in our past. It is the approach we used when we hired Drew Johnson and Austin Holmes as High School Pastor at Woodridge and it is the approach we took when we hired Aaron Sorenson as pastor of The Exchange and The Highlands. Those other situations involved an internal candidate so this is the first time we have done it with an external candidate but it felt like a process we were familiar with and Zac was an external candidate we felt very comfortable with because some of our staff participated in his ordination council and he works at Westwood Community Church which, like Woodridge, is a church plant of Wooddale Church. 

And, whether we interviewed several candidates initially or took them one at a time, hiring for a Lead Pastor job is always like this. It always involves the most time being spent with a single candidate where mutual discernment brings that candidate and the team the church utilizes to agreement that they are a fit together. 

We are bringing Zac after that period of examination and discernment and recommending him to our members.

A tool that some churches utilize to recruit potential candidates is to ask members of their community for recommendations. Another tool is to advertise a job on staffing websites. And, churches also utilize paid search firms that recruit and sort through candidates. All of those tools are ones we were aware of and may or may not have utilized if this process had developed in the way and at the pace we anticipated. Instead, we believe God prepared us through the parts of our process we had worked through and then brought us the right person at His right time. We also believe God was preparing Zac and his family and brought Zac to us when he and Cassie were ready. 

The Leadership Team and the Overseers reviewed Zac’s biography and some documents Zac created in 2018 about ministry, leadership and what he believes about the Bible and theology. We also asked Zac to review our statement of faith and our statement on human sexuality that our entire staff affirms when they are hired and each year during our employee review period.

Then, the Leadership Team and Overseers each interviewed Zac covering questions around spiritual growth, formation, theology, outreach, leadership, team building, ministry, preaching, and teaching.

After that, we discussed Zac as a candidate and his answers to our questions and each group unanimously agreed to nominate him to our members as the next Lead Pastor of Woodridge Church.

Yes it is. Drew actually put it together at the beginning of 2023 as a way of helping us organize our answer as a staff and overseers about what Aspen Grove actually is and what that answer means for our future. One of the first things Drew did when he talked to Zac Bush about potentially working with us is to send him this website. After you are done with this page wander around a bit and check it out.