December Ministerial Search Update
Ministerial Search Update: Now we know what busy is!
We have been meeting weekly for months now, and working between meetings, and we are proud of what we have accomplished. We have completed our self-study, we have written our informational materials, we have duplicated masses of printed and electronic information, we have put together a draft agreement and financial package. Now we have come to realize it is just a warm-up, the real endurance test is ahead of us.
Look on the Ministerial Search bulletin board at church, or on the TJMC website, and you will see our timeline of events. We are entering the part of the search process where we start looking at candidates, reviewing their information and narrowing down the field to the three or four candidates we will bring to Charlottesville next year for in -person interviews. Our timing is extremely tight and we will be spending more time, both in meetings and on our own.
This is also the part of the search where we will be very tight-lipped. Until we have narrowed our pool of candidates to the one person we think is the best fit for our congregation, we are not going to be sharing any specifics. Here is how we are going to do that narrowing.
Round 1: We got our first list of candidates on Tuesday, November 11. These are ministers officially in search who have said they would like to consider us. Each committee member read each of these profiles and the group decided which ones to advance to
Round 2: We exchanged packets with a smaller group of candidates. In an intense couple of weeks, we each read all the packets, meeting almost daily to pass packets to each other. The logistics were daunting, the workload heavy, the discussions spirited.
Rounds 3 and 4: In December, we will be narrowing our choices to the candidates we will invite for in-person interviews. Stay tuned!
