“The Packet” and “The Process”
Thank you so much to the 55 people who attended the “Beyond Categorical Thinking” workshop, held after an excellent church service by Rev. Joel and Rev. Keith Kron, Director of the UUA’s Transitions Department. Since Keith is the guy who knows the most about ministers and churches in search this year, we wanted Keith to see what a good “catch” we are. As a Search Committee, we came away from the weekend with a lot to think about in terms of categorical thinking, as well as a lot of gratitude to Joel, Keith, and our congregation.
You can learn more about what happened at the workshop or try the exercises yourself at: www.uucantonny.org/our-church/ministerial-search/beyond-categorical-thinking-bct-workshop-2/
The Search Packet
As I (Theresa) write this, we’re in the throes of finishing our Ministerial Search Packet. The last Ministerial Search Packet was a binder, which continues to live in our Church Library. In today’s world, that packet will be completely online—and you’ll be able to view it! Every church in search of a new minister hopes to have their packet online on January 3, 2016. Working with David Pynchon, our website developer, Erika and I will get all of the parts of the packet online by then!
What IS the Packet?
After seeing our Congregational Record, ministers in search decide which churches they’d like to learn more about; those ministers request to see our packet and give us their packets. In ours, they’ll find letters of recommendation, a lot more information about who we are, and a wealth of information about our community and region. We think they’ll love what they see!
The Search Process
Below you’ll see where we are in the process for the next two months. To see the entire Search Process, which began in November 2014 and goes through September of 2016 go to
www.uucantonny.org/our-church/ministerial-search/the-search-process/.
January 2016
On January 3 our Ministerial Packet goes live online. Ministers who are interested in us will view UU Canton’s Ministerial Packet and we will read the packets from those ministers. Search Committee members will identify those ministers who appear to be a good fit and will conduct phone interviews with them. We will also call their listed references. Based on the phone interviews, we will select three or four pre-candidates who will travel here for weekend-long interviews, including neutral pulpit sermons at other UU churches in our region. We meet again, via Skype, with our Ministerial Search Representative, Rev. Craig Schwalenberg, to talk about our findings.
February and March 2016
Pre-candidating weekends! We’ll all be gone, spending an extended weekend with each of our three or four “pre-candidates.” We’ll hear them preach in a neutral pulpit and have lots of conversations. We will then receive summaries about each candidate from the UUA Transitions Office. We will interview pre-candidates’ previous employers, references provided by the candidate, and references developed through the interview process.
By the end of March, the Search Committee will gather all the information from the previous three months and spend time reflecting on our first choice candidate for our congregation.
What a lot of hard, challenging, and exciting work you are all doing. It’s crunch time and I suspect you are thinking of little else besides the search. Please know that we are grateful beyond words for your commitment to this important task and we know you are doing the very best you can. Thank you, thank you, thank you — and don’t forget to laugh, breathe, and sleep at least a little bit.
Amen and ditto to what Judy Gibson wrote. We, the Congregation, are so blessed to have such a hard working a dedicated team working on our behalf. Thank you for all you have done, are doing, and will do going forward. Exciting times.