Pastoral Selection Committee Report

The Pastoral Selection Committee held its first meeting last night. If you need a refresher on the make-up of the committee, go to Tenth's website and follow the link from the front page. Because we are a Presbyterian committee, which conducts business "decently and in good order," we spent the time setting up our procedures. But you will see one result of the meeting on Sunday. We will have in the lobbies copies of a Senior Minister Profile DRAFT. I highlight the word "Draft" to emphasize that it is not a done product, and, indeed, the reason for putting it out is that you may review it and give your input if you wish. (In my own opinion, the profile leaves wide open a candidate who could come in with seditious ideas about what sports teams to publicly promote, something the last committee obviously did not consider.) The final version will find its way back to the Session for approval, and we will then make it public. We are also working on application forms, church profile, and other sundry forms.

Some of you may be bursting to recommend names of candidates. You may do that, of course, but it is going to be a good month before we actually get to names, and we have not set up the means yet by which to assure that suggested names are properly recorded. Your suggestions are more likely to get recorded if you wait a month.

Along that line, you can are welcome to give your ideas about who should be a candidate or what we should be looking for. But if you are talking to any of us on the committee, and we do nothing more than listen without giving a response, don't read too much into it. As of last night, we have officially taken on our responsibility as the committee and no longer have the freedom to to even appear to give our opinion about potential candidates.