[Magdalen] Epiphany

[Scott Knitter]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Mahoney, W. Michael
<wmmah at stoneledge.net> wrote:
> We are in the midst of a transition in my parish.  I kid our search
> committee that if our eventual "call" works out wonderfully, we will all
> say it is the work of the Holy Spirit.  But if it turns out to be a
> disaster, the search committee will get the blame.

One of our search committee members is ashamed at how things went with
our new rector. I told him I wish he didn't feel that way. We did our
job, and we fought off some attempts to prevent us doing our job;
there are things we now wish we had done differently; there are things
we couldn't have predicted. And we're not a professional corporate
recruiting department. I feel we did what we could. We followed some
diocesan advice that it's not worth it to go visit a candidate's
current parish because you can't interview the current parishioners
and you won't get a true picture of how the candidate will do in our
parish. Perhaps we'd visit anyway if we had it to do again. Or visit
the candidate's previous parishes and work through the current rector
to set up some confidential interviews with parishioners who would
have experienced our candidate's rectorship.

But if the search committee or any individual is blamed for a problem
with the new rector, something's askew. There's a process in place.
And be aware during the process of diocesan involvement, at least to
know what their agenda is so you can either work with it or against it
with clarity. (If against, I hope there would be frank discussions
rather than game-playing.)


-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA