[Magdalen] Epiphany

[Christopher Hart]

At my parish we have a relatively new rector, about 16 months now, who is
very different from his predecessors. His churchmanship is lower than what
we were used to, but OTOH he is very likable on a personal level. The
parish may be changing, but time will tell. I'm not entirely happy with the
new status quo, but I'm not anxious to move anywhere either.

On Saturday, January 9, 2016, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Mahoney, W. Michael
> <wmmah at stoneledge.net <javascript:;>> 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
>


-- 

Christopher Hart

List Mail Address: cervus51 at gmail.com
Personal Mail: cervus at veritasliberat.net
Twitter: @cervus51