Diocesan Office

November 1, 2007- the Search Committee spent most of the Monday meeting going at The Questionnaire with hammer, tongs, scissors, needle-and-thread, and scotch tape.

You all will have gathered from Tim's letter that the Search Committee
spent most of the Monday meeting going at The Questionnaire with
hammer, tongs, scissors, needle-and-thread, and scotch tape. It's a
tremendously important document, since it will be the primary (though
NOT the only) method of collecting and codifying the concerns and
hopes of all the parish's members for the future of the parish and
what sort of rector we hope to have lead us into that future. So it's
got to cover an awful lot of ground and include a great many
considerations, and do it efficiently enough that it won't swamp you
when it arrives in the mail. We think we've got it worked out now,
between our intensely careful reading and discussion and the
Transition Committee's equally intense and thoughtful reading and
discussion. Your job is to fill it out. If it looks too long to you,
it may help to think that it should only take you 15-30 minutes
(unless you want to write to us at great length--we all took it to
make sure it'd only take <30 min.). It will have taken us hours and
hours to work out and hours and hours to compile. That's fine--we all
signed on to this amount of work, but we'd be VERY grateful if you all
would sign on to do your parts.

There is also a concerns/suggestion/input box in the Great Hall, the
periodically present "Lucy-Booth", and the Focus Group Meetings that
we'll be announcing very shortly.

The other matter we discussed was the time-line. The short version is
that we are planning to have the Profile together to submit to the
diocese by early February. Once that's approved and published, the
process goes into another gear and we start dealing with the actual
search. We are aiming to have called a new Rector by the summer. The
schedule Stover Babcock has drawn up is realistic, so this is a
realistic possibility, which is pretty exciting, if a little bit
exhausting to contemplate. As you pray for us, please pray for
stamina as well as wisdom.