Search Committee Completes First Round of Interviews
Summer is almost over and it’s been a busy one for your Search Committee. In my 35 years of church work, I’ve never been part of a harder working group. We meet weekly for two hours at a time, usually on Sunday after worship. In between meetings, we are interviewing candidates, watching sermons, talking to our networking contacts, and planning next steps.
We have completed our first round of candidate Zoom interviews - our first major milestone. If you recall, these two-hour interviews focused on the candidates’ history in ministry. We start out by having them tell us how they became a person of faith. Then we have them walk us through their resume, explaining how their faith informed their career path. We asked them 10+ questions dealing with topics such as preaching, worship and music, pastoral care, leadership and administration, crisis management, mission and justice work, fundraising, staff development, strategic planning, and their relationship with their congregation. We’ve found that two hours often is not enough to cover all our questions, so we let the candidates answer the remaining questions in writing.
The selection process is two-way. The candidates are evaluating us as well. We tried to allow time in this first interview for them to ask us questions but in several cases, we’ve had to schedule follow-up Zoom sessions. They ask great questions. We are committed to giving each candidate the time needed to fully understand our church and our congregation.
With the interviews completed, we evaluated our candidates and have chosen seven of them - The Magnificent Seven, as we affectionally refer to them - to proceed to Round Two interviews. These will all take place in September and will focus on how the candidate would work with our church to achieve its longer-term goals and vision.
I want to emphasize our unique situation. We are a church recovering from a decade in which key areas of our church were neglected and need to be rebuilt. Under the leadership of our two amazing interim ministers, Dr. Layne Smith and Dr. Tim Moore, we have dealt with our trauma, worked through the healing process, and begun looking forward instead of backward. We can be proud of how we have all rolled up our sleeves and already begun the work of rebuilding. We are ready for a strong leader who can partner with us to make our church whole again. This leader is going to have to want the challenge of working with an elderly congregation to attract new, young members. The goal of our committee is to find the candidate who has both the desire as well as the skill set needed.
The candidates we are advancing to Round 2 fit this bill. They are completely aware of our situation and are energized by the prospect of working with us. They include men and women, black and white, straight and gay. They come from multiple denominations.
After our Round Two interviews, we will narrow our candidate list down to just two or three. We will have these candidates visit Charlotte for in-person interviews. We will also engage in extensive reference checking. Our goal is to complete our search in October, if possible, which means we may have our finalist ready to introduce to the church this Fall. This is our goal, not a hard commitment. And remember, our new Senior Minister’s start date will likely not coincide with search completion. He or she will need time to prepare their current church for their departure and several of our candidates have families with young children and, if called, would wait to move after the school year.
These discernment decisions will be among the most difficult of our lives due to the engaging personalities, high character, and spiritual gifts we appreciate in each candidate. It has been our joy and privilege to get to know them. With each step we depend on God’s spirit to lead us.
As always, thank you for your support of our team and continue to keep our church in your prayers.