An Important Letter from the Vestry
To the Parish of Christ Church,
While the vestry has had the opportunity to speak with some of you regarding our transition and search for a new Rector, we wanted to reach out to everyone to provide as much information as possible, even if it is still incomplete. In the last few weeks we have been able to develop a fuller understanding of how our church community wants to proceed. In response, some of our planning has changed.
- As you know, it is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to Rev. Jane on June 25. While she will still be with us for some services through August, with Deacon Dennis filling in with Morning Prayer now and then, much of her time will be on her new duties with the Diocese starting June 26.
- The initial plan was to follow a very streamlined process that would see a new priest in place quickly with whom we would undertake a type of probationary period with an eye towards a long-term match.While this initially seemed attractive, we have now determined that this approach does not suit the wants of the parish. Accordingly, we will be slowing things down into a more traditional search.
- While Rev. Jane’s new job is actually to oversee transitions such as ours, we will be working with Canon Shawn Wamsley in our search process. Some of you met Canon Wamsley at our Winter Chess event. The vestry will be meeting him soon to get acquainted and start the process.
- As you may recall from our last discernment process, it was a long affair and entailed a lot of work by many hands with meetings and questionnaires to build our parish profile and website and some other documents that are required in the search process. All those things took several months and had to be completed before we could even begin to list the position and receive applicant information. That hard work by so many of you will serve us very well now. We will not be starting from scratch, and it should not take nearly the same amount of time or effort to prepare our new search.
- After our meeting with Canon Wamsley, we will be sure to share with you more about the required committees and the hopeful timeline. In the meantime, we will have supply priests, or possibly an Interim priest, and Deacon Dennis will be with us for other pastoral needs. And, of course, the vestry and finance committee, Mackenzie in communications, Nick in the office, and Josh at the organ will together take good care of everyone.
As you may recall, at the end of the committees and resumes, it is the vestry who ultimately identifies the next rector, based on the recommendations of the search committee. None of us wants to do that in a vacuum, and we are slowing the process down to give us the chance to speak with and hear from as many people as want to be heard. Please do not hesitate to contact me or any vestry member with any questions or thoughts about any of this.If you are interested in participating in any of the committees to do this work, definitely let me know.
Vestry Contact Information:
Sharon Cotter
Nicole Bowden
Earl Dempsey
Eileen Capozzoli
Shannon Hollar
Bruce Horne
Carol Parasink
Mike Barnard
Ken Mobley
Debbie Saul
Dresden Shumaker
Barbara Torrens