When will we have a new rector?

While a few people have asked members of the search committee how much longer the new rector search is going to take, many parishioners don’t appear to be overly concerned about how long the search will take. It has been almost a year since Father Wise retired and seven months since the search committee was named, so it's a good time to revisit where we are in the process and what happens next.

In the past seven months, the search committee has been organizing the work required to conduct the search and getting input from parishioners about who we are as a church and what our hopes and dreams for the future are. All that work was necessary to help determine what exactly we are looking for in a new rector and to prepare information about the parish to send to potential candidates once we begin advertising the position. Your input on the surveys and the parishwide meetings have been extremely helpful as we seek to define who we are. We are planning to share the information that we collected with the parish and the vestry.

We are in the final stages of preparing that document and will soon be shifting gears to a different phase of the search. In the coming weeks, we will advertise the position opening in several different places to conduct a national search. Forms will be available for parishioners to recommend candidates for the position. Absolute confidentiality will be maintained regarding the individuals being considered.

Once a list of candidates is compiled, each person will be carefully screened and the search committee will conduct phone interviews with selected candidates. After the phone interviews, the candidate list will be shortened again and members of the search committee will visit the candidates in their churches. Once that second round of screening is completed, the search committee will recommend three to five candidates to the vestry.

The vestry will then consider the candidates and arrange for them to visit St. Paul's and be interviewed by the vestry. The vestry will evaluate the candidates and make a selection, which must then be approved by Bishop John Bauerschmidt.

It usually takes between 12 and 18 months from start to finish and the search committee members believe we should do this on God's schedule. We know that all of you have many questions about the process and want to know what is happening. As new information is available, we will include it in the Evangel and on bulletin boards in the parish hall.

We ask that you continue to pray for us, for our church, and for the new rector.