Apologies to everyone for not keeping up with these reports. Chairing the Central Board created a heavy workload, and the notes from Forward Chats tended to get moved to the back burner. Writing on May 10, 2020 (Mother’s Day), I am reporting on nine meetings held from November 2019 through March 2020. In most cases, the whiteboard notes were brief. In a few, there were none taken. I am reporting what information I can find.
Meeting #26 – December 1, 2019:
Establishing Working Teams and Pastoral Search 3 (Shepherd’s Staff)
One part of this meeting touched on some of the new working teams:
1. Sanctuary – to take care of communion, ushers and greeters
2. Thematic Worship [later called “Worship Design”] – grew in part out of earlier Worship Committee that focused on decorating the sanctuary [but this was not the purpose of the new Worship Design Team]
3. Visitation – including prayer shawls, distributing cards and flowers to shut-ins, as well as visitation proper
Since the Board was planning to talk with Brian Coday of The Shepherd’s Staff (the Texas pastoral headhunting firm) at their next meeting on December 3, we asked the group at Forward Chats what kinds of questions or concerns they wanted us to bring up. The list included:
· Will they be able to find women ministers?
· Would they be helping us find an Interim or Settled pastor? [answer is Settled]
· What are their theological assumptions/predilections?
· Can they find someone ordained in and/or approved to preach in the UCC?
· What exactly would we be paying for – need details.
· What exactly is in the contract?
· What is their process?