Hello All Souls Church family—T Vatnick and Morgan Duncan, your Ministerial Search Committee co-chairs, here to give you an update on the ministerial search!

As you probably know by now, our Committee, the All Souls Board of Trustees and the UUA, have all agreed that our next senior minister (starting August, 2024) should be a “developmental minister,” not a called settled minister. 

Developmental ministry is meant for congregations that have serious, and often chronic, structural, financial, spiritual issues and/or an aging historic building that needs work. Congregations work to identify deeper issues that have led to symptoms like burnout, conflict, and turnover. After identifying the needed work, congregations hire, by contract, a developmental minister to serve for a finite period of time (between four to seven years) and to help the congregation focus on that work.

Developmental Ministers hired to do this type of work are seasoned ministers, experienced enough to help a congregation take on big challenges that might be beyond the limits of a more junior settled minister.

The church decides on a set of 3-5 concrete goals for the period of developmental ministry.  These goals can be about finances, facilities, church culture, conflict, administrative processes– anything the congregation needs to work on. The ministerial search committee and All Souls Board of Trustees will create a draft set of goals and present them to the congregation and staff for feedback this fall before finalizing them.  There will be several sessions for you to provide input on the draft goals, both in person and on zoom, in October.

The UUA will pull together a list of approximately 6-8 developmental ministerial candidates in Spring, 2024 and the All Souls BOT and Ministerial Search Committee will interview, select and the Board will hire them.

After the developmental ministry is completed, All Souls should be in a much better position to call and settle a senior minister.

On behalf of the Ministerial Search Committee, we thank you in advance for your input.  See you in church!