Interim Pastor's Corner

February Newsletter

At the Congregational Meeting on Sunday, December 4, I talked about the Presbyterian process for calling a minister and the role of the congregation in that process. Since not everyone in our church family was able to be at that meeting I want to share with all of you what I said at that time in the newsletter this month. 

The process of calling a pastor began with your participation in the interim activities which led you to look at yourself as a church and then to think about the directions you believe God is calling our congregation to go in the future. You elected a Nominating Committee which was responsible for recommending people to be on the Pastor Nominating Committee. You suggested names to be considered for the PNC and then elected the Committee which is representative of the entire membership of our church. They were commissioned for their work at a worship service dur-ing which you promised to support them in this awesome task. 

Since their election, the PNC has been busy with their responsi-bilities. Because they place a high priority in keeping you in-formed about where they are in this process, they have commu-nicated with you in a variety of ways - charts in the hallway, regu-lar reports at both worship services, and individual conversations. 

In addition to being a function of our congregation, our search for a new minister is a partnership between First Church Franklin represented by the PNC and the Presbytery of Western North Carolina. The presbytery is always actively involved in this search process. As soon as an active minister leaves a church, it is assigned a Committee on Ministry liaison who works with the Session during the interim period and the PNC during the active search process. 

As the PNC began their work they participated in a workshop where they were given an official manual that lays out the poli-cies and procedures for how a congregation goes about looking for a minister in THIS presbytery. As you know, other denomina-tions and even other presbyteries vary in their policies related to calling ministers. 

The PNC is now at the stage where they are having exploratory interviews with ministers in whom the committee is interested. 

 Recognizing the importance of this new stage in their work the PNC recently reviewed the procedures laid out by the presbytery in the manual, and in particular, the policy regarding confidentiali-ty. At its meeting on November 29 the PNC discussed a cove-nant of confidentiality that had been drafted by the co-moderators. Each member of the committee then signed this covenant. 

As a result of their initial exploratory activity, the PNC will eventu-ally focus on a few candidates. At that point the presbytery will be involved in doing further reference checks to determine the suitability of a particular person for our church. 

It may seem to you that at this point you are now closed out of the process. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. You still have a vital role. It has to do with trusting. 

The bottom line for our Presbyterian system is that trust is central and foundational to this calling process. You as a congregation trust that those you have elected to serve as members of the PNC will represent the concerns of the entire congregation and that they will convey to prospective candidates your desires and hopes. The PNC trusts the truth of what you have said in the small group process about the needs of this church for the com-ing years and about the qualities, skills, and interests that you believe to be essential in the next pastoral leader of this congre-gation and is being guided by this information. 

The final step for both you and the PNC is another reflection of this trust. In this presbytery and others from the former Southern Presbyterian Church the congregational meeting called at the conclusion of the PNC’s work has two purposes. First, to share the identity of the recommended pastor, and second for the con-gregation to vote on whether to accept this person as their new permanent pastor. 

I want to share with you that the primary reason for this proce-dure is to assure that pastors who talk to a church trusting in con-fidentiality will not have that conversation get back to their con-gregation in such a way as to jeopardize that minister’s relation-ship with his or her current congregation. 

After all, in the process of ministers and churches finding each other they both have many contacts which do not lead to a per-manent relationship. Our Presbyterian world is small and one never knows who is connected to whom. 

So, at that congregational meeting the PNC will distribute printed material about the recommended pastor, will do an oral introduc-tion of this person, and will answer any questions you may have. Your final responsibility is to carefully consider this information before you vote. In the meantime, your role is to be supportive of the PNC by sharing words of encouragement, remembering them in your prayers, and respecting the need for and require-ment of confidentiality. 

I hope what I have written above will help clarify the nature of the Presbyterian process for calling a pastor and the vital role you continue to have in this process. My prayers are with the PNC and all of you as together we anticipate how God will work out His purpose for our church in the future.