An Update On Our Searches from the Senior Warden

Written By Sam Allen, Senior Warden

Your Wardens and Vestry met on March 28 and worked on laying some foundations for our Searches for an Interim Dean and Dean. Our initial focus must be on the search for Interim Dean.
In many ways, this will be an expedited and somewhat simplified “dry run” for our Dean search. The Dean search process will be conducted with the guidance of our Consultant, The Rev. Pamela Mott. We are also aided by having our Associate Priest, The Rev. Suzanne Roberts, working for the Diocese as Acting Transition and Deployment Officer. At our meeting the Wardens and Vestry voted to authorize your Wardens, Claire Hammen and me, to invite a group of 3–5 individuals to be nominees for the Interim Search Committee. Your Wardens will be ex-Officio members. A list of nominees will be presented to the Vestry for ratification. Claire and I will start work to define the Committee members immediately.

The Interim Search process will entail preparing an advertisement for the Interim Dean position with the Church’s Office of Transition Ministry (OTM). The advertisement will be posted the OTM and other websites. Potential candidates will also have prepared materials that we can review on the OTM website.

To provide an opportunity for parishioners to help inform the Interim search process, we have scheduled two Town Hall meeting opportunities after 10:00 A.M. services on Sunday April 2 and Sunday April 16. The meeting on April 2 will be facilitated by the Rev. Suzanne Roberts. The meetings use two questions to prompt discussion about St. Luke’s and what qualities we should seek in the Interim Dean:
•Provide just a few words that would help a prospective Interim candidate learn about St. Luke’s.
• Provide in just a few words gifts and skills that you feel are particularly important for St. Luke’s Interim Dean to possess.

In addition to the two Town Hall meetings, we will also be making a short survey instrument available that parishioners can use to provide input on the Interim search electronically. We encourage everyone to participate! After April 16 the Search Committee will coordinate using input from the Town Hall meetings and the on-line survey to prepare the advertisement for the Interim Dean position. Then we will place the ad and we can look forward to receiving and reviewing applications.

Looking ahead to the search for our next Dean, the process will be stretched out considerably and there will likely be several Committees formed to engage with different aspects of the search. There will be an extensive parish survey and many opportunities for parishioners to participate at different points during the search.