If I invited you to be a part of a committee that would meet for more than five months, in excess of twenty meetings during that time period, would you agree?  I thought not!  And yet, that is the schedule the Transitional Leadership Team (TLT) kept this spring and early summer.

A week ago the TLT presented its final report to the session.  The report was unanimously approved by the session and the TLT was dismissed with thanksgiving for their many months of work.

The final responsibility of the TLT was to review the report with the Pastoral Nominating Committee (PNC).  The report of the TLT will serve as the basis for the Church Information Form (CIF) that the PNC will compose to introduce our congregation to potential candidates for the new installed pastor.

 

Once the PNC completes the CIF, it must be approved by the presbytery.  The presbytery will determine whether the CIF adequately reflects the report of the TLT and if it is ready to be distributed.  Once the CIF has been approved, it will be posted on official sites, in publications, and on our website.

In the meantime, I want to share with you the Report of the Transition Leadership Team.  It is seven pages, with around 1,500 pages of material represented in the footnotes.  We have not included the additional pages in this email, but the TLT did provide a CD with the footnoted material to each member of the PNC.

We can each identify those parts of the report most interesting to us.  If I were a

 candidate, the section that would catch my attention would be the sections in the conclusion entitled "we are" and "we seek to be."  I would have plenty of questions for the PNC about the journey from one to the other.  A church that can look honestly at its present reality, while keeping a clear and compelling vision about the future, would be an inviting place to do ministry.

The part of the report that has garnered the most questions is the engagement statement at the end of the report.  Some have responded, "are we leaving   out P resbyterian?!"  My answer:  Not by a long shot.  The words have been rearranged for marketing purposes.  

Mt. Washington is the shorthand that we hope folks will come to recogni ze as this congregation.  I am so deeply proud of the Presbyterian Church (USA) a nd few of us would want to put any distance between our congregation and the larger denomination-nor do we intend to.  It is all there and it will remain all there.

If you have questions about the report you may contact any member of the TLT (just don't ask them to schedule another meeting.)  Thanks to Cal Johnson, Chair, Rick Brasington, Sarah Gibson, Joe Jaap, Claire Kroger, Scott Stewart, and Carole Sylvester for a job well done. Let us continue to pray for the PNC as it continues its work.

 

Grace and Peace,