Our Transition Team met this past Sunday night after a six week break for all our church and family Christmas activities. There was a strong sense of joy as everyone reconnected to complete the remaining work on the congregational self study. The eleven of us have gotten very close to one another over the last seven months.
The team is switching the order of the remaining task from the way it would normally be done. The two remaining tasks are: 1) Examining Leadership and Decision-Making Concerns and 2) Embracing the New Pastor’s Leadership and Our Future. This second task would normally be the last one done by a Transition Team. We are doing the Embracing task first because of the timing issues with of our Wesleyan call process.
The “standard move date” in The Wesleyan Church for pastors is the week after the second Sunday of July. Our denominational efforts to have a uniform transition time among all districts creates a “prime candidating season” which is March – May. The Transition Team wants to have both a church and pastoral profile completed by March 1st so that the pastoral search committee can be looking at candidates during this prime season.
The plan is for the Transition Team to spend the next six weeks working on the Embracing task and then six more weeks working on the Examining task before the annual church elections in April. The team will then return to the Embracing task which includes a good closure of the interim period and a clean exit of the intentional interim pastor.
The next blog will provide details about the upcoming “Pastoral Expectations Survey” that the Transition Team is preparing for the congregation.
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