Progress Report from the Search Committee

Your search committee has made great strides in the weeks following Thanksgiving! We completed the UUCC Congregational Packet -- a thick binder containing detailed information about our congregation. Make sure you stop by and see one for yourself during Fellowship Hour on Sunday. We all put a lot of time into it, and we are proud of the result. We hope you will agree that it is a true and appealing portrait of our spiritual home.

The other big news is that, as of the first week in December, the UUA Ministerial Transitions Office in Boston gave us a list of candidates interested in our church! Of course we cannot relate details about the individuals on the list, but we can tell you that they are a diverse and talented group. We will be sending copies of our UUCC Congregational Packet to those in whom we are interested, and in turn, these ministers will send us their own informational packets so that the search committee can get to know them better.

A Word on Confidentiality…
Members of the congregation are entitled to know about the process we are following and the progress we are making in the search. But please be aware that members of the search committee have pledged to keep the names and all other personal details about ministers applying to our position in the strictest confidence, including where they are applying from. There are some very good reasons for this rule of confidentiality (from the UUA Settlement Handbook):

● Ministers currently settled in a congregation may not have told their present parishioners that they are contemplating a move. These parishioners are entitled to hear the news from their own minister at the appropriate time. To “leak” a minister’s name can undermine his or her ability to serve the present congregation, and will almost certainly damage our chances of attracting that potential candidate.

● When the identities of unsuccessful applicants are known, it heightens the competitive aspect of the search process. This hurts collegial feeling among ministers and can create hard feelings among congregations.

● It is harder to resolve differences among the members of a search committee if others in the congregation learn details about individuals being considered and start voicing their opinions. The search committee must be allowed to conduct their confidential work in private.

A final note: if, by some chance, you learn of the identity of any of the applicants (it’s a small world after all!) we respectfully ask you to keep the information entirely to yourself.