During the annual meeting in June, the congregation voted to create a task force to discern our future with Reverend Kristina. Do we move forward and “call” her to be our settled minister or do we explore other options?
The board has completed their role in forming the “Contract to Call” task force. Members include Becky Cline, Saunis Parsons, Ellen Doucette, Saul Flanner, John Wickersham, Ellen McWilliams-Woods, and Diana Watt.
They will organize many opportunities for feedback and discernment from congregants as we move toward this important decision.
The task force will have their initial meeting next week and will have detailed plans as the weeks progress.
The task force can be reach via email at: [email protected]
What Does It Mean to “Call” a Minister?
In Unitarian Universalism, we as the gathered congregation get to choose our congregation’s minister. Our faith is not hierarchical; we do not get assigned a minister by our national denomination, the UUA, for example. This aligns with other aspects of being a UU in which each congregation is self-governed – a system called “congregational polity.” Our congregational polity gives these important decisions to local congregations: choosing a minister, defining membership, electing leadership, or purchasing property.
In the past, our congregation has engaged in a formal ministerial search process. The congregation would elect a search committee, and they would engage in a year-long process. First, they determined the congregation’s needs, then they shared that information about our church in the UUA’s search system. They would get a list of ministers who were interested, and they would sort through the their information, then conduct interviews. They would find a single candidate that they would present to the congregation. The candidate would preach an introductory sermon, spend a week meeting with different groups in the congregation, then preach a second sermon (this is called “candidating week”). Following that second service, the congregation would hold a meeting and vote on whether to “call” the candidate.
After the unexpected death of Rev. Steven in January of 2024, we had a choice of hiring an interim minister (who would only be with us for a year or two), or a contact minister (also hired by the board) that we would have an option to call. We could only afford a 3/4 time position at the time, which limited our options. We decided on the contract-to-call option and had the good fortune to find a match with Rev. Kristina. We were then able to bring her up to full time in the current fiscal year.
Moving from a contractual relationship to inviting Rev. Kristina to be our settled minister would be an invitation into a deeper, covenantal relationship where she is “settled” into her role as our called minister and she and the congregation become full partners in ministry. The contract to call task force will help our congregation do the kind of discernment work that would have happened during “candidating week” in a formal settled search process.