Next Steps for RPC

January 2012

Dear Friends,

We have in our house each year put out a Christmas letter summarizing as best we can the past year. One year we had to admit that if the year had been a fish we would have thrown it back.  Other years we simply had to say that it had been a quiet year in Lake Wobegone, or our equivalent thereof. This last year for us was a year of many transitions.

2011 was a year of change for RPC as well. While 2012 is, of course, a continuing transitional year (how could an interim pastor say otherwise?) it will also be a year of building some long-term foundations. The quality of the future for the church is not in the future, but in the decisions we make now, and in the partnerships we all form in the service of Christ’s mission. Ideas that RPC formulates now about what it wants to be and how it should serve are the task at hand.

It may be helpful to everybody to know what the process of the next few months will be.

In the coming month, the Session will begin to have several discussions about the identity of the church, about its history and about its self-understanding, and will duly appoint a Mission Study Committee. This committee will take into consideration the Alban Institute report of the last year, Session decisions about where the church needs to go, and will conduct several small group discussions aimed at discerning what the church is called to do in the future. It will then write a report which will be the basis of the Church Information Form (CIF) that will be used to describe the congregation to interested candidates for the installed senior pastor position. The CIF will be written by the Pastoral Nominating Committee (PNC) which will be elected as soon as the Mission Study is completed. Once the PNC has written the CIF, and it is approved by the Session, it will begin the task of culling through interested candidates, in seeking candidates, and in interviewing them, until they have a nomination to put before the congregation.

All of these tasks are crucial for building the foundations on which the church is going to stand for several years – years of significant witness in the Rye community. Thus they are not to be rushed through, but need to be done carefully and thoroughly. They do not so much mark a merely “in-between” time as they are really the beginning of something long term. Take them seriously – and have some fun while we are doing them.

                                    Peace,