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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Greetings from your Conference Minister Search Team!

 

We want to update you on where we are in the search process for our next Conference Minister for the Missouri Mid-South Conference. As you know, we were authorized by Conference Council in January, 2014, to seek a candidate to recommend to the Conference Council, and, ultimately, to you, for Conference Minister.  We spent the better part of 2014 meeting together as a Team - researching, organizing, writing, incorporating numerous documents, editing, re-editing and reporting to you as often as feasible with updates on our work and progress.  We have stayed abreast of the Vision Team's fine work.  We've presented updates at Association meetings and clergy gatherings, and we've kept listening to the voices of our Conference.  

 

Before Christmas, 2014, our Team determined that it would be wise to ask the Conference Council to support us in MMS Logo shifting the search from a Designated Conference Minister to a Conference Minister -  to seek a longer-term  candidate and to open up the process and attract a wider pool of applicants.  It was our sense that our Conference has engaged in a great deal of healing and growing over the months, and that our current Conference leadership - both lay and ordained - is doing a great job of renewing our sense of belonging and confidence.  The Conference Council agreed.  On January 15, 2015, our revised Conference Minister profile was posted at the national UCC website and supporting documents also appeared on the MMSC website.  The position description remained posted for sixty days, after which time we placed a "hold on profiles" to carefully review the pool of applicants and discern where the Spirit was leading us.  

 

That brings us to mid March.

 

Your Search Team has carefully reviewed all seventeen profiles received.  We have eliminated some.  Several applicants have chosen other paths.  We are now focused on the handful of candidates we believe we'd like to talk with in more depth.  We are in the midst of a number of preliminary interviews - using "GotoMeeting" technology, which enables the Search Team to gather at Columbia UCC, and to both see and hear the applicant at another location.  As we continue these remote interviews, we are beginning to contact telephone references and others who can help us determine who we want to invite to meet with us in person.  The in-person interviews are coming more into focus for us now, and we are eager to move to the next phase of an increasingly focused search. 

 

Your Search Team is very excited about where we are to date - we have a strong set of close relationships among us and are hopeful about the next phase of the search.  We are talking with some very capable, dynamic people!  We will keep you updated as it is appropriate.  We cannot set a ticking clock on something of this importance, but we truly believe that God is at work in this journey - guiding us and growing us as a Conference for the future of God's mission in this time and place.

 

More soon!  Thanks for your continued support and prayers.

 

David Mehl, Chair

Laura Mignerone, Vice Chair

 

Lorin Cope

Wayne Hoffman

Elaine Hudson

Linda Stenger

Sonya Vann

Lloyd Viehland

Karen Watson



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Missouri Mid-South Conference United Church of Christ  314-962-8740 or 877-877-5884  
 
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