February 14, 2013

Renewed Energy, Great Joy and Cautious Optimism

Greetings FCCO,

Please take a moment to read this brief update from your FCCO Search Team. Over the past 12 days, our Team has met three times and hosted two wonderful interviews with a gifted candidate we are all mutually excited about.

After exploring over 60 potential candidates and reviewing 32 twenty-two page pastor profiles, we are pleased to have narrowed our search down to one pastor. Our next step is to coordinate an on-site visit with this candidate.

As our Team moves into this late stage of our search, we do so with renewed energy, great joy and cautious optimism. Our vision has always been to faithfully live out the congregation’s charge to our Team. Below is the spiritual litany we created and continue to offer aloud at the beginning of each search meeting.

Our work is a prayerful work. Our time is about discerning:

• Not, what do you and I want, but instead…
• What does God want for our congregation?
• Not, who has our congregation been, but instead…
• What is God calling our congregation to become?
• Not, where are we leading our congregation, but instead…
• Where is God’s Spirit leading us?

As we move forward together, I want to again affirm FCCO’s strong support for our Search Team to:

• Be open and prayerfully discern the senior pastor God is calling for FCCO, regardless of sex, age, background, race or sexual orientation…

Your bold trust and support has guided us from the beginning to think creatively and outside the box. In the coming weeks and months, I invite each FCCO member to do the same as you continue your prayers for and commitment to this process.

It has been 22 years since our congregation has walked this path. During this time, even with the extraordinary changes of our congregation, community and world, one dynamic remains the same. The calling of a new pastor always requires prayer, patience, trust, support, imagination and an open invitation for God’s Spirit to lead the way.

Thank you and stay tuned FCCO – we are on the way!!!

Dan Oliver – Search Team Chair & Team Members; Shami Espinosa, Cathy Perring, Kathy Vail, Hazel Stover, Rich Kempf, Kevin Kamp, Judy Row, Jim Ruby and Becky Nelson