The search committee has prepared a survey to gain an understanding of congregational needs and desires as it pertains to the search for an associate pastor. The survey will be conducted over the next 2 weeks to give everyone a chance to participate.
Your responses are very important to the process and we encourage everyone to take the survey as it only takes a few minutes.
Please click HERE to take the survey!
Welcome to the Deerbrook Associate Pastor Search Team Blog
In our first meetings we determined some basic tenants that we will follow as we seek God's leading in our efforts to call an associate pastor.
- Follow God’s Direction – The Pastoral Search Team first and foremost wants to follow God’s direction and find the individual who God has pre-selected. Each of us will continually pray that we find the person whom God has pre-selected and we urge each and every one to please be praying for the team to identify the person whom God has pre-selected for our Associate Pastor.
- Representative Democracy – that the team members were selected to represent the congregation and welcome any and all input from you. The members are sensitive to your input, will discuss your input and make decisions that he/she thinks is in the best interest of Deerbrook.
- Confidentiality – As the team continues in the process of reviewing candidates and narrowing down potential Associate Pastor Candidates, the team will keep any and all specific information regarding names, how many applicants, discussions that occur in meetings within the members of team. Confidentiality is a necessity in being able to trust and respect one another during this selection period. As a team we are committed to confidentiality within the team and team members will not share information regarding the search outside of the whole team, including not sharing team information with spouses.
- Communication – The team has laid out timelines to keep the process moving along and will seek feedback from you along way and will do our best to keep you updated as to where the team is heading.
- The Process – The team will be following the process of search and selection as laid out by the Covenant denomination and as stated in our constitution. We will be gathering information from you through focus groups, online blog and survey during October and November. The next step is for the team to assimilate the information and develop a package that we can send out to any interested candidates and solicit information to any interested candidates that you bring to us. Once candidates are sent to us, we will begin looking at candidates and narrowing them down to present ONE candidate to you. The covenant process of presenting candidates is one candidate is selected by the team that you chose to represent the congregation. That one candidate will be presented to the congregation during a meet and greet weekend. That one candidate will be voted on. If that candidate is not selected the process is repeated. We just want to make clear that we are following the process as stated in our constitution and as explained to us by the Covenant. We will not present more than one candidate at a time and we will not have several candidates come before the congregation to speak.
- Consensus – The team has unanimously decided to proceed using consensus as our decision making process.
