Mar. 25 Newsletter: Great Expectations

   

Great Expectations

It’s “hurry up and wait” time at First Unitarian Church.

In order to protect all UU ministerial applicants and all UU churches in search, certain rules of confidentiality and due process are in place.  For that reason, your Ministerial Search Committee (MSC) is currently not at liberty to tell you where our deliberations stand. However, on Sunday, April 6, just 12 days from today, all of that will change. In church that day, the MSC hopes to announce its recommended Candidate to be our next settled Minister.

From that moment, you can expect to be inundated with information about the Candidate. The MSC’s work of discernment will be nearly done, but the congregation’s will have just begun. You will now join us, hands-on, in this remarkable project. You’ll become full and active participants in all of these final weeks. Only you the congregation can decide whether to call this Candidate to our pulpit as our next settled Minister!

Here is what will happen:

·      Sunday, April 6 until Friday, April 25: informational deluge.

·      Friday, April 25 to Sunday, May 4: Candidating “Week.” (It is really 10 days.) During the entirety of this time, our Candidate will be in Worcester, meeting the congregation and learning about all of us, and we will learn more and more about him/her. The MSC, the Prudential Committee, and the Lay Leadership Program Council will plan a bevy of events, at various times of the day, so that as many people as possible can get acquainted with the Candidate in diverse settings. A calendar of events is currently under construction.

·      On Sunday, April 27, our Candidate will conduct the service and preach in our pulpit for the first time!

·      And on Sunday, May 4, our Candidate will lead the service and preach in our pulpit for the second time!

After the service on Sunday (May 4), the Candidate will leave the building. The Congregation will then meet in order to vote on whether to call the Candidate to be our Minister—the Twelfth Minister in the history of First Unitarian Church.