From the Senior Minister
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens ….
Ecclesiates 3:1
Dear Edwards Church Community,
Happy New Year! As a community we are in transition. Of course, everything that lives is always adapting to keep thriving amidst changing circumstances. The transition underway for Edwards Church may involve more than simply hiring a new person into an established role, which we first called Minster of Education and then Minister of Faith Formation. Further change may require that we slow down our thinking and attend to our faith community, its identity and values, and how it engages with the world at its doorstep and beyond.
This week Rev. Marguerite Sheehan begins her service as Bridge Associate Minister, a deliberately temporary “bridge” role that she describes later in this Spire. Since it was clear she would become our bridge minister, Marguerite has been in close communication with Deb Moore to provide for the smoothest possible hand off. Her job at Edwards is three-quarters of full-time, so already there is one change from which we will learn. Another is that Marguerite, an experienced preacher, will preach at least once per month, and I will sometimes be with the children when they leave the sanctuary.
During the four to six months Marguerite will be with us, the Search Team will gather information, consider how the second minister position supports fulfilling our mission and vision as a church, and then prepare a profile to describe the role to possible candidates. We expect that will be a profile for a Designated Term Associate Pastor. Calling the role an Associate Pastor would be slightly different – but not as much as you might think – from our recent past. Deb Moore was called to Edwards because of her specialization in faith formation, then over time functioned as an associate pastor with responsibility for faith formation. But then, as one member of the Search Team quipped, “Isn’t faith formation every minister’s responsibility?” to which I could only reply, “Yes, and every church member is a minister of the church!”
When any church does the work required to say farewell to one long-serving minister and prepares to search for another, it needs to check its assumptions. That process revealed some surprises during the search for a new Director of Music, which brought us Adam Simon. So much has changed since the role we are now reconsidering was created that we need a good process to follow. We will follow the search and call process used by the United Church of Christ, which provides all UCC churches with a strong level of assurance. To be in that system, every potential candidate must be an authorized minister in good standing and have a current background check. The system also allows churches to access a national talent pool.
Soon after Deb announced her retirement, I shared with the ECM a number of resources about the search and call process. Essentially, they describe the choices available to us, the first of which is to choose between engaging an Interim Minister or a Designated Term (DT) Minister (which typically entails a short term Bridge Minister while we prepare to search for a DT). It is all laid out on the SNEUCC conference website ( https://www.sneucc.org/the-search-and-call-journey ). On request, by sending the most relevant items I can spare anyone who wants to learn more a lot of unnecessary reading.
We decided to hire a Bridge Minister and then call a DT to take advantage of the features of DT ministry. It provides an opportunity for church leaders, including me, to focus with the DT on specific questions or developmental challenges during the designated term, and it gives the DT and the church an option to convert the relationship to a permanent one at the end of the designated term.
A traditional interim minister would usually be hired by the ECM and serve for 1.5 to 2 years while we search for a permanent second minister. An interim minister is not allowed to become a permanent minister at the church. DT ministers are called by the whole church for a fixed term between 3 to 5 years (we plan for 3), rather than hired by the ECM. At the end of the term, if both the church and the DT want to make the relationship permanent, they can. Those differences are seen by potential candidates as making DT ministry sufficiently more attractive to increase the talent pool in a meaningful way.
Ultimately, we need a staff well suited to help our church fulfill the mission and vision that we are called to pursue. Over sixteen years ago, the congregation determined that it needed or at least deeply desired a seminary trained person on staff with specialized knowledge about faith formation. Experience also indicates that we are not a community whose culture supports moving quickly. That could change, but making the change constructively will require its own time.
Granting ourselves the opportunity to call a Designated Term Associate Minister has seemed fitting to the ECM and Search Team. I look forward to supporting that effort as we go forward through the search process and the coming year.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
From the Bridge Associate Minister
Happy New Year Edwards Church! I am so glad to be able to introduce myself as your new Bridge Associate Minister! I look forward to meeting each of you during the 4-6 months that I will be serving your church here in Northampton. I live just over the river in Amherst with my wife Dorrie and our active 2.5 year old standard poodle Penny. We are “back in the valley” after a 10 year sojourn in Shelburne Falls, where I served as the minister of Trinity Church.
A “bridge” is a particular kind of ministry; one that “spans” this next part of your church history. One side of the bridge being your recent past with Deb Moore as your Minister of Faith Formation and the other side of the bridge being your yet to be discovered and called new Associate Pastor. A Bridge Ministry is intended to provide and nurture a firm and solid passage, a “non-anxious presence” in times of transition, and a joyful and perhaps even playful experiment in Walking in the Way of Jesus who spans the generations and holds us firmly in love and care.
I love that I am coming to be with you now, in this season of Epiphany, when Christians continue to ponder about how the living presence of Jesus speaks to each of us, to our churches and the suffering and beautiful world. I look forward to worshipping together into the season of Lent and on into the Easter season! I will do my best to get to know you, your church traditions, hopes and visions. Speaking of hope, I fervently hope that you will dust off your name tags and wear them. There is just one of me to get to know and many of you!
Grace and Peace, Reverend Marguerite Sheehan (Please feel free to call me Marguerite!)
To read the full Spire click here.