Dear Edwards Church Community,

May flowers. It is a simple declarative sentence. May, the month, flowers – but into what? When the month of May expresses the life force welling up in it to become a floral form, what exactly will it be, this time? My sister Madgie, a flower farmer in Maryland, knows exactly what to expect in each area of her fields and greenhouses. She knows what seeds she planted and where. But in life writ large, in our lives and the life of this church, what growth can we expect?  What are we planting

Master gardeners often plan their gardens to take advantage of their environment. Until climate change, with the upward trend in average annual temperatures expected to continue, arborists in our area did not even think of experimenting with trees that historically did not appear north of New York City.  Now they are planting them selectively to find the best trees for our future.

Since the pandemic, most mainline churches (including ours) have seen attendance overall, and especially participation in programs for children and youth, shrink and in some cases disappear.  Rather than accept that as inevitable and adapt by reducing staff to meet the reduced current size of our regularly attending cohort of children and youth, we are proceeding with a search for a full-time, seminary trained Designated Term Associate  Minister of Faith Formation. We will also consider candidates who express a preference for a three-quarter time commitment.

This is a significant financial commitment for our church. The profile posted, which is reproduced in full at the end of this Spire (just before the calendar), offers a compensation range of $78-88,000 for a full-time person. A designated term minister is “called,” not “hired,” for a minimum of three years, which is what we are offering.

At the end of the search, the search team will recommend a candidate to the congregation. The candidate will participate in leading a Sunday service and attend smaller group social gatherings in anticipation of a vote after the Sunday service. Unlike “called” ministers that our church has had in the past, the designated term minister does not have an open-ended commitment. After three years, the relationship ends, unless both parties want it to become open-ended. Unlike an interim, the church and the minister can decide together to convert the relationship to become a “settled” minister, meaning it would become open    ended.

This three-year experiment is an investment in finding out whether we can find a new approach to engaging families of school aged and younger children that will obtain more engagement than we currently have. As described in the profile, the Designated Term Associate Minister of Faith Formation will not only give some energy to ”what was before,” they will also be tasked (with congregational support) with reaching out to the community and relevant groups within it to see what might lead to more engagement.

This is an investment in the future of church: not an investment in “church as we know it,” but a in a church still to be discovered.  Any church that is not investing in creating new members in the next generation will gradually disappear, even if it has plenty of money in the bank.  So we have decided to fund this effort to find a way or ways to start regrowing our future.

In faith, with hope, for love,

Michael

To read the full SPIRE click here.