PNC Update June 11, 2021
Greetings to our St. James family! After a l-o-n-g winter, spring has arrived and there are actual face-to-face activities happening in our world! It feels like we are breaking through to the “other side” of quarantine and isolation. We thank God for this positive direction, remembering those still suffering with the disease or the losses it caused. We carry many in our hearts. But as we are all moving forward with cautious optimism, your PNC has been steadily meeting and discussing our path to finding a new full-time spiritual leader. Over the past couple of months we have reviewed any new candidate listings on the Church Leadership Connection website and have followed up on several self-referrals to our Ministry Information Form. We have been fortunate to actually meet with some candidates in person and spend time with them. Socially-distant and masked, but at least in the same space! It has been a joy and a blessing to become acquainted with them (and in some cases their families) and to see and hear about their love for ministry. Each meeting has been met with prayer and enthusiasm. We have discussed each candidate’s potential as a pastor at St. James. As you know, there needs to be a mutual feeling of call for a candidate to move on to the next step in the process. Although we have met a few wonderfully qualified and truly amazing people, there is a candidate with whom we share a strong mutual connection. Because this candidate is a recent graduate and still in the process of finishing all requirements, there are some steps in the process that require patience. But St. James appears to be pretty good at that! We are of the belief that our very lives, and the life of St. James, are in God’s hands and we trust that the right candidate will find their way to our pulpit in His time. In Jeremiah 29:11, God tells the Ancient Israelites “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” And we haven’t even come CLOSE to 70 years of exile in Babylon! But we can hold fast to these scriptural words of assurance and find hope in them as we continue the process of discernment. The entire PNC thanks all of you for your continued prayer support and words of encouragement as we have been navigating through these waters. Please continue to keep us, and our future spiritual leader, in your prayers as we look forward to some smooth sailing! We hope you enjoy some beautiful sunny days in the coming summer months!
Peace & Grace,
Karen McL
Romans 8:28 – And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
PNC UPDATE OCTOBER 5, 2020
Fall has officially arrived and we had our first “little bit chilly” outside service on October 4th, opening our worship with a beautiful introit of “Autumn Leaves”! The leaves are certainly beginning their transformation as we move into this season of change. St. James is facing changes of all kinds, just like the rest of the world. How will worship look next month? How will we praise God together in closer quarters? How can we keep each other safe and healthy while enjoying fellowship? All of this will require facing change, and the PNC is no exception. How can we find a full-time pastor while there are so many restrictions and distractions??!! However, we are continuing our efforts to find a full-time pastor for our church family. But there are changes to the process because of our circumstances. As you might imagine, having a pastoral candidate travel for a visit is challenging right now. One candidate was interested in seeing our church home, but preferred not to travel by air at this point. We gave the candidate a “real-time tour” by taking a device to the church property, giving a full walk-around to show the outside features of the building (entrance, parking, pavilion, playground, labyrinth, front seating area) and surrounding neighborhood, the inside of the building spaces, and ended with a video chat in Holy Grounds coffee cafe! We did have the opportunity to meet a candidate in person. We hosted a meal at my home prepared by the PNC and were planning to eat outside, but a rainstorm moved us to the basement (more open space than the dining room) for the meal until we could go outside and walk around! We organized a dinner with another candidate that didn’t involve any gathering in person at all! We called the food delivery service “Grubhub” and had a meal delivered to the house from one of their favorite local restaurants, the PNC members prepared or ordered dinner at their homes, and we ate together on a ZOOM call! We have embraced some changes to the process and are moving forward. All of the issues that we are dealing with have slowed the process a bit as you might imagine. We are in communication with the COM at Presbytery to keep abreast of the processes that need to happen should we decide to move forward with a particular candidate. Obviously meeting with the COM will look different than it has in the past and we are learning how that might affect our timeline. The PNC wants to let you know that we are still very actively seeking a leader, even under somewhat challenging circumstances. Please keep us in your prayers as we try to discern who God is calling to lead us, and for the pastor who may be being called to lead! We especially ask for prayers for two of our PNC members that have faced some extremely difficult days; Deb as she and her family walk the path of losing dear Linda, and Tom as he and his family continue to heal from Covid-19. We also ask that you hold in prayer our new temporary pastor, Roz Presby and our outgoing Director of Youth Ministry and Communications, Theo Camara. We are so very grateful for Roz’s spiritual leadership and guidance while we continue our task and for Theo’s work in our midst. We wish them both well, and we will continue to pray for all of you, too!
Peace of mind and body to all,
Karen
Philippians 4:6-7
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
July 22, 2020 update:
Friday, May 15
Hello, St. James Church family! Checking in today to tell you that your PNC is thinking of you and that we really miss seeing everyone in person! In spite of the limitations of these difficult times, we are continuing to communicate through ZOOM conference calls, phone calls and emails. We would like to bring you up to speed on what is happening in our search. When I wrote last, we had just had our MIF approved. Since then, we have uploaded it and have begun to see some results! It has been a busy month! We got the first wave of matches shortly after the MIF hit the Church Leadership Connection website. We went through that list following the procedure we had established. We all generally look over each of the candidates, and teams take on specific groups until all are thoroughly examined. We are comparing notes, listening to sermons, reading blogs and following FaceBook links to find out about each pastor. It is interesting that in this time of online worship, we are able to go to some of the church’s websites and “tune in” to their service to get an idea of the candidate’s preaching style, even if it is using the online format. It also gives us an idea of their technology skills. So there are some unusual benefits to this online trend! We found a couple of promising candidates in the first wave, but unfortunately they had already accepted calls and had just not taken their PIF down from the website. We have done a couple of “rematches” where the computer runs our form through another set of names and we have evaluated each one of those as well. We are currently reaching out to these candidates to set up Zoom calls for conversations. It is not a perfect system…for example, some candidates listed Pennsylvania as an acceptable location for their call. When we contacted them, they said that they are not interested in this specific area, just western or eastern PA, but there was no way to specify that on their form. Others that we contacted simply said that they are not actively looking for a call even thought their form is still present on the CLC website. We had a Zoom conference meeting this week with members of the Presbytery to talk about the progress. There were some suggestions made, so in addition to using the Church Leadership Connection website, we are contacting the placement offices of Presbyterian seminaries in the local area to see if they have any resources for connecting us with potential pastors. We are also looking into placing a notice in the appropriate sections of two online publications, Presbyterian Outlook and Presbyterians Today. We wanted to let everyone know that even though we are not physically getting together at St. James, the work of finding the pastor that God has in mind for our church family continues! Please keep us in your prayers, as we know and appreciate that you have been doing. Until the next time, know that we are praying for all of you and for the right candidate at the right time. Take care!
Peace of mind and body to all,
Karen McLaughlin
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. – John 14:27
Friday April 3, 2020
NC UPDATE #5
Greetings, St. James family! I am writing this note while “sheltering-in”, thankful for technology that makes all of this possible! Due to the wonders of conference calling, Zoom meetings and email connectedness throughout the past couple of weeks, we have some great news to report. Karen Howenstine and Tom Dardick attended a Zoom meeting with Presbytery’s COM yesterday, April 2. They had worked hard on making the changes and improvements to our MIF recommended by the COM and presented the document. It was approved! We are very excited to have this step in the process complete. Now we must get some codes (from Presbytery) to access the Church Leadership Connection website. Once we are logged in, we can upload the MIF to their search engine and send it out. Then the process REALLY begins…hopefully we will have some great candidates reach out to us based on our needs outlined in our MIF. Your PNC is so excited and hopeful as we begin this next phase. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we move enthusiastically forward! We will keep all of you in our prayers as we are separated by distance temporarily, but connected to one another by the blessed ties that bind!
Peace of mind and body to all,
Karen
Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God
Monday March 16
In the midst of uncertainty and uncharted virus-containment measures, your PNC is reaching out to you with prayers for health and the peace that passes understanding. Please contact your deacon or a member of your St. James family if you need anything!
And…it is time for another update! We met with the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry in the Camp Hill office on March 12 as scheduled. We presented the MIF that was approved by session. It was fairly well received by the committee, which was composed of about 15-18 people. They did, however, have some suggestions that we needed to consider before they would approve it. We took notes, made some positive changes to the document at our homes and met this morning to coordinate our efforts. We were able to fine-tune the form and we now have an updated MIF that contains the recommended changes from the COM. This will, again, need approval from session and it will be presented at the session meeting this Tuesday, March 17. Since the first draft was approved and this one is does not contain any major content changes, we see no reason that it will not be approved. If that goes as planned, we will then present the revised MIF to the COM when they meet next on April 2. This will likely be a virtual meeting using technology under the current circumstances. If they approve our form, we will get the “go ahead” to upload the form to the Church Leadership Connection website and begin the matching process with pastors seeking a call. In the meantime, we are preparing for the next phase. We are drafting an evaluation form to be used by PNC members as they read through the candidate’s PIF’s (Personal Information Form). This will give us a standard guideline to fairly evaluate each candidate’s form. We do not have another “official” meeting scheduled until we meet with the COM in April, and even then, face-to-face meetings could be curtailed indefinitely. However, thanks to our ability to teleconference and communicate freely through email and attachments, we will press on!
We are grateful for the support and prayers from all of you! We are all praying to be led to the person God has in mind for us. Thanks for sticking with us in this process…and wash your hands…for a full 20 seconds!
Peace,
Karen McL
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing…” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
Tuesday February 19
Hello, faithful friends at St. James! Since the last update, the PNC has had two very productive meetings. We met on Monday, February 3rd and spent a lot of time comparing our responses to the Leadership Competencies section of the MIF. We talked about the qualifications that overlapped in the descriptions, tallied our results and narrowed them down to what we determined to be the allotted ten most important competencies that we feel will best support St. James. We discussed and streamlined the answers to the 5 narrative questions and discussed scriptural references that helped support our answers. We compiled the congregational data and discussed whom we will list as references for our congregation. The timeline for uploading the completed document was outlined. The plan was to work on the final touches, finalize the narrative responses and meet briefly after church on Sunday, February 10. We did so, and selected our final choices for references and tied up some loose ends. We distributed the completed MIF to session members so that they could read it before the session meeting Tuesday, February 18th. At that meeting, the session unanimously approved the content! We will now be put on the agenda to present our MIF to the Commission in Ministry meeting at Presbytery on Thursday, March 12th. We will not meet again until after that meeting, pending their approval. Please keep us in your prayers as we prayerfully consider these exciting next steps!
Karen
Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Sunday, January 26
Today was a big day for the PNC! This morning, Rev. Donald Potter and the people of St. James commissioned us into service for the task of finding a leader. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve in this capacity and appreciate the blessings! Now that we are officially “tapped in” to the job at hand, please keep us in your prayers, specifically for discernment of the best vision for St. James and the type of leader that will best help us live out that vision.
Following the worship service, we met for several hours going over the ideas we brought to answer the 5 narrative questions on the MIF. We had a great discussion encompassing church history (early and recent), current situations and future possibilities. Steve will coordinate our notes and share them to the PNC, and Tom will frame them to answer the narrative questions. We are meeting again soon on Monday, February 3. At this meeting, we can fine-tune the response texts, and that part of the form will be complete. During the coming week, we will independently read over the next part of the form, which are Leadership Competencies that are potentially important to have in a candidate. There are 33 specific descriptions under the following categories: Theological/Spiritual Interpretation, Communication, Organizational Leadership and Interpersonal Engagement. We are charged to read and choose the top ten competencies that we believe are required for our candidate. We will discuss them and narrow them down based on which ones seem most pertinent to all committee members. This week, we will also be gathering data about congregation demographics and salary/benefit allowances granted by session to the potential pastor. We need three references that are well acquainted with our congregation and we hope to have three names secured by this meeting as well.
We are excited about our progress and are looking forward to meeting next Monday to keep up the momentum!
Peace,
Karen McL
Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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Welcome to the PNC UPDATE page! As things progress through the steps of finding a new pastor for our church family, I will be posting some general information about where we are in the process. Hopefully this will keep you both informed and enthusiastic about whom God has chosen for this important role…and how we locate him or her! If you have questions that are not answered through these updates, please reach out to any one of the members of the PNC. Our names and contact information will be at the close of this note.
We have had 2 meetings so far. We first met on December 10 for an informal, introductory meeting where we met Scott Pepperman, who is our liaison to the Presbytery’s Commission on Ministry (COM). He is a Ruling Elder at Silver Spring Presbyterian church, has been through this process before and is looking forward to working with us. We then scheduled our next meeting to meet with Interim Executive Presbyter Rev. Cheryl Galan. That meeting was held on January 13. Rev. Galan gave us a power-point orientation and went over a publication titled “On Calling a Pastor”. She also showed us how to navigate the Presbytery’s website called “Church Leadership Connection”. After she and Scott left, we met in Holy Grounds for a discussion. Here is a consolidated look at the steps we are taking now:
- We need to fill out a Ministry Information Form (MIF). This is a detailed form that requires statistics about St. James, answers to 5 narrative questions about who we are, a definitive mission statement, characteristics of the person that we feel will best suit our leadership needs and salary/benefit offerings. We are working independently on ideas for these topics, staying in contact through email and will meet again on Sunday, January 26 after the worship service. We are going to work hard to get this filled out as expediently as possible, however realizing that it is very important to represent our church authentically and be intentional about what we are looking for in a spiritual leader. This may take some time. We are currently reviewing the Mission Study that was generated in September 2019 from our small group meetings. This will assist us in answering the narrative questions best representing what the members of St. James deemed most reflective of our situation and goals.
- After the form is completed, it will have to be approved by our session and the Presbytery. Once approved, we can submit and upload it to the Presbytery website. There it will go into a computer match service to be linked to possible candidates that are searching for calls. They will have filled out a Personal Information Form (PIF) about themselves (with corresponding questions from our MIF) and we will be notified of any candidate that is looking for what we need. If this sounds a bit like computer dating, you’re not wrong! But it is a convenient and efficient way to get started. There are some other options for searching that we may explore later, but for now, this is where we are going to begin.
- Once we find some “matches”, we will be reviewing the PIF’s. In addition to the question/answer/statement parts of the PIF, there are often links to sermons, both video and written. So we will be listening to and reading sermon texts from our candidates. From there, we will narrow down the field and begin interviewing. But as you can see, that may be down the road after some long walks and twists and turns in the path. Stay with us…we think it is going to be an exciting journey!
Your PNC is very anxious to keep the momentum going in our search. We are all “on the same page” when it comes to enthusiasm in furthering the mission and ministry of everyone at St. James. We all look forward to coming to worship together, seeing all of you and participating in outreach events to our community. We are enjoying the new and powerful music that Dr. Beth Trez is providing for our church. She is a very talented, faith-filled music leader and her excitement for musical worship is evident and contagious. Theo Camara is a blessing to our kids and our congregation! He is enthusiastic, warm and well-loved by our youth and adults alike. Jenn Capers is a gem in our office, organizing all of the “nuts and bolts” of our church and always doing so with a smile. Our preschool continues to thrive under the direction of Jane Michaliszyn and her staff of caring, compassionate teachers. And then there is YOU! The generous and caring congregation of St. James! We have much for which to be thankful among us. Most importantly, our love which comes from the grace and love of God our Father. Please keep us in your prayers as we determine the person God is calling to lead all of us into new and wonderful ways to show His love to all!
Peace,
Karen McL
Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Pastor Nominating Committee
Karen Howenstine (717) 576-0879 kjhow33@gmail.com
Ginger Johns (864) 357-6249 aldaygirl1727@gmail.com
Steven Grubb (717) 576-8145 stevengrubb@comcast.net
Deb Hanner (717) 805-8413 cwbyfan02@aol.com
Karen McLaughlin (717) 497-3032 kmcl105@aol.com
Joyce Shirley (717) 579-1909 joycershirley@gmail.com
Tom Dardick (717) 343-9229 tom@dardickcommunications.com
