Search Updates

Your Search Committee commits to keep the Fellowship’s congregation informed about the progress of the search with periodic updates. Please bear in mind that many aspects of the search are required to be kept confidential, because careers are at stake and fairness is a must.

December 3, 2019 Update

On December 2, our Congregational Record went live on the UU Association’s Ministry Search jobs board. Ministers from across the nation are now able to examine it, and they have until New Year’s Day to decide whether to express interest in UUFSD.  On January 2 we will receive from the UUA the names and Ministerial Record (a sort of expanded résumé ) of those who may express interest. Your Search Committee will immediately begin to contact the ministers and arrange interviews.

The Congregational Record reflects our Fellowship’s history and the input from the cottage meetings and survey, as compiled by your Search Committee and vetted by the Board, our Transitions Coach, and the UUA’s Transitions Office in Boston. It is posted to our website here.

Your Search Committee will host a general meeting on January 12 in Founders’ Hall after the second service to provide the congregation with feedback from the survey and cottage meetings, and to discuss next steps. Thanks to so many for participating in our discernment process. In the meantime, we will continue to be available after services at the Search Committee table in the Core Area.

Numerous Updates in September, October, and November are omitted
because they relate to old news about filling out the survey and attending cottage meetings and attending the Beyond Categorical Thinking workshop. These discernment events were successful and their input is reflected in the published Congregational Record.
August 30, 2019 Update
Search News — What Do We Think?
Seriously. What do we think? Your Search Committee has to represent the views of the entire congregation. We have specifically agreed that our views as individual Search Committee members are only as relevant as anybody else’s.
To capture and fairly present the opinions of such a diverse group as UUFSD is a daunting job. Age, gender, race, experience, theology, income, expectations, criticisms, needs, what’s important, and what’s unimportant—no two UUFSD members are the same along all these dimensions, not to mention many more.
We’ve set up a confidential email address for anyone to tell us what they think:
This address goes onlyto the seven elected members of the Search Committee, who are covenanted to keep confidences. (It’s confidential, not anonymous.)
So, what do we think? What do youthink? Pick any topic about ministers that is on your mind, and send us your thoughts. (Of course we’re still going to have a survey, focus groups, and random conversations—this is just one more way of finding out what we think.)

 

August 9, 2019 Update

The Ministerial Search Committee was approved at the June 23rd congregational meeting, and since then we’ve been learning about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, familiarizing ourselves with UUA’s search process, and getting UUFSD into UUA’s system. That, of course, means holding meetings and filling out forms.

Your Search Committee is Livia Walsh, Nancy Hebert, John Atcheson, Alisa Guralnick, Mark Tuller, Patricia Cofré-Stone, and Sara Appleton-Knapp.

If you’d like to get an overview of the selection process, the timeline, and the latest happenings, you can go to our web site here. We’ll also be giving regular updates as things progress.

Two of the core operating principles we share are a commitment to select a minister who – as much as possible – reflects what the congregation wants, and to be as transparent as possible about the selection process and progress.

To that end, we will be conducting an on-line survey of members’ views, setting up group and individual meetings to get direct feedback, sending out emails, and beginning on September 8th, hosting a Search Committee Table on the patio after each service to get your views and answer your questions.

 

July 22-23, 2019 Update

Your Committee had a day-and-a-half off-site retreat with Rev. Judy Zimmerman of Oregon, who is our UUA-appointed Transition Coach. We spent time learning one another’s working styles, as we will have significant decisions to make, which must be made fairly and democratically. We divided ourselves functionally, with Livia Walsh and Nancy Hebert as Co-Chairs and all other members responsible for areas such as candidate hospitality, editing the Congregational Record, designing the survey, and so forth.