January 2023 Senior Minister Search Committee Update

January 20, 2023

This month, the Old South Church Senior Minister Search Committee has started interviewing candidates in discernment about our Senior Minister position.  As you know, we spent the fall reviewing profiles and letters of interest and selected a small group of ministers that we felt might be a good fit for our congregation.  We are now in the middle of a 6-week process of meeting candidates in conversation.  These initial dialogues are hour-long virtual interviews during which we explore the candidate’s theology and approach to worship, their experience building community, their skills as a senior leader, and their commitment to faith-based social action.  We also give the candidate an opportunity to get to know our congregation a bit better by asking questions of committee members.  Following the interview, we invite candidates to send us additional material – links to sermons and correspondence they have crafted for congregations in response to difficult situations.

As a committee, we are excited about the pool of candidates we have chosen to invite for interviews.  Though we are a diverse committee with different perspectives, each of us is confident that we have identified several individuals who – with God’s help – have the potential to serve our community with extraordinary courage, creativity, and compassion as the next Senior Minister.

By the end of February, we anticipate that we will be ready to choose a smaller set of  candidates with whom we would like to engage more deeply.  We will be extending invitations to that smaller group to join us in Boston this spring for longer in-person meetings.  We are working together as a committee now to craft a collection of experiences for the in-person visits that will permit the kind of mutual discernment this process requires. We hope to be ready to introduce a final candidate to the congregation before summer!

Thank you, as always, for your trust and your ongoing prayers of support.