Members and friends of the UU Community of Charlotte:
For the first time in 20 years, our congregation is searching for a new Settled Minister. The term is capitalized because it has special meaning in Unitarian Universalism, and it signals that we plan to open the search process to ministers across the country who may want to change roles or location. Serving as spiritual, pastoral and administrative leader of a community such as ours is, as I’m sure you know, a big job. We had stability in that role for 19 years starting in 2003, and now we’re in a period of transition.
To lead the search, our congregation elected a seven-member team at the June annual meeting. The team has begun its work, and this is the first of what will be a series of updates on our progress. We hope you will take a few minutes each time to stay informed about our work. Future updates will go into more detail about the search process, our schedule, and your role in it.
It’s essential for us to gather information about how you assess the current state of our community and the role a new minister will play in moving us forward. The survey we distribute and the open meetings we hold in coming months will be structured to give you an opportunity to influence decisions we make on the best candidate to be our Settled Minister beginning, if all goes to plan, on August 1, 2024.
Under our UUCC Bylaws, the final decision on calling a Settled Minister must be made by our members at a congregational meeting. We can’t emphasize enough that, because of the need for candidate confidentiality, the Search Team will present one and only one candidate to the members for an up-or-down vote. And our Bylaws require a 90% vote in support of candidates to authorize the call for them to serve us. You will have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with, question, and hear sermons from the candidate in the week prior to the vote.
So we hope you see how important you are in this process – in particular in its early and final stages. The Search Team has begun its work, recently selecting longtime members Ellen Holliday and Rebekah Visco as co-chairs. The other members are Barry Ahrendt, Althea Clark, Mic Elvenstar, Dave Warren and Kathryn Whitfield.
The team plans to involve UUCC members, youth, staff and other stakeholders in the information-gathering phase. All seven of us are aware of the import of our decisions. We are committed to making the search process as participatory, transparent and open as we can, given the limits of candidate confidentiality aimed at protecting the names of ministers in search from being revealed publicly before offers are accepted.
To facilitate communications with the team, we have established a dedicated email address for you to ask questions and express concerns to us: ministersearch@uuccharlotte.org. Since this is a part-time responsibility for us, we can’t promise everyone will get an immediate and detailed reply. But please know that we will read and consider each email, and respond in an appropriate way as best we can. In addition, you can see updates from the team on Currents and on the Search Update page on the UUCC website.
Your Search Team looks forward to our shared work, and especially to welcoming a new Settled Minister to our community.
In faith,
Barry Ahrendt
Althea Clark
Mic Elvenstar
Ellen Holliday (co-chair)
Rebekah Visco (co-chair)
Dave Warren
Kathryn Whitfield