Pssst… Have you heard? The PSC has recommended a final candidate to the congregation for the position of senior pastor at CTK! You can learn more about Travis Drake, his family, and his ministry at ctkcambridge.org/candidate.
We as a committee are very excited to be at this point — we are excited to share with you how God has provided over these last months and we are excited for you to have a chance to get to know Travis and his family.
But the work is not yet done…
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Phase 4: things are getting real.
Just by way of reminder, there are 4 phases in the pastoral search process:
Phase 1: Creating a Church & Pastor Profile - Using feedback from the congregation, we created a church and pastor profile.
Phase 2: Securing Candidates - During this phase, we made initial contact with a variety of candidates, some of whom were nominated by our congregation, some of whom were suggested by our consultants, and some of whom reached out to us because of our church & pastor profile.
Phase 3: Evaluating Candidates - As a committee, we broke into smaller teams to do “deep dives” on each viable candidate, listening to sermons, reading any blog or social media content, interview with the chairs, and familiarizing ourselves with the candidate’s history in ministry. When we felt that a candidate was potentially a good fit for Cambridge, we then began a series of interviews with the full PSC, evaluating each candidate along the way.
Phase 4: Selection of the Final Candidate - In the process of interviewing candidates, we have narrowed our search down to finalists. This is the phase we are in right now.
Let’s review, shall we? There are 4 phases of the search process: drawing up the church & pastor profile, securing candidates, evaluating candidates, and presenting a final candidate for the congregation to consider, at which point the congregation will get to hear from the candidate and eventually vote on him. Currently, we’re in phase 3: evaluating candidates. This is the longest phase in the process, as it can and is repeated often - we are presented with candidates, we dig into their resumes and online presence, listen to a sample of their sermons, have an initial interview, and decide whether to move forward with them - then we repeat.
As you’ve hopefully heard by now, we have entered Phase 2 of the pastoral search process. Phases 2 and 3 are focused on gathering and evaluating candidates, and we encourage you to nominate any pastors you would like us to consider using this form. Nominations are completely confidential and are sent to McGowan, who will reach out to the nominee to discern interest.
Phase 1 centered mainly on creating the church and pastor profile. (You can read the profile here and watch a video from some of the PSC members here).
While creating the profile has been the centerpiece of our work as a committee over the last few months, the other distinguishing feature of this first phase has been the CG Prayer visits.
Hopefully by now you’ve all read the church assessment sent by McGowan and filled out the survey to give your feedback. One topic that came up quite a bit in the assessment and survey responses was that of Mission and Vision. Does CTK have one? Does CTK need one? Who comes up with it?
And one question in particular that has come up in PSC meetings is “When in this transition process does the Mission and Vision development take place?” It seems like a classic chicken-and-egg situation… how can we choose a pastor if we don’t know our mission and vision? But how can we determine our mission and vision without our new pastor in place?
The PSC has embarked on our training with McGowan and Associates. Ed Norton sat us down over Zoom to give us the bird’s eye view of the process. The four basic steps are
Preparation and training for the PSC
Securing candidates
Evaluation of candidates
Selection of a candidate to bring before the congregation for their (your) consideration/vote.
Sounds simple, right?
Hello.
Welcome to the PSC blog. We hope this will be a place where the committee can engage with the congregation and keep you all updated as to our progress. This blog will be informal - sometimes it will contain important announcements, sometimes just smaller updates and reflections. Any important announcements will also be shared via other avenues (the Reader, Sunday morning announcements, etc.) in addition to here on this blog.
The nine of us met last night for the first time. We had a time of Scripture meditation and prayer, and then we set about selecting the committee chair. There was a decent amount of deliberation as we considered people’s gifting, inclinations, and time commitments. In the end, the committee decided on the following: