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It
took us only five minutes to make the decision, but it took us
nine months to get there. We,
your ministerial search committee, reached consensus in the first
round in choosing The Rev. Elizabeth H. Stevens of Alexandria,
Virginia as your candidate for the fellowship’s next minister.
Please read her enclosed letter.
Thank you’s go out to all who helped to hold the vision
that our choice would be so obvious to all of us that we would
quickly reach consensus.
Using
the results from our congregational
survey as our foundation, each candidate went through a
four-hour semi-formal interview, including a role play scenario to
test their conflict resolution skills, as well as endured
give-and-take discussions over two lunches and one dinner.
Plus we heard each candidate deliver a sermon at different
churches in the greater Puget Sound area. Due to the closeness in
each minister’s collective qualities, nuance and intuition
played important roles as well.
Of the five pre-candidates interviewed,
one accepted a call with another church the week before our vote,
so that brought us down to four potential candidates.
We
were looking for a minister who could comfortably meet the
religious diversity of our membership; a person with youthful
vigor and an old soul; a person who could put a song in our hearts
and challenge our thinking; a person with spiritual depth and
intellectual acumen; and a person with great potential who could
meet our current needs and grow with us in the future.
All of you will have an opportunity to
meet The Rev. Stevens during the week of April 18 – 25 (see schedule). We
have done our best to create as many small groups as reasonably
possible to give all of you more individual time with her.
Also note that we have set-up a couple of daytime sessions
for those who can’t get away in the evening.
Day care will be available.*
Fellowship members will vote on the candidate following the Sunday
service on April 25.
Although the process was laborious and painful at times, it was
also illuminating, rewarding, and enriching.
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Rev.
Elizabeth H. Stevens |
And to the many of you who have asked “are you still
friends?” – Absolutely!
We received 14 or 15 applicants,
chose to phone-interview six.
Of those six, we chose to pre-candidate five. Of the five, three were women, two were men, one was
bi-sexual, one was transgender, one was a person of color and one
had a Hispanic heritage.
We were prepared to struggle with what we
might have to compromise on, but we believe we have found all that
in the person of The Rev. Stevens.
Here are a couple of
tidbits she didn’t mention in her accompanying letter:
She entered Yale University at age 16, graduating four
years later with a BA in History.
She spent a year in Russia teaching English to second and
third graders at Moscow School #607 – and is now fluent in
Russian.
While at Starr King, she was an advocate
and hotline counselor for three years at the Bay Area Women
Against Rape Center in Oakland and worked with The Rev. Kay
Jorgensen, the social justice minister at First UU Church in San
Francisco. She is currently serving as a chaplain at a hospital in
Alexandria and sings in her local choir.
The Rev. Stevens is a person of many talents. She and her family also enjoy the great outdoors through
skiing, hiking and kayaking.
It has been a long journey for us search
committee members. We
want to thank all of you for your patience, prayers, candles, and
your kind, thoughtful acknowledgements. |
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Faithfully yours,
Leif Bentsen,
Diane Boatwright-Frost, Marlene DiMauro, Linda Gabriel,
Beth Wilson, and Ginger Younie |
