Internship Journal
Journal #1
Today I started my internship with the Christ Episcopal Church Rector Search Committee (RSC). I was actually an elected youth representative, but it is basically a hiring team for a rector at a parish. I am a member of the committee, but I will be working closely under one of the co-chairs of the committee, Jean, who will be mentoring me during the HR part of the committee's work. We spent the night getting to know each other as we will be working very closely together over the coming months. We also outline exactly what we needed to do to hire a new rector. Obviously, we could not immediately hire someone because we also had to take the congregation's opinions in to consideration. I realized at this point that we were not only hiring a priest, but someone who the congregation would get along with and nurture and grow our church as well. We not only had to consider their readiness for the job, but their spiritual awareness as well. Our job is to find three qualified applicants and them present them to the vestry, so we don't actually have to make the final decision.
Journal #2
We planned out all the "Town-Hall" meetings today in our meeting. The Town-Hall meetings are meetings where the entire congregation gets together and discusses a topic, the soonest one being our Parish Profile. Our Profile is a way for us to tell the applicant pool what we want and a way for the applicant pool to "taste" our culture and see if they want to apply for the job. Creating the profile will be a long process, we will start off with the first meeting, what the congregation wants to say in the profile, have the second meeting BLANK months later with the topic, "Did we hear you right?", and have a third meeting after the interview process to introduce our choice in rector and transition them into the community. It will be a long process, as we have to interview the applicants as well, and it will probably take about a year.
Journal #3
We had our first town-hall meeting today. It was held after the 10:15 service and we asked the 8:00 service people to come back for it if they could. We provided lunch as the meeting was scheduled from about 11:45 to 1:30-2:00. Everybody on the search committee, including myself, led a table discussion. Everybody helped plan this meeting, we all brainstormed questions and refined them for several weeks, and everybody helped set up for the actually meeting. The questions had to be very carefully worded not to offend anyone and to encourage discussion. Many good points were brought up about some questions during the brainstorming process, some of which I hadn't even thought of. The actual structure of the meeting was that there would be a member from the RSC at every table to facilitate discussion and a vestry member as well to take notes. The discussions were very informative and we gained a good perspective on what the congregation wants in the Parish Profile. Our next job is to write the Profile using this input and accurately represent what our community wants in a new rector.
Journal #4
Now that we opinions and input from the congregation, we can start writing our Parish Profile. Each member of the RSC was assigned a section of the profile to write. I was assigned Finances. This mean that I have to write about our policies about money and our church finances over the past few years. This is work that we do outside of the meetings, but we have to have our section done by Jan. 1st. I am going to ask my dad to help me write it, as I have no idea what it is about. It helps that my dad was on the Financial Committee for a few years.
Journal #5
We are now editing! Everybody has turned their section in and we are now editing the sections to sound like one cohesive piece, not just random sections stuck together. This is a long process as we go through the entire profile (Currently over 30 pages!) and edit each and every sentence. We have to make sure that the wording is correct, and that we are really saying what we want to be saying. After all, this profile represents not only what we are looking for but who we are as well.
Journal #6
We are now receiving applicants! This signals transition into the other part of this internship, interviewing and screening applicants. The applicants could reach a total of three interviews, one preliminary phone interview with the RSC, if they pass, they will then receive a visit from 3-4 RSC members and conduct an interview there, and if they pass that, they will come to our church and have an interview with the Vestry. We have started the interviews, and so far, they all have had a different HR aspect that I have had to learn about, like question wording, or forming questions according to their pasts.
Journal #7
We have narrowed it down to a few applicants and we will be starting the home visits shortly. I will be going on two visits and while my teams are there, we will be both interviewing the applicants and some references.
Journal #8
All of our visits went well and we are now discussing them. Pretty soon, we will have to refer three candidates to the vestry so that they can make the final decisions. We are taking our time with these decisions because as we are all very aware, these choices affect our whole congregation, not just ourselves. The people that we refer have to be dedicated people who will help our church grow in all aspects and respect the culture that we have now. It is not a decision to be taken lightly and we will discern as much as we need to to make the right choices.
Journal #9
We have made our decisions! We gave the candidates over to the vestry today and are now "relieved" of our duties. This marks the end of my internship as the only things that we have to do now are hold one more town-hall meeting to introduce the new rector and social gatherings while the candidates are here for their interviews. It has been a very informative process and I have learned a lot!
Today I started my internship with the Christ Episcopal Church Rector Search Committee (RSC). I was actually an elected youth representative, but it is basically a hiring team for a rector at a parish. I am a member of the committee, but I will be working closely under one of the co-chairs of the committee, Jean, who will be mentoring me during the HR part of the committee's work. We spent the night getting to know each other as we will be working very closely together over the coming months. We also outline exactly what we needed to do to hire a new rector. Obviously, we could not immediately hire someone because we also had to take the congregation's opinions in to consideration. I realized at this point that we were not only hiring a priest, but someone who the congregation would get along with and nurture and grow our church as well. We not only had to consider their readiness for the job, but their spiritual awareness as well. Our job is to find three qualified applicants and them present them to the vestry, so we don't actually have to make the final decision.
Journal #2
We planned out all the "Town-Hall" meetings today in our meeting. The Town-Hall meetings are meetings where the entire congregation gets together and discusses a topic, the soonest one being our Parish Profile. Our Profile is a way for us to tell the applicant pool what we want and a way for the applicant pool to "taste" our culture and see if they want to apply for the job. Creating the profile will be a long process, we will start off with the first meeting, what the congregation wants to say in the profile, have the second meeting BLANK months later with the topic, "Did we hear you right?", and have a third meeting after the interview process to introduce our choice in rector and transition them into the community. It will be a long process, as we have to interview the applicants as well, and it will probably take about a year.
Journal #3
We had our first town-hall meeting today. It was held after the 10:15 service and we asked the 8:00 service people to come back for it if they could. We provided lunch as the meeting was scheduled from about 11:45 to 1:30-2:00. Everybody on the search committee, including myself, led a table discussion. Everybody helped plan this meeting, we all brainstormed questions and refined them for several weeks, and everybody helped set up for the actually meeting. The questions had to be very carefully worded not to offend anyone and to encourage discussion. Many good points were brought up about some questions during the brainstorming process, some of which I hadn't even thought of. The actual structure of the meeting was that there would be a member from the RSC at every table to facilitate discussion and a vestry member as well to take notes. The discussions were very informative and we gained a good perspective on what the congregation wants in the Parish Profile. Our next job is to write the Profile using this input and accurately represent what our community wants in a new rector.
Journal #4
Now that we opinions and input from the congregation, we can start writing our Parish Profile. Each member of the RSC was assigned a section of the profile to write. I was assigned Finances. This mean that I have to write about our policies about money and our church finances over the past few years. This is work that we do outside of the meetings, but we have to have our section done by Jan. 1st. I am going to ask my dad to help me write it, as I have no idea what it is about. It helps that my dad was on the Financial Committee for a few years.
Journal #5
We are now editing! Everybody has turned their section in and we are now editing the sections to sound like one cohesive piece, not just random sections stuck together. This is a long process as we go through the entire profile (Currently over 30 pages!) and edit each and every sentence. We have to make sure that the wording is correct, and that we are really saying what we want to be saying. After all, this profile represents not only what we are looking for but who we are as well.
Journal #6
We are now receiving applicants! This signals transition into the other part of this internship, interviewing and screening applicants. The applicants could reach a total of three interviews, one preliminary phone interview with the RSC, if they pass, they will then receive a visit from 3-4 RSC members and conduct an interview there, and if they pass that, they will come to our church and have an interview with the Vestry. We have started the interviews, and so far, they all have had a different HR aspect that I have had to learn about, like question wording, or forming questions according to their pasts.
Journal #7
We have narrowed it down to a few applicants and we will be starting the home visits shortly. I will be going on two visits and while my teams are there, we will be both interviewing the applicants and some references.
Journal #8
All of our visits went well and we are now discussing them. Pretty soon, we will have to refer three candidates to the vestry so that they can make the final decisions. We are taking our time with these decisions because as we are all very aware, these choices affect our whole congregation, not just ourselves. The people that we refer have to be dedicated people who will help our church grow in all aspects and respect the culture that we have now. It is not a decision to be taken lightly and we will discern as much as we need to to make the right choices.
Journal #9
We have made our decisions! We gave the candidates over to the vestry today and are now "relieved" of our duties. This marks the end of my internship as the only things that we have to do now are hold one more town-hall meeting to introduce the new rector and social gatherings while the candidates are here for their interviews. It has been a very informative process and I have learned a lot!
