October Prudential Committee news

Here's the exciting news!

The 7-person Search Committee membership that was approved by Prudential Committee is as follows:
Amy Borg, Chair
Joonu Coste
Cassie Datena
Laura Kirshenbaum
Jay Lavelle
Kaitie Mandile
Seth Popinchalk

In addition to these 7, one more person was appointed to serve as a member ex officio:
Cindy Cordova (who is the current RE Committee chair, and who chaired the RE Futures Task Force that worked to gather information and make preliminary recommendations over the summer, about how to respond to Sierra-Marie's decision to begin studies at Yale Div. School).


Committee Charge:

This task will contain several phases:
~2 months gathering input and helping to arrive at an actionable consensus on the strategic vision for First U's RE staffing -> develop a job description and job title for the program director by end of December, to be advertised in January;
~3 months sifting through applications to decide on whom to actually meet and interview through the late winter;
~1+ month interviewing a small number of candidates -> making a recommendation(s) to Rev. Schade by the end of April or early May regarding whom to hire, to start work in the summer sometime).

The Search Committee will meet with Rev. Schade to be oriented to their task by early November.

The Finance Committee will provide the members of the Search Committee with an annual budget number by mid-December, which represents the church's total resources available to support the RE program in a sustainable manner for the next three years. Jennifer Bowes will be available to help the committee translate and interpret the various options they may develop for alternative staffing configurations, to fit within this budgetary constraint.

The Search Committee will provide brief updates on how their work and thinking is progressing at every monthly PruComm meeting, to keep the Prudential Committee informed.

Otherwise, deciding how the work gets done is a matter entrusted to the members of the committee. Some of these tasks can certainly be performed by individuals or sub-committees; some will require meetings of the whole to hash out ideas and discuss contingencies.


This was the main item of business Prudential Committee acted upon this month.

David Spanagel
Moderator