Please consider this part one.
After worship this morning, Jan & I will retire to a local coffee shop. The congregation will fortify themselves with some coffee or tea and perhaps light snacks, then return to the meeting house.
At which point there will be a congregational meeting with a single item of business.
(While I’m nervous as a cat I’m also conscious as to how this congregational meeting and the town meeting, which in old New England, was the same thing, are deep roots of our American democratic institutions. I think of that call to freedom of speech, where all may speak, indeed where all are called to stand and speak their deepest wisdom and my head spins. There is something powerful, and even holy in this enterprise…)
After the vote someone from the search committee will give us a call and the committee, Jan & I will have a late lunch together, either to celebrate or commiserate.
The numbers I need to accept election are rather higher than those called for by the church’s bylaws. I’ve discussed this with both the search committee and the Prudential Committee, the congregation’s board. I would say due to past issues regarding ministers here, while everything I’ve experienced has been evidence of a very good fit, it just isn’t in the bag…
So, pins and needles…
The sermon I preached and the outcome of the vote will come later today…
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