Dear Cherrydale Family,
It has been almost seven months since our last blog update and so many things have changed. As you may have heard from various announcements, we are restarting our Biblical Community Pastoral search process. If not, we hope this update can bring everyone up-to-speed. We will share some of our reasons for restarting and introduce our new members.
Back to Phase One…and a Half?
In the last blog post (at the end of March), we presented two candidates to the Elders for consideration; however, because of the pandemic, the search process was put on hold.
Now, the Elders have decided to restart the search process for several reasons bulleted below:
- The two candidates we put forth previously are still being considered, but are in different circumstances that warrant us to expand our search.
- The racial and justice issues of today have weighed heavily on the Elders’ hearts, encouraging us to seek out candidates that reflect the church and the area we all live in.
- Finally, we’ve received more applications over the past few months, which is an encouragement to Cherrydale!
For these reasons, the Elders have decided to restart the process, though not completely from the beginning, in order to look at several more potential candidates for the Biblical Community Pastor position.
Our New Team
Understandably, with everything going on right now, some of our team members aren’t able to commit to serving on this team again. We thank Justin Velez-Hagan, Carrie White, Johanna Rogers, and Dave Rippey for their work in the spring. Pastor Tom Oostdyk, Pastor Matt Gibert, Val Lewis, Kristina DeVesty, Rachael Gunaratnam, and Matthew Dong have agreed to stay on the committee, so please pray for them.
What is most exciting is the addition of two Cherrydale members to help our committee – Bob Glahn and Jessica Marston – who bring fresh perspectives and unique experiences as we continue with our search. Please pray for their integration into the team and overall team unity as we go through the search process.
First Meeting Update
We all met together on September 28th over Zoom with great anticipation. After some time in introductions and prayer, our efficient team got to work analyzing resumes and cover letters we had received. We would love continued prayers for our search, that each member may put what God has prioritized first and foremost so we can put forth strong candidates.
Second Meeting Update
We had our second meeting on October 12th. In just a short amount of time we reviewed several more resumes. From this meeting we were able to reach out to several potential applicants to apply to the Biblical Community Pastor position. We’re finding a lower response rate from some of these applicants, so please pray for the team’s patience and the Lord’s guidance for all the applicants.
Thank you for reading this long update!
Matthew Dong, on behalf of the Biblical Community Pastor Search Committee
View our pastoral search process page here.
