The Church of the Good Samaritan
212 West Lancaster Ave.
Paoli, Pa 19301
610-664-4040
Homepage: http://www.good-samaritan.org/
Contact: Discernment Committee, goodsamdcinfo@gmail.com
Background
Good Samaritan recently completed its discernment process and has called a new Rector, Rev. Richard T Morgan, from St. Paul’s, Salisbury, England after a 19 month search. He will be coming to this Pennsylvania congregation as soon as the necessary visa documents can be approved for the work permit. Mac McCausland was co-chair of the selection committee process. The parish used a consultant to help them with the self study preparation process and as a facilitator. The information gathered here comes primarily from the Good Samaritan parish profile, the Strategic Plan and information from Mac McCausland, co-chair of the discernment committee during the rector call process.
Parish History
The Church of the Good Samaritan began alongside a promising dirt road about 14 decades ago and has been engaged in ministering to a growing and changing Episcopal congregation ever since. Planted in the 1870′s, safely beyond the western reach of the city of Philadelphia, Good Samaritan unknowingly laid roots into the mainstream of suburban growth. Before long, the wayside chapel proved too small. Within Good Samaritan’s first 50 years, the campus of the church doubled. Within the next 50 years, a day school and new sanctuary were added to meet the growing demands of new membership.
Good Samaritan is one of the largest churches in the oldest diocese in the country. But it isn’t just favorable demographics that paved such growth. Good Samaritan held onto a taproot, which had proven successful through the decades– faithful, clear, and dynamic lay and ordained leadership. With only seven Rectors in over 14 decades of ministry, Good Samaritan established a strong heritage of solid biblical teaching, engaging worship, and a clear commitment to compassionate, hands-on local and global outreach.
As the result of the prayerful work of the Master Plan feasibility committee in 2001, the leadership and congregation launched a campus renovation and expansion program which included a successful capital fundraising campaign. An expanded Ministries building has equipped us with the ability to provide expanded Children’s, Youth and Adult Christian Education programs. With a renovated and expanded Sanctuary completed in 2007, our commitment to remain a vibrant community of worship has been wonderfully enhanced.
With the departure of our 7th Rector, Greg Brewer at the end of 2008, we begin a new chapter in the Life of Good Samaritan. With the calling of The Rev. Dr Todd Cederberg as our Priest-in-Charge during this season of transition, our call to “Build up the body and move forward in mission,” remains our focus as we seek to follow and serve Christ as His church. The parish completed a Strategic Plan in 2009 as part of its discernment process. In 2010 a new rector was called from England but his start date depends upon securing the work visa necessary for him to be employed in the United States.
Self Study Process
“Our self-study was amazing – and invaluable – to our work. By careful attention to the structure of the self-study process, and to the content, we were able to include over 40% of our ASA into the self-study – and this was over the summer months of 2009 when many were away on vacation. I’d strongly recommend you pay particular attention to this phase of your work. The self-study also enabled us to produce a parish profile which reflected our values and priorities. The comments from our applicants seemed to confirm that it was clear and helpful to them in their own discernment.” Mac McCausland
Good Samaritan engaged a consultant TAG Consulting, Fairfax, Virginia to assist them in their process. TAG consulting is run by Kevin Ford, a nephew of The Rev Billy Graham and the author of a popular church planning book Transforming Church.
Supported by the church staff and with the assistance of a consultant, the committee initiated a self-study and made every effort to ensure both the congregation and staff had the opportunity to participate. To assist in this endeavor and to facilitate such involvement from a large parish, two principal vehicles were utilized:
A survey (known as the Transforming Church Index (TCI) survey) was made available to the congregation during July and August 2009;
A series of “Discernment Gatherings” were held at the church and in people’s homes during July, August and September 2009. The results of both represent a broad spectrum of our family and include children in our Sunday School, the youth, elderly shut-ins and our congregation at large. With an average Sunday attendance (“ASA”) of 618, our goal was to include as many parishioners as possible.
The TCI Survey
“The TCI Survey was available to parishioners to complete from June 28 – August 17, 2009, and 261 (42% of our ASA) participated in the survey during this time. The survey revealed many wonderful and encouraging strengths of Good Samaritan. These included a strong sense that Jesus Christ is our personal Lord and Savior, that our church strives to make a difference in people’s lives outside of the church and that many congregants felt better prepared to minister to others as a result of attending Good Samaritan.”
“As with all families and large churches, the survey also revealed some areas for improvement. These included an acknowledgement that we need to be better at closing down ministries that are no longer effective. Additionally, some members felt that they could be more connected with the overall mission of the church, while others did not feel that they had a clearly defined role in our church family.”
“Though it is always harder to hear our weakness than our strength, the survey has been helpful in highlighting areas where we need to make change. These areas of strength and weakness will be an important focus for our future Rector.”
The Discernment Gatherings
“We were heartened that 253 people (41% of our ASA) participated in a Discernment Gathering during July, August and September, 2009. These informal gatherings were held at the church and in people’s homes; they were identical in format and presented many opportunities for individuals and families to attend. Each gathering lasted approximately two hours. After refreshments, fellowship and prayer, participants were guided through a series of questions addressing such topics as our strengths and weaknesses as a church congregation, where we want to go and what skills and gifts are needed in a Rector to take us there?”
“People wrote with care and at times great passion about these and other topics. There were many different answers to each question and the committee labored over each discernment gathering worksheet. It is not possible to convey all the input we received, but patterns emerged and the discernment committee was greatly informed by these invaluable gatherings.”
The process of involving the congregation was an intentional and important part of the success of the process according to Mac McCausland. We also held discernment gatherings for the Discernment committee itself (the very first one), the Vestry (the second one), and other key leadership groups within the parish (paid lay staff, clergy staff, etc.). We were intentional in obtaining input from as many leadership groups within the parish as was possible. That was very helpful, because since the information from those groups was largely in sync with what we learned at the congregational discernment gatherings, we knew we had solid and reliable data on the parish’s priorities, goals, and dreams for the future. This was key in helping us discern a Rector whose gifts were precisely what the congregation and leadership was looking for.
The other lesson from the discernment gatherings was the need to be PATIENT. This is a long process, and it’s very hard to stay fully connected. After the fact, Mac said the Discernment Committee said one thing they would do differently is expand communication with the parish beyond reporting on the last Sunday of every month (and through the parish’s emails and monthly publications). Because the process took so many months it was necessary to keep refreshing the parish on what the process was, where they were in that time line while still protecting the confidentiality of candidates. He recommended that other parishes err on the side of over-communicating with the parish to pay particular attention to this.
Candidate Screening and Selection Process
The Vestry at the church of the Good Samaritan set the tone for the process in charging the discernment committee. They told the committee to:
- Cast a wide net
- Provide a progress report to the Vestry each month on the discernment committee work
- Maintain complete confidentiality regarding the identity of the candidates
- Tell the wardens when you need financial support
- Bring us one name at the end of your work.
The Discernment Committee felt fully supported by the Vestry and their courage in placing their trust in the committee members. The Discernment Committee members responded by devoting “serious time to this work.” The Committee:
- Met weekly for almost 19 months meeting typically for 90-120 minutes
- Formed subcommittees to work in parallel on different tasks:
- Developing a self study methodology
- Organizing, staffing and leading the parish discernment gatherings
- Interpreting the survey data (TCI Survey and discernment meetings) for the profile and to include in the monthly Vestry update report
- Produce the parish profile draft
- Develop questions for the process
- At each step, the full Discernment Committee had the opportunity to review the subcommittee’s work product and recommendations and modify them to reflect the sense of the full committee.
“We asked our initial “inquirers” to provide us with the following information (on the basis of which we eliminated a fair number): their resume or CV, the average Sunday attendance (ASA) of their present (or previous parish where they served), their letter of inquiry, and their CDO profile. We eliminated perhaps half of our inquirers after our committee’s review of these three docs.
We asked three initial questions, which were peculiar to our parish. We are one of the largest parishes in the Diocese of PA (ASA over 500) so we had particular questions relevant to us and our situation.
Those first three questions were these:
- What are your core beliefs and how do they inform and shape your ministry?
- Providing effective pastoral care in a resource-sized parish can be a challenge. What strategies would you apply in approaching this challenge?
- What strategies have you used to help clarify and sharpen congregational vision?
After further reducing our pool of candidates on the basis of their responses to these three questions, we then did the following;
- Conducted a Skype video interview with all remaining candidates (some were outside the US), and we recorded these interviews (with the candidate’s permission) so that all of our search committee members could hear the entire interview even if they were absent. We had questions that were submitted to all candidates, and we had questions which were candidate-specific, based on their earlier materials.
- Further eliminations took place.
- The Discernment Committee put together three member visiting teams from among the committee members including one “skeptic” for each candidate. If the skeptics came back impressed the full committee gave more credence to the candidate. We then visited (teams of three) the finalists in their home parishes over a weekend: an interview session, dinner with the candidate (and spouse if applicable), worship with the candidate preaching Sunday morning at a principal service, and lunch with the candidate (spouse). The interviews were recorded with the knowledge and permission of the interviewee, so our entire team could hear the full interview. The process was intentional that each visiting team was TRUSTED that meant that the full committee respected the judgment and impressions of the visiting team and consider them representatives of the full committee. The visiting teams, conversely, saw their role as representing the entire committee not just their personal views or preferences in objectively evaluating the candidates on the same criteria. The Discernment Committee felt this policy of trust worked so well that it felt as if God was with them every step of the way and that every committee member felt committed to the team.
- Again, more eliminations.
- The finalists were invited to spend a weekend with us at our parish – interviews, touring the campus, Rectory, Evening Prayer, homily, and dinner at a committee member’s home, and discrete worship with us on Sunday morning.
- Following those final meetings, we had several discernment sessions, finally discerning one name. As the process neared its end, the Discernment Committee invited the recommended candidate and spouse to visit providing a confidential and informal opportunity to introduce the candidate to the Vestry and begin the process of handing off the final decision to the Vestry.
- The Vestry also established a transition team including one member of the Discernment Committee to enable the elected leaders of the parish to plan the employment terms and conditions and other details of the formal consultation with the Bishop and other procedural issues. This transition team work was also kept strictly confidential. This planned hand-off process proved extremely important as the final candidate ended up with immigration and work permit issues since he was coming from England.
Of note – we never took a vote. We worked very hard to practice “spiritual discernment’, and God blessed that intention.” —Mac McCausland
Strategic Plan 2009 Summary
Unique and Attractive Qualities
- Evangelical, Biblically-based, scriptural orthodoxy
- Deep commitment to Christ
- Strong outreach and missions in our community and worldwide
- Vibrant worship – preaching, orthodox teaching, music
- Commitment to youth and children
- Prayer foundational
- Caring, friendly, grace, filled community
- Individuals equipped to minister to others
- Strength of clergy and lay leadership
- Welcoming facilities
Barriers to Success
- Being spread too thin with too many programs, too few people involved
- Weak local evangelical outreach
- Distracting, potentially divisive national church issues
- Large size— not being connected or bridging community across services
- Not personally engaging, valuing and including everyone
- Danger of weakening focus on God
- Potential for over-reaching complacency or turf-ism
- Failure to embrace change
Conclusions
- The Church of the Good Samaritan has a mission reflective of its name being the Good Samaritan to one another and to the community. Through this we live out Christ’s Great Commission.
- Participating in the building projects has unified us and established wonderful facilities.
- Now we will focus on “Building up the body of Christ and Moving Forward in Mission”
- With all that God is calling us to do, it’s time to raise up new leaders and energize ministry participation.
- This plan must be achievable. http://good-samaritan.org/documents/strategic_plan.pdf
Lessons Learned
Like painting your house most of the effort required to get a good result is preparation. Good Samaritan is a great example of a congregation that spent the time up front to discern both who it was and what God was calling it to be as preparation for their call process. By using a prayer driven approach to involving the congregation in the process pro-actively to define their vision, strategic plan and parish profile, they dramatically improved the alignment between the congregation and the search process and the consensus building needed to achieve a good result.
Their efforts are instructive also for the use of a consultant and standardized survey materials like the TCI Index which adds discipline, statistical validity and quality control to the data gather and survey process and thus makes the information gathered actionable.
Lastly, the clarity of the Vestry direction to the discernment Committee, a regular pattern of progress reports keeping the Vestry informed of progress and the trust factor that developed among the Discernment Committee members and with the Vestry were critical to success.
Prepared by Gary Hunt, Discernable Futures, December 14, 2010
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