And Tim, thanks to you too. You’re right, the job description for such a position can seem vague. To some degree this is intentional. Our interest is to call a person with leadership gifts to serve in a broad capacity, exercising their gifts on the church’s behalf, making observations and listening to the Spirit of God and to all of us in the church as they serve. In turn, we hope that they will invite and challenge us to move together as a whole (many parts moving together). We want this person to work within the huge parameters of God’s dream and the stated vision of the church (hopefully there is some overlap here) and we want to give them a lot of latitude as to how they actually do this to work in and through people. We don’t name many specifics because we don’t want to limit how he or she carries out the role…specifics might limit creativity and orient tasks more in line with power and authoritative structure than vision and need.

Jim S could certainly tell you better exactly what he does on a daily basis, but I think his aim is to be an observer and listener to the big picture of the whole church and to our calling. This means relating to a lot of people in a lot of different ways, phone, e-mail, writing, meetings, preaching, etc. On a daily basis he watches, listens, and tries to speak honestly to others to invite them/us to stick to and live out our calling, God’s vision for the world through Christ. On a little bit more down-to-earth level, in addition to his work at and in preparation for the Delegate assembly each year, his role is to follow up on the details that the Delegate Assembly desires for the church. This includes a lot of travel, meeting with a lot of people, one-on-one and in groups–to listen, build relationships, preach, explain, make analogies so that we get it and so that we learn to appreciate others in the church, and so on. He really does, as you can imagine, have quite a number of intense interactions with individuals and groups. He is also responsible to help the denomination and its various parts (agencies, conferences, schools, etc) move toward our stated vision. He does this through an executive leadership staff group that he meets with and supervises. Together they work with communication and finances between many groups, convention planning, several boards, committees and leadership groups, and so on. He also meets regularly with the leaders of all the Mennonite Church Agencies and he is our representative to inter church groups as well. Again, a lot of his role has to do with communicating with and to the church. I hope something in here was helpful. Thanks again for your honest question. Don’t hesitate to ask more.

Wondered if the committee would consider thinking about gender, as well.