Olivet Congregational Church has embarked on the search for a new settled minister. Potential candidates for this opportunity are welcome to browse our website as well as review the materials below:
Members of the Pastoral Search Committee (this page)
Almighty and Gracious God, we ask your blessing on Olivet's Pastoral Search Committee and our congregation. Grant us... Courage and Strength for the journey ahead; Patience in times of frustration and uncertainty; and Trust, both in one another and in your infinite wisdom. Guide the committee with your loving hand and open their hearts and minds to discern your will. Keep us all faithful to the process and near to You in the days ahead. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Statement on Leadership
The following “Statement on Leadership in Ministry” is the concluding section of Olivet's church profile, which can be obtained in full by submitting a Letter of Interest to the Search Committee.
An Open Letter to All Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ Contemplating a Call to Ministry at Olivet Congregational Church:
On the last Wednesday evening of his 38-year-tenure ministering to Olivet Congregational Church—four days before Pentecost Sunday, 2007—the Reverend John Marcus Cox was asked what question he would most want to pose to candidates seeking to answer the call to be the next minister here on the corner of Dewey and Iglehart Avenues in St. Paul. Without hesitating, he replied, “Ask them what they are grateful for, what fills their heart with thanksgiving.”
That same question could be asked by candidates of us. In many ways it already has been. Our 30-page church profile might well be regarded as our response. It is not, to be sure, a clear, simple, and unambiguous expression of thanksgiving flush with self-assurance and devoid of fear and doubt. But then, how could it be? The loss of a ministry stretching over decades and across generations unsettled our sense of who we as a community of believers are. But even that might be perceived – indeed, has been so perceived at Olivet – as cause for thanksgiving, in the sense that Walter Brueggemann suggests when he wrote, “The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken from you by the grace of God.”
Under its interim minister, the Reverend Anne Swallow Gillis, Olivet has begun to envision itself anew. We have begun to discover and explore new possibilities of recognizing in each other and relating to each other the presence of the Triune God in our everyday lives. New families have joined in worship and fellowship, many of them with young children. New lay leaders and a new sense of being called to serve have emerged among newer and younger members, new vitalities have been unleashed among those older or with more years at Olivet giving generously of their time and talent. We have opened our hearts and minds in the past 18 months to engage purposefully and prayerfully with an interim minister whose style of leadership is different from what we had previously known, and in so doing have opened ourselves up to a newer, richer, more hopeful sense of what we might yet come to know. Thanks be to God!
When you read Olivet's profile, you will know a little bit—maybe more than a little bit—about us. You may also know a little bit—maybe more than a little bit – about what we most want to know about you. There are, of course, many things you don’t know, but may in time, God willing, come to know and love and be thankful for:
· What it feels like to stand at the back of the sanctuary with the choir on a Sunday morning looking over the people seated in the pews on each side of the aisle, mindful of the many generous ways they have supported your ministry and the equally many and varied ways they have earnestly sought and still yet more earnestly seek your ministry
· What it feels like to process down the aisle to the sound of a splendidly built and masterfully played pipe organ while behind you the choir sings and on each side of you the congregation joins them in raising their voices in praise to God in hymns old and new, rich in language and meaning
· What it feels like each Sunday to approach the dossal screen stitched together over 30 years ago with words from I John that have shaped this congregation’s sense of who – and whose – they are: “With what great love hath the Father loved us that we should be called God’s children?”
· What it feels like to hear the lectionary readings spoken aloud by a wide range of voices—young and old, male and female, some deeply familiar with the words, if not always fully comfortable with them, others newly introduced to the Word and looking for ways to enter into conversation with it.
· What it feels like to baptize an infant and hear the congregation vow to help raise the child in their faith by faithfully presenting to the child as it grows older the infinite variety of thinking about, talking about, and being in relationship with a Triune God, and through God, with others.
· What it feels like to see those children, now older, listen with rapt attention to your Children’s Sermon and renew you in spirit with their pearls of pure wisdom.
· What it feels like to make the mark of the cross with water on the foreheads of those renewing their baptismal vows during the Easter Vigil service, see the water brimming from their eyes, and hear them quietly intone, “I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
· What it feels like to hear the cacophony of voices crying out in a multitude of languages from the pews the words from the second chapter of Acts on Pentecost Sunday.
It is there, perhaps most fittingly, that this letter should end: with Pentecost, with the Church brought to new life and given its mission. As a parting gift and also, in a way, an introductory gift, we offer the following passage written following Pentecost Sunday, 1996 by a member of Olivet, Timothy Polk, in the preface to his book, The Biblical Kierkegaard (the book is dedicated to Olivet Congregational Church):
“The fact is—and I should have learned this in the fourteen years that they have been cradling my family and me—this is a congregation full of rapt, discerning listeners, and just as defiant of the conventional labels as my champion (Kierkegaard). They excel at hospitality, not least toward ‘the Tradition,’ gladly entertaining the presence of the dead, who knows how many ‘angels unawares.’ For what I talk, they do: daily receive all things as gifts, proving what the pastor, now well into his sermon, just said, that the Spirit blows where it wills, that we cannot domesticate it, that it is not within our power….either to kill it or vivify it. Rather, it vivifies us.”
The following “Statement on Leadership in Ministry” is the concluding section of Olivet's church profile, which can be obtained in full by submitting a Letter of Interest to the Search Committee.