Good people of Calvary, with great honor and deep pleasure, on behalf of the Vestry and the Search and Nominating Committee I would like to announce that we have called Fr. Jon Hall to be our new Rector! 532 days from the day Mtr. TJ announced her departure, the Vestry was presented with a candidate and voted to call Fr. Jon. In less than a year and a half, Calvary formed a search committee made up of individuals hungry for change and driven by a love for our dear church. These folks worked tirelessly during this time. They worked hand in hand with Cn. Amy to fully prepare themselves and our church for finding our new Rector. Folks the search process isn’t just putting an ad on Indeed.com or in the newspaper. Our team did a deep dive into our church, collecting data from the CAT survey, and working to get an idea of where Calvary stands today. Where we are different from where we were when we called Mtr. TJ ten years ago, how we are the same, what we need out of a new Rector, and how to move forward as a congregation. It is no secret that our church has changed. We are growing, we have new baptisms and confirmations every year. It is a far cry from where our numbers were ten years ago. We have faced good times and hard times over the last decade. We restructured how we operate, and had to move on from doing things as we always had just to survive. Folks, we aren’t just surviving, we are flourishing. Even during COVID, we grew in numbers! When other churches were closing their doors, we grew! Calvary is such a healthy church. We have a wide range of people that make up our congregation, with different theological interpretations, and styles of worship, but we all share central things in common. We have strong faith and a sense of helping others. These are the things that we knew from the beginning of the search process that would be enticing to prospective candidates. When speaking with Fr. Jon, the health of Calvary was one of the best-selling points.
Fr. Jon comes to us from Good Shepard, Lexington. He was the assistant to the Rector. He has served as a Rector in parishes in Kentucky and Missouri. He has been ordained for the last 18 years. He has a strong pastoral presence. Has an eye for growing faith communities, and cares deeply for the people he serves. Fr. Jon is very much middle of the road. He’ll be a great leader for our diverse congregation. I am thoroughly excited to see where we can go and grow as a faith community under his steady hand. I thank the search and nominating committee for doing all the hard work and presenting the Vestry with him! Fr. Jon begins as Rector on December 1, 2023. His first Sunday will be Advent I, December 3, 2023.
Folks, in 2023 it is no secret that the Episcopal Church, nationally has declined. We are in the middle of a shortage of clergy. We knew the beginning of this process would be different than how things used to be. The days of dozens of applications and wooing potential candidates are long gone. Now the process forces us to look deeper at ourselves. To see what and who we need to help our church remain true to our vision and purpose. With ample prayer, we beat out the statistics. There are churches across the country that have been searching for far longer periods than we have. Churches that are more dysfunctional and worse off than we are. We are a healthy congregation, we are blessed to be in the position that we are now. I truly believe that Fr. Jon being led to us was a divine intervention. He could have had his pick of any church across the United States. But he was led to us. I praise God for bringing us this new priest and I cannot wait to see what is in store for us in this next chapter.
Peace,
Sean Farrington, Senior Warden
