Reactions to a New Rector

I’d just like to say out loud what everyone is thinking: our new rector will not be Newt Hayes.* Now it’s said! We can breathe deeply and prepare to receive a new rector in the next month or two.

Our Search Committee has worked very hard on our behalf for the last year searching the world for the best person to lead us into the future. In my forty years as a priest I have never seen a more dedicated and concerted effort to find a new rector. Each of us owes every member of our Search Team our heartfelt thanks! They began in prayer and will see us through to the end in prayer, and God will undoubtedly lead us as he has promised to when we pray.

From my experience, our new rector will generate a flush of excitement and renewal. In this honeymoon period we will be excited to support him. We will assuredly rally around his family. We want to hear his story and see his heart. And, like a marriage, the honeymoon will extend with time into a deeper mutual ministry in which we learn to work with him for Kingdom purposes.

Please be determined to give him grace when he is not as dignified and correct as Ken Semon, or as smart as Grayson or Chris, or as handsome as our interim rector. I have no doubt that he will lead us to exciting new places given his unique strengths and weaknesses.

I am thankful to God for our future at Christ Church. In a couple weeks we will go back to one combined Summer service. And in very short time we will be celebrating a new ministry among us. Thanks be to our gracious God!

Chuck Collins
Interim Rector

 

*Newt was a scientist at Los Alamos Laboratory who lived very near God. He was diagnosed mid life with ALS, but even in his illness up to his death, people came from all over the country to hear him speak of Jesus. I was privileged to be his friend.

 

Artwork above: “The Red Vineyard” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, Pushkin Museum, Moscow