Reviewing Our Vestry Nomination Process | November 2021 - January 2022

Last week, our current Mission Vestry members finished our side of the Vestry Nomination Process. Today, we shared with our congregation our 2022 Vestry slate including 3 excellent candidates our current Vestry is putting forward to our congregation’s members to approve or disapprove as a whole slate by vote at our upcoming Annual Congregational Meeting on Sunday, February 27th from 11 AM - noon at House of Joy.

As we prepare for this vote, we want to share with you the step by step details of the process so that you know how leadership decisions were made which allowed the process to unfold. We believe sharing these details is important both for the sake of transparency in our operations as a church, and also to show you how important the continued participation of as many of our members as possible truly is in the annual vestry nomination process. So let’s start back in November 2021 with step 1:

1) November 10 - 24, 2021 - We opened a 2 week window in which we asked the members of the Mission Cincinnati congregation to nominate fellow members to serve on the Vestry. We announced that we were ideally looking for 2 new members (ideally both female) to join our 2022 Vestry class. 9 nominations were submitted. Some candidates were nominated multiple times, and in total we had 6 nominees.

2) Tuesday November 30th - Our current Vestry met and reviewed the nominations to ensure nominees meet the qualifications to serve on our Vestry. The current vestry determined that all 6 candidates not only qualified but that all 6 would be excellent candidates to serve on our Vestry.

3) December 1 - 19 - Our current Vestry reached out to the 6 nominees, shared with them what their nominators had said about them, and invited them to continue in the Vestry nomination process. After prayerful consideration, 3 nominees declined the invitation to move forward in the process (though they expressed tremendous honor and gratitude for being considered). The other 3 nominees accepted the invitation to move forward in the process.

4) December 20 - Jan 11 - The 3 nominees completed a short questionnaire about their faith journey, interest in serving on the Vestry, and practical skills. On Tuesday, January 11th, all 3 shared individual interviews with our current Vestry members and Rector. After the interviews, our Vestry and Rector agreed that while we had initially only sought to find TWO candidates for this year’s Vestry slate, that ALL THREE candidates in fact would be an excellent fit to serve this year.

5) Tuesday, January 18th - At our first Vestry meeting of 2022, our current Vestry voted unanimously to invite all 3 candidates to join the 2022 Vestry slate.

6) January 18th - 21st - After a final round of prayerful reflection, all 3 of these candidates accepted the invitation to move forward in the process and officially join the 2022 Vestry class slate. If approved by the congregational vote at the Annual Meeting, all 3 will begin 3-year terms of service to our church on the Mission Cincinnati Vestry.

We want to sincerely thank everyone who took part in this process: those who made nominations, those who were nominated and discerned whether or not the time was right for them to serve, and those who after navigating the process have said yes to being on this year’s Vestry slate. We celebrate the health of our congregation: that we have been blessed with so many faithful, mature, and gifted people who would make such excellent candidates to serve on our Vestry, and that so many people in our church enthusiastically participated in nominating others to do so. There is an African proverb that says, “it takes a village to raise a child.” In our case it takes the faithful participation of a whole church to prayerfully bring forth a great Vestry class. God has been so faithful to us in moving our whole congregation to take part in this process and we have great nominees as a result! Praise God!

If you have any questions about the Vestry nomination process, please feel free to reach out to william@missioncincinnati.org.