Dear Friends,
I’m excited to announce that we have a pastoral candidate to introduce to you!
Before opening a broad search, Matt Wilber (the clerk of our church) and I have worked our way through a very short list of people with whom we felt it was necessary to explore the idea of joining our pastoral staff. This person is on our extremely short list, and conversations over the past several weeks have proceeded to the point where we are excited to introduce him to you all.
Josh Bunce is currently the chair of the Bible and Theology department at Barclay College in Haviland, Kansas. Josh graduated from Barclay and then did graduate work at both Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, where he earned his Master of Divinity degree. He pastored at Netarts Friends Church in Oregon before spending the last 14 years as a professor at Barclay. I know that several of you know Josh and will be excited about this possibility, and Matt Wilber and I both believe that Josh would be a great fit for our church.
Over the next week a small committee will meet with Josh to do further interviews, and then we have approval from the Coordinators to bring Josh in to preach on March 19th, a week from this Sunday. The timing is related to Josh’s availability; we recognize that this is the second weekend of Spring Break but hope that as many of you can make it as would like to. The service will be live streamed as usual if you have travel plans that make it difficult to be in attendance, and recorded to YouTube if you need to watch later on our church channel.
Assuming that things progress well this week for both the Bunces and our church, we plan to have his family—Josh, his wife, Marcy, and three Children, Audrey (16), Ethan (13), and Clayton (10)—down to meet with different groups and worship with us the weekend of March 31st-April 3rd.
As always, any decision on a pastor will be discussed and recommended by the church Coordinators for final approval by a full congregational business meeting. Such meetings would not occur until after the second weekend visit by Josh and his family, and we will make sure there is plenty of notice when we are ready to bring a final decision before the congregation.
I’m extremely excited about this possibility and trust that you will be as well as you get to know Josh and his family. I also hope you will join me in continuing to pray for good discernment for both our church and the Bunce family as we seek God’s direction for us all.
Grace and peace to each of you!
Bobby Kirkpatrick