Dear People of St. James’,
I would like to update you on the Associate Rector search.
At the Annual Parish Meeting, we approved a budget that covers the addition of an Associate Rector to our staff as of June 1, 2023. This move was made possible by our strong stewardship and the reduction of our debt to ZERO at the end of 2022. It is exciting. We have a growing congregation with in-person and online attendance of over 300 people many Sundays. We worship and learn in multiple languages. We train seminarians and contribute to the life of our community in so many ways. We show up for each other in times of need and distress and also joy. We have a clear sense of our call. With all of this holy momentum, it makes sense to expand our clergy staff. (Notice I said “expand”! To my knowledge, nobody already on our clergy staff is going anywhere.)
The job description, created after a really good listening session with our Spanish-speaking community, has been approved and posted by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas on the Transition page. This is where clergy go to see what a diocese might have available. We will be posting through a variety of other Episcopal networks shortly, because I think we will need to expand our search outside of the diocese in order to find a Spanish-speaker who would be a good fit for our whole congregation.
I am hopeful that we will find someone who feels called to serve East Austin with us, and I am also willing for us to take the time we need to search. You all have some experience with hurry-up-and-wait patterns of search processes, and this will be no different. Please keep this process in prayer.
Rev. Eileen
