search for our
new rector

Our parish is in the process of searching for our next permanent rector.

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Rev. Rondesia was hired as an interim rector to help our parish prepare for and work through this time of transition. We have her full support as we look ahead to the future of St. Stephen’s. 

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The vestry wants the congregation to be involved in every stage of this process. 

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The Episcopal Diocese of Washington will work alongside us in this process. The vestry will serve as the formal search committee, but it is committed to making this a transparent process, involving the entire parish. Once we say “go,” the diocese will work with us step-by-step through the seven stages that they’ve set up for us:

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1. The first step is working through hurt and conflict in the healing and reconciliation process. It also involves getting our finances fully audited and starting conversations about who we are and who we want to be as a parish. This stage is anticipated to take a few months. Please stay tuned for more opportunities for your input as we start this stage of dreaming and looking forward. 

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When we feel ready to move on, we’ll move through the following steps:

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2. The diocese will work with us to do a financial review of the church that includes our compensation package for the prospective priest.

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3. We’ll offer the diocese a detailed job description that includes our must-haves and our negotiables.

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4. The diocese will work with us on a “parish vitality assessment.” We’ll evaluate ourselves along vital signs like “mission and vision,” “discipleship,” “financial practice,” “ministries,” “worship,” and “blessing our community.”

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5. The diocese will review our website to make sure it matches our assessment of who we are. 

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6. We’ll work on a "parish profile" about who we are and how we worship. It’s what prospective priests will read as they’re getting to know us. 

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When all of this is finalized, the vestry will meet with the diocese’s transition teams to review everything we’ve put together and determine next steps in moving forward. At that point, we’ll be able to post a job description and start taking applicants and interviewing for our next rector.

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To make it easy for members of the parish to be engaged throughout this process, on this page are links to documents stored in a Google Drive folder with all these steps laid out and a public dashboard that marks our progress throughout these stages. The vestry will be populating this dashboard and putting in specific names, links to documents, and everything you need to feed into this process and see where we’re at. You do not have to have a Google account or Google email account (Gmail) to access these documents.

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In this public folder is also a document that you can jump right in and start editing - sharing your thoughts and ideas and priorities for this search.