The Rev. Gretchen Haley – Our Candidate
Be sure to check out the website Gretchen created for her application for the Senior Minister position: unleashingourfuture.weebly.com.
Please also be sure to check out our Candidacy Brochure which summarizes all of the information on this blog and our process up to this point.
We are thrilled to recommend a candidate who is such a perfect match for our congregation’s future.
Please join us for one of the upcoming MSC Forums where we will have an opportunity to share our excitement with Gretchen’s candidacy, answer questions about our recommendation, and make sure you have all the information you need to vote at our congregational meeting Nov 15.
Forum Schedule
(Open to all – no registration – just come – Child Care will be provided)
- Saturday October 24 10 am
- Sunday Oct 25 12:30 pm
- Monday October 26 3 pm
- Thursday October 29 6 pm
- Saturday October 31 1 pm
- Tuesday November 3 7 pm
- Friday November 6 1 pm
The MSC Forums & Candidating Week will replace the previously promoted November 8th event.
From the Ministerial Search Committee’s Announcement on 10/18/15:
We join you this morning to reflect on the amazing process that we, as a congregation, have been through these past few months. You opened your hearts to us about how you treasure the congregational life we share together. You took our survey, you gave us incredible feedback, you came to our discovery sessions and talked passionately about your hopes and dreams for a new senior ministry. Intensive interviews with lay leaders created a blueprint of our leadership and administrative needs.
We spent hours distilling your input as we wrote the congregational record – a picture of us as we are now and our best attempt to reflect your hopes and desires for our common future. All through this time we tried to stay as objective as we possibly could.
As that portrait of our congregation became clearer, brighter, and deeper, the image of our future senior minister became obvious to us all.
We are thrilled to recommend to you The Rev Gretchen Haley as our new senior minister, and we will each share why:
Ed Beers
I was one of those who questioned if Gretchen had the experience and tested wisdom to be our senior minister. After all, she is younger than my youngest daughter. I knew she was a very capable and effective leader. I had a lot of respect for her, but I was skeptical that she could be senior minister – not now, but maybe in a couple of years.
However, it was pointed out to me that Gretchen is about the same age as Marc Salkin when we called him as senior minister. I also learned that Gretchen had started a company from the ground floor and grew it from one employee to 1200 employees in three states in a seven-year period. In conversation with the CEO and owner of several companies that included Gretchen’s company, he praised her leadership, strategic planning, and people development skills and told me we were lucky to have her. In fact, he said he hired her part time while she was in divinity school to develop and train leaders and executives in all his companies.
I got the same kind of feedback from UUA people in the Mountain Desert District. I could go on and on, but Howell only gave us three and one-half minutes.
Needless to say, I have changed my mind. I am convinced beyond any doubt that Gretchen is the right person to be our senior minister – not later, but now.
Sue Ferguson
When you asked me to serve on this search committee, I committed myself to being as objective as I possibly could be. I listened to you and worked with the team to create a profile of our best match in a minister. When I stepped back and looked at that profile, it was immediately apparent to me that we already had with us the person who was the best match.
We have seen Gretchen in action. She has served as second in command with 3 different ministers since she came to us. She’s served each of them and us with professionalism, exceptional skill and grace. She has lovingly helped us, as a congregation, through some difficult times. I can only begin to imagine what will happen when she takes the lead.
She is a person with the talent and ability to help us clarify a shared congregational vision. She’s got the drive and commitment to help us turn that vision into a realistic plan. And most importantly, she has the administrative ability to help turn our plan into collective action and to inspire us to achieve the future we want together.
In the website she created and the hours we spent in dialogue during her interviews, I saw a gifted spiritual leader with commitment to our UU principles, a dedication to cherishing our diversity of beliefs, and a true desire to accompany us through the good times and the bad.
She’s innovative and creative, she’s funny and easy to work with, and I love her sermons. Frankly, we would be fools if we let any other congregation have her as their senior minister.
Judy Gates
I didn’t know Gretchen very well before our discernment process. I agreed with many of you that she and Marc made a great, complimentary ministry team.
During the discernment process, I discovered her deep commitment to our church. She intends to stay with us for the long term and deepen our wider community relationships.
I was impressed with Gretchen’s willingness to learn, take risks, and adapt her ministry as well as her system-level view of church life, all skills we will take greater advantage of when she is senior minister. She enjoys brainstorming ideas in groups and then helping to make the most exciting ones a reality. She has clearly spent countless hours imagining the possibilities for Foothills.
Gretchen is realistic about her ministry and the needs of our church. She is committed to a big picture vision of a ministry team that, through complimentary skills and charismatic Sunday services, will enrich us all.
Finally, I am very happy that we will continue our tradition of having senior ministers who appreciate our diversity of beliefs and enjoy a good conversation.
Steve Herbener
During one of her interviews with the search committee, Gretchen stated, “I am a religious person.” I found myself thinking, “Now here’s a topic that the congregation would be very much interested in hearing more about.”
I then asked Gretchen to give more details about her statement. What happened next was amazing. Gretchen started speaking with a passion that I hadn’t seen in her before. She talked about how she loved her church and the UU faith. Then about how the UU movement was the best vehicle for reaching out and touching others. It became crystal clear that Gretchen’s purpose of being is not centered around any particular theology nor to evangelize the UU faith, rather it is to make a positive difference in the lives of people, from the individual level to the whole world community.
The conviction with which Gretchen spoke convinced me that she will fulfill this purpose, and it will be in no small manner! How fortunate I thought that we, a congregation full of people who want to make a difference, have the opportunity to choose a minister who is so well equipped to lead us in this endeavor.
Julie Thomas
Over the past six months, as we have worked together in service of the congregation, I kept an open mind and reserved all judgment as to who our candidate would be.
Of course, I knew all along that we might have an internal candidate, but I actually didn’t even consider whether Gretchen would be the right fit. I needed to hear your thoughts about what Foothills means to you, your needs, your dreams for the future.
As we created the congregational record and a profile of the minister we seek, based on the input we received from all of you, we recognized that Gretchen might be that person and invited her to enter into the interview process.
As I read the information Gretchen shared on her candidating website, I saw the possibilities of the new and exciting ministry that she envisions at Foothills. Over many hours in the interview process, we asked the hard questions, discussed our needs and dreams, and developed a more complete understanding of her experience, skills, knowledge and passion for Unitarian Universalism and for our congregation.
Honestly, I am blown away. Gretchen has what we need and shares our hopes and dreams. She’s demonstrated many of her skills and abilities, and as senior minister she will journey with us as we develop and live into our mission and future.
With enthusiasm I join in recommending the Rev. Gretchen Haley as our candidate!
Lyndy Latta
Throughout the intensive, eye-opening process that was “The Big Listen,” my focus, our focus, was on developing a deep understanding of our congregation.
I believe our commitment to that objective is well reflected in the process we engaged in and in the Congregational Record which summarizes it all.
I was blown away by the incredible, dynamic website Gretchen presented for our consideration, but what captivated me as hour after hour of our intensive interviews went by was the picture that began to form of who she would become in this new role.
It was quickly clear how Gretchen’s ability in growing a business to 1200 employees isn’t just impressive. It also reveals an exceedingly rare capacity for adaptation, a rare and impressive ability to evolve and develop new skills as our congregation will, inevitably, evolve and change over time.
These are just a few of the many reasons why I join with my fellow search committee members, today, in whole-heartedly recommending the Reverend Gretchen Haley as our next Senior Minister. The depth of our process and the clarity of understanding attained as a result make it clear that she is, indeed, “The One.”
Foothills SearchLight 