Search for a Pastor: Background information

Our congregation had applied to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) to fill the position, left vacant, by Pastor Christian Ceconi. The EKD Council approved this request and agreed to provide a new pastor from August 1, 2021.

The advertisement for the new pastor went out on July 22, 2020 in various church publications in Germany. All interested parties had to apply by October 15, 2020. Afterwards, the applications received were checked and pre-sorted by a specialist group in the external office of the EKD and a decision was made to present the selected candidates to our congregation.

According to the regulations for parish elections and the plans of the EKD, the first round of interviews was supposed to be carried out in person in Hanover in November 2020. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Germany, these interviews were postponed to January 2021 and carried out online.

On February 21 and 28, 2021, the second round of interviews took place online in our congregation. There were two parties, a pastor couple and a pastor. They each provided a church service and the German radio devotion. The congregation was then able to ask questions and have contact on Sundays as part of our “coffee hour”, on Zoom. Before that, on Saturdays, the call committee and the council had the opportunity to get to know the applicants and to speak in detail about content-related questions about our congregational life.

On March 8, 2021 after several hours of deliberation and very careful consideration, the call committee decided unanimously in favour of the pastor and submitted the decision to the council for a final discussion and vote on March 9, 2021. The church council in turn unanimously confirmed the recommendation of the nomination committee and asks the congregation for approval to appoint this pastor in our congregation. The voting process began and will have to be completed by the end of March 2021.

According to the ELCIC regulations, voting should be done by paper ballots, however, during this pandemic period, voting by email was also made possible.

Blog: Wishing Pastor Ceconi well at the Berliner Stadtmission, October 8, 2020
https://martinluther.ca/2020/10/wishing-pastor-ceconi-well-at-the-berliner-stadtmission/