Senior Minister Search Committee Update | April 2022

Dear Riverside Family,

In 2005, something extraordinary happened – a 2,000-year-old date palm seed found in the rubble of ancient Masada in the Judean Desert germinated.

Life, from a seemingly impossible situation. Like the grand narrative of Holy Week and Easter. Like the hope we dare to feel as we emerge from our two-year pandemic. And in a way, like the progress we’re making in our search for the next Senior Minister of The Riverside Church.

Your guidance and patience in helping us find our Senior Minister are now yielding tangible results – a large number of applications from across the US and beyond, amazing in diversity, have been received so far. Your Senior Minister Search Committee is in the process of reading these comprehensive portfolios. We are also listening, watching, and discussing. It’s an enormous responsibility. We are giving all candidates the full attention they deserve, trying to discern their gifts and their hopes and how these might mesh with what we have heard from you over the past year.

To that end, our committee is scheduled to meet at least six times in April and four times in May, in person and through Zoom. We continue to consult with our ABC and UCC representatives and have been fortunate in having Mr. Jason Lillis as our administrative assistant along this journey – the input and support have been invaluable. Of course, we also continue to value the insight of our Riverside family at all times.

And that palm tree? Well, it yielded its first crop of dates in 2020. We hope to produce a similarly beautiful result – and we can assure you, it won’t take us 2,000 years!

We wish all of our Riverside family a most joyous Easter season as we move into the abundant life Christ has promised us.

With God’s grace,

Alexa, Andrea, Annie, Beth, David, Emily, Hylda, Karissa, Lee, Lisa, and Mark