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Basic Church Profile
St. Peter’s Church, at Third and Pine Streets in Philadelphia, is seeking an Interim Rector to shepherd us through the process of selecting a new Rector. A priest with experience with the search process is preferred. The ideal candidate would have excellent administrative and communication skills, an ability to connect with people, and excellent listening skills.
St. Peter’s is an historic church in an urban neighborhood. We are a vibrant community where all different types of people come together to ask life’s big questions and to find relationship and community with one another. Our members range in age – we have a lively Family Worship service for children age 8 and younger. We also have active ministries for those in their 20s/30s, 40s/50s, and 60+.
We believe that all people are beloved by God and are of equal worth and dignity; we have many parishioners in the LGBTQ+ community and embrace all who walk through our doors. We raise our voice for justice and look for ways to serve our neighbors and our city. We have a Food Cupboard ministry that distributes groceries to those in need weekly, and a choral program that is steeped in the Anglican Church musical tradition. Both of these ministries are being reshaped during this “post-pandemic” period. The Interim Period will include discernment and decisions about how these ministries could best meet current and future needs of the parish and neighborhood.
The majority of St. Peter’s parishioners live in the neighborhood. St. Peter’s parishioners have a healthy sense of ownership and stewardship of their church. People are volunteers both at St. Peter’s and elsewhere.
Job Description
- Provide Stability: The Interim Rector, working with the Vestry, will provide the leadership necessary to maintain stability during the interim period. They bring a “non-anxious presence” to an uncertain, grieving, or conflicted congregation.
- Support Discernment Process: A key task is to help the congregation complete its disengagement from previous leadership as it begins the self-study related to the search process. They will also work with the Vestry to create and support a search committee.
- Liturgical Leadership and Support:
o Work with the Vestry and other lay leaders to maintain the regular schedule of worship services and preaching, education, pastoral care, and pastoral offices (weddings, funerals, and baptisms), while increasing the flexibility and resiliency of the parish in liturgy and music, by offering opportunities to experience different forms and styles of worship.
o Manage and support the Associate Rector and other staff with the worship calendar and liturgical planning for worship.
- Review organizational structures: Manage the clergy and staff; help the staff and lay leadership identify processes that might be improved for decision-making, management, and communication; establish a detailed report of current active ministries.
- Pastoral care: Call upon the sick and shut-in, visit newcomers, and ongoing administration of the parish, while increasing the parish’s commitment to pastoral care by lay members.
- Supervise all parish staff in the exercise of their responsibilities and ministries, for which they shall be accountable to the Interim Rector. If it is necessary in the interim time to hire or terminate staff, the Wardens shall take those actions, given their canonical responsibility for the parish during the Interim Period.
- Support the Vestry in its responsibilities.