Professional interview/self profile (8/4/2020)

Last Thursday around 4pm all clergy received an email from the Conference concerning Professional Interviews, and our self-profile.  Both of these things are things that we do each year, and the self-profile has to be turned in at least a week before your professional interview.  (A professional interview is your yearly opportunity to meet with the District Superintendent, sometimes they have questions they ask everyone, sometimes as clergy we have things we want to bring up.  Basically it's an hour that each pastor has with their district superintendent for the year...I once served with a district superintendent who said this is your hour what do you want to talk about.)

On July 15 in my memories on Facebook, I had finished my self-profile for that year, and it caused me to wonder about them for this year.  Then lo and behold we received this email last Thursday.  In some respects this is a form we fill out every year, that has basically the same questions on it every year (this year there were a couple more questions having to do with COVID-19).  (The form is about 4-5 pages long.)  Most (sane) clergy probably think oh man, this again!  But for me I was looking forward to filling it out.  Why?  I'm not sure, was it because it provides some normalcy in this time of things not being so normal?  Is it that having it done means, one more thing off the list of things to complete before the end of the year?  Could it be that your pastor is just abnormal, and likes things like this?  Who knows, there is probably truth in all of this!  

I write all of this to say that maybe, just maybe, in these times you are craving some type of normalcy.  If this is you, I'm right here with you.  As we turned the calendar to August (although I'll be honest I don't have a paper calendar to turn-and my phone does it automatically) we immediately start thinking of school, and gearing up for school.  This year this is a little more complicated for everyone involved.  So, as we begin something that would be considered normal, we are facing the reality of it being not normal at the same time.  I invite you to be in prayer for school/college administrators, faculty and staff, as well as parents as they all make difficult decisions for this Fall.