Greetings from your Interim Priest:

This is my first official greeting to all of you and my first introduction as your interim priest. Steven Lander and I have now started our interim work here and look forward to meeting all of you and helping St. John's to ready itself to be in the best possible position to call the most attractive candidate as Rector that you can find. Steven will introduce himself elsewhere and send you his own greetings. Please look for that.

It will be your search committee's task to clarify what kind of rector you need and to generate and interview candidates in order to present to you the best candidate. Steven and I will not be an integral part of that process. Our goal is to help you define your goals for this interim period and to meet those goals. Some of those will be maintenance goals, such as continuing the pastoral care that Henry and Lydia have been doing so ably. Others may call for new ventures and experimentation, still others for holding the course.

Our first few days and weeks we will listen a lot. So, now is a good time to get our ear. Mary is setting up an email address for me at St. John's. In the meantime, you may email me at hd15@gwest.net. My home and office phone is 612.673.0232. We will be announcing some regular office hours, but feel free to call Mary to set up an appointment, as she will know our availability as well as anyone.

Jay Hanson, Interim Priest