South London Pastors Franklin and Cecilie Fortune Gain Vote of Confidence

South London Pastors Gain Vote of Confidence.

Tim Read - January 16, 2019

Our pastors were given a resounding vote of confidence last Sunday despite a possible last-minute change of plans. Eighty eight people voted, and all but two, who abstained, voted for them

Application process

The deadline for applications to be pastor was December 31st, and applications were to be sent to our HR department. The HR department would then have checked the applications to see if they matched the criteria asked for in the job description, and then passed them onto our Community Committee where we would have considered each application on its merits, and then asked for an interview with all possible candidates. Any candidates chosen would then have been referred to the National Leaders for their approval before being finally put to a vote amongst our community voting membership.

Franklin and Cecilie with their granddaughter, Leona

Pastors re-apply leading to a vote of confidence

By December 31s we hade only received one application, from our current pastors, Franklin and Cecilie Fortune, so we put into place plans to have a vote of confidence for them on the 13th Jan.

However, on the 9th January, two applications were received via other channels. After some consideration, the South London Committee felt that we didn’t want to change our plans for a confidence vote at the last minute. In addition, since this is the first time we have had elections for the position of pastor, we felt that it was important to follow our agreed upon process and deadlines rather than change them, which would not set a very good precedent for elections in the future and risked dismaying our membership due to our indecisiveness.

The vote went ahead on 13th Jan at the end of the Sunday service, and email votes were allowed until midnight Weds 16th Jan. The final tally was 86 votes supporting the current pastors, none against, and 2 abstentions.

Lessons learnt

We learnt some good lessons from this process – the main being that it is crucial to make the pastors’ position attractive, well supported and doable. To that end, amongst other things, we are working to bolster our community committee with new members and roles that can actively support the pastors’ mission.