Has the Episcopal Church's search for a better way to deploy its clergy been the answer to everyone's prayers? In 1969 the church replaced the ''old buddy network'' method of negotiating a new pastorate with the Clergy Deployment Board and its computer clergy data bank.
The authors, after retirement from parish ministry, took a two-year trek around the United States, armed with a tape recorder and a word processor. They came back with a 220-page book full of stories about the process of calling a pastor from one parish to another. Chapters tell about "the winners," "the losers," and "the search committees."
This book sensitized me to the clergy search dilemma as perceived by 200 clergy and 50 members of search committees interviewed by the authors. The concluding chapter distills information learned in the interviews. The authors use this information to make suggestions for refining the process of clergy search. The feelings that come across in these interviews should motivate improvements in the Episcopal Church's impressive machination of the search process so as not to clutter up the call of the Holy Spirit. As summed up in the book's final line, "the task that lies before the church is to provide, in deployment, an atmosphere in which the call to a parish can be clearly perceived as an authentic call from God."
The short stories told from the perspective of both pastors in the process of being called and the laypeople on local search committees make this book interesting and valuable to all churches. These vignettes caused me to reflect on how I am dealing with pastoral change in my own church. My pastor has taken a call to Texas, and I am part of the search committee. This book adds a whole new perspective to my thinking.