New Method of Filling Church's Job Openings Off to Fast Start
Diocesan Press Service. May 1, 1972 [72040]
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Half the clergy of the Episcopal Church, more than 4,500 diocesan bishops, deans, rectors, vicars and others, have joined in the new data bank method -- the Church Manpower System -- for filling career openings.
"This is a most encouraging start toward meeting that age-old problem of the church world, matching the right person with the right job," the Rev. Roddey Reid, Jr., executive director of the Clergy Deployment Office, said at the first anniversary of the start of the operation.
Mr. Reid said in his first-year progress report that the 50 per cent response by the Church's 8,700 active clergy met initial objectives, and that an additional 20 to 25 per cent will be sought during the next 12 months. He added that more than 100 requests for detailed profiles -- embodying 259 pieces of personal information on each questionnaire -- have been or are being processed since the people-search part of the operation was inaugurated a few months ago. "An average of five profiles per search, more than 500 candidates all told, have been sent out in response to requests so far received," he said.
The program is described as a national personnel inventory method of assembling and regularly updating personnel files of the ministry for the use of parishes, dioceses and the national church. Startup costs for the Clergy Deployment Office were underwritten by the Episcopal Church Foundation, an independent organization of laymen that supports the work of the Church.
" By quickly bringing together the openings and the most highly qualified persons," said William A. Coolidge, president of the Foundation, "the system saves much time in the placement work of bishops, vestries and clergymen; helps avoid personnel mistakes; minimizes instances of overlooking deserving ministers, and assures the prompt filling of vacancies. All persons have access to their own files."
The Rt. Rev. John H. Burt, Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio and chairman of the Board for Clergy Deployment said, "This plan serves Church and ministry alike by means of a great technological step forward. I think we can be proud of the response of our clergy in view of the purely voluntary nature of the project, the natural concern that anyone would have about any new method affecting their careers, and the complexity of the questionnaire itself. I think that our friends in the business world would call these results 'phenomenal'."