Session Update – The Search Process
The Session of Highland Park Presbyterian Church is the ruling body of our congregation, charged with governance, overseeing the Church’s spiritual health, and guiding its mission for Christ in the world. To do this better, the Session frequently communicates with the congregation of HP Pres to report its decisions and activities.
Since Bryan passed and we lost our Senior Pastor, we have seen an outpouring of love and support from you to the Dunagan family and the rest of our church family. Thank you for caring for Ali, the kids, the church staff, and each other. We’re blessed as a church to have a congregation like this.
As time has passed, we’ve been getting questions about the next steps for our church. Who will our next Senior Pastor be? How long does it take to find the right person? What will we do in the meantime? What can we do to help? These are all fundamental questions, and while we don’t have answers for everything yet, I’m here today to share with you what the first steps in this process will look like.
Over the last two months, we have spent time in prayer, seeking counsel from our denominational leaders at ECO, and talking to other churches and church leaders to glean their wisdom. In a few weeks, on January 19, the elders will spend time together at our Annual Elder Retreat. We will focus on defining the first steps and overall process in the search for our next Senior Pastor. Please pray for this retreat, for our Elders, future Elders involved with the search, prospective candidates, and for all of our leadership to be blessed by supernatural wisdom and discernment from God as we enter this process.
After the retreat, we will return to you with more communication about the next steps. In the meantime, I want to let you know about a page on our website, hppres.org/questions. This is a place where you can submit questions you have about the process, and it’s a place that we will keep updated with FAQs as we go forward.
Thank you for your prayers, patience, care for each other, and solidarity and support as we seek to engage this process faithfully. We have complete trust in God, who has taken care of and guided this church for almost 100 years, to remain faithful as we carry out our church’s mission far into the future.
The Session of HP Pres
