EFCAndrew.com

After a year of "hunting" and trying to find out where God is going to take me, I share my story of hope and madness in hunting for a church.  Waiting on church contact is a long and sometimes madening process.  Waiting to hear back after that first contact can be even harder...

Hearing from a church is always encouraging during the search process.  There is a rush of activity around any new church contact.  You receive an email or a phone call, and then you spend the next couple of days reading up on the church and the area.  There's a church website to check out, maybe a town website, information on school districts, income, industry and area attractions.  Then a day of trivial wondering if you'd like the weather there or what sports teams people like.  Finally it is time to wait.

On the first church contact it can be really hard.  I was lucky because I started the search process a semester before I graduated so there was a sense that I had a lot of time.  Still, waiting for the second call from that first church was a life lesson in patience.   A week seems like a long time to wait and a month seems like forever.  If a second contact takes two months, well, that's about when you are writing them off as "they weren't interested in me."

Of course, seeing things from the church side, two months is pretty fast, especially if they send an email.  If the search team meets once a month, then they effectively receive your reply a month later.  So they can have one meeting to go over whatever you you sent them, and the next they decide to contact you again.  That's four hours for the search team, two months for the candidate.

And really, I can't blame them.  If I was on the search team somewhere, I wouldn't want to have an extra meeting because someone sent us an email or we received something in the mail.  As a candidate, no cantact from a church just means they haven't contacted you, and while eventually it may mean you aren't on their list, even four months later you may receive another letter saying, "We like you, could you send us some sermon tapes."

So, if you are waiting for that callback, hang in there.  It is a slow, slow process, but don't give up hope.