From the Executive Director:

Dear friends,

With enthusiasm for God’s calling, I have accepted appointment as the Transitional Priest-in-Charge of the Seacoast Shared Ministry, a collaboration between Trinity Episcopal Church in Hampton and Christ Episcopal Church in Portsmouth. My first Sunday with the Seacoast Shared Ministry will be on Sunday, July 11, 2021.

With any new calling, there is grief in saying goodbye. As I begin my ministry with the Seacoast Shared Ministry, I will be stepping down as Executive Director of the NH Council of Churches. God has profoundly blessed and changed my life through four years of ministry among the nine member denominations of the Council.

In 2017, representatives of those nine denominations took a leap of faith. Following a period of internal conflict and declining participation, they hired for the first time a full-time Executive Director. Their charge to me as Director included the priorities:

1. Revitalize the Council’s relationship with its member denominations
2. Renew the relationships of the member denominations with each other
3. Connect deeply with the local churches and interfaith communities of our state
4. Advocate for our member denomination’s faith-based social teachings in the public square

Four years later, both our board members and I would affirm that we have made strides in these priorities and that through this work our ministries are all stronger together. Specifically, over these years we have come together to:

1. Repeal our state death penalty 
2. Take a leading role in the Solidarity Walk for Immigrant Justice
3. Form a faith-based Addiction and Recovery network
4. Organize denominational leaders in responding to the COVID crisis

As I prepare to leave my service to the NH Council of Churches and to begin service to the Seacoast Shared Ministry, I ask for your prayerful support of the Council and all its members. As long as our churches remain faithful to God’s calling, the Council will always have a ministry to support them in doing together what we cannot do alone.

Over the coming weeks, the NH Council of Churches will publish a job description for that next Executive Director. Please read it prayerfully and ask if God is calling you or someone that you know to this ministry of connection and support. I will hold the Council in my own prayers, for our shared future ministry and in gratitude for how the Lord has blessed me in this time.

Yours in faith,

 

From the NHCC Board: 

We are so grateful for Jason’s ministry over these past four years, and will miss his leadership and dedication to ecumenical work. We hope you will join us in sending Jason off to his next call with our blessing.

We have already begun planning our search for a new Director. As you have hopefully heard by now, this role will be moving to a half-time position, and we have been working over the last few months to shift the job description accordingly. The Board appointed a small hiring team at our meeting last week who will be sharing more details about the search in the next week or so. If you are dedicated to ecumenical connection and action here in New Hampshire, we hope you will consider applying or sharing the job description in your networks. 

As the search progresses, we will keep the NHCC member denominations and partners informed. We hope to have a new Director to introduce sometime this summer. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to reach out to our Board President, Rev. Allison Palm at minister@uunashua.org.