Serving Congregations & Ministers

January 2025

Pre-candidating Update:

For Settled Ministry Search Teams

• Please directly invite the ministers you hope will be your pre-candidates tomorrow, 23 January. UUA staff do not have a role in transmitting these invitations. 
• Do not have more open invitations at any given time than pre-candidates you intend to host. In other words, do not invite six pre-candidates, assuming some will decline, in the hopes that you will end up with three. Doing so would not be fair to ministers or other search teams. 
• If a minister knows they will not accept your invitation, they may tell you at once. If they’re not sure, they may think about it.  
• Ministers may begin accepting invitations on the 24th.
• If an invitation is declined, you may invite another minister if you have another applicant whom you feel might be a good match for your congregation.  
• Once ministers accept your pre-candidate invitations, ask each one which of the weekends you have reserved for pre-candidating would work for them and schedule the visits. 
• Once your pre-candidating visits are scheduled, please let the UUA Transitions Team know which ministers will pre-candidate with your search team and when their visits are scheduled so we can schedule the preparation and distribution of interpretive file summaries.  

• You may decline invitations to pre-candidate at any time after they come in on the 23rd.  
•  If you’re not sure if you want to accept or decline, it’s fine take time to think about the decision. Please try to respond to the search team within three days. 
• You may accept invitations on or after the 24th. 
• You may receive an invitation after the 23rd if a search team was, for some reason, not ready to send invitations on the 23rd or had one of their invitations declined.  
• You are limited to three pre-candidate opportunities per search cycle in the settled search process.