Kitchen Cabinet
It is the second week of March. A legal pad, the parsonage list, the minimum-compensation schedule, and forty churches — and before you can weigh a single appointment, you are cross-referencing by hand who is even eligible. This is that work, made playable: you sit as the appointive cabinet, read the spring’s contingencies, and fill the open charges. Then the year plays out, and next spring’s openings emerge from what you decided.
Everything here is invented — the churches, the clergy, the circumstances — so the process can be shown without exposing anyone. What is real is the polity underneath: attendance sets what a charge needs, apportionment is the second signal, deacons are never appointed as pastor-in-charge, and a charge that cannot meet minimum compensation cannot hold a full-time elder. The same machinery, on a conference’s own data and rules, runs the fall reporting and the planting decisions too.
Try the season →A process you recognise
Retirements, requested moves, family and renewal leaves, a church start, a congregation merged after years of decline — the contingencies a cabinet actually reads each spring.
The synthesis, made visible
Toggle a constraint — require Spanish, only what a charge can pay, right-sized leadership — and every candidate list re-ranks at once. That weighing of many factors against real rules is the work.
Advisory, never an oracle
The cabinet builds the scenarios; the tool never hands down a recommended appointment or ranks people. It eats the schlep so the discernment has room.
You are the appointive cabinet for a conference of 16 churches. Each spring brings retirements, requests, and arrivals. You fill the open charges — and the way you match clergy to churches shapes whether congregations grow or fade. Do it well for years and the conference flourishes; misjudge it and the vacancies and friction compound.
Worship attendance sets what a charge needs; apportionment payment is the second signal. Small charges lean on local pastors — yoke them into circuits when pastors run short. Larger churches need associates, the natural home for deacons.